Amid global crises, international aid is at a critical juncture. Budget cuts by donor nations risk undermining humanitarian efforts while sparking debates on aid dependency and systemic inequities. Arthur Larok, ActionAid International’s Secretary-General, brings decades of civil society leadership to this discourse. In an interview with DevelopmentAid, he advocates for a paradigm shift: moving from top-down aid models to self-determination and locally led solutions.
Larok highlights how the shrinking funds are threatening frontline responses but stresses deeper issues – structural inequality and imbalanced power dynamics – that demand radical reform. He calls for reimagining development finance, prioritizing economic justice, and empowering communities to lead change.
Addressing rising nationalism, Larok underscores the urgency of innovative global cooperation, with civil society as a driving force. Aid, he argues, must evolve from short-term fixes to fostering sustainable equity. His vision challenges the sector to replace dependency with solidarity, transforming aid into a tool for systemic progress.
DevAid: Given the recent decisions by the U.S., the U.K., and several EU countries to slash foreign aid budgets, how do you assess the immediate impact on humanitarian organizations like ActionAid?
Arthur Larok: Cuts to foreign aid have real and immediate consequences – not just numbers on a budget sheet, but lives disrupted, progress stalled, and futures put at risk. When governments pull back, it means fewer resources for education, healthcare, climate adaptation, and emergency relief.
At ActionAid, we believe that the system that creates aid dependency needs to be dismantled –people should have agency, power, and dignity. The way these cuts have been made is deeply problematic. It’s not just about reducing budgets; it’s about who gets to decide and how those decisions are made. It feels abrupt, undignified, and disconnected from the realities on the ground.
For organizations like ours, it forces difficult choices. We’ll have to stretch already limited resources even further. But I do believe this sector can evolve for the better, especially by focusing on the bigger picture of how to finance sustainable development through action on tax justice, debt justice and ending austerity. Alongside this strategic work, we can and must still harness the power of individual giving, voluntary spirit, and community-driven support.
When I speak about breaking aid dependency, I mean countries, communities, and movements working to change the systems that perpetuate poverty by addressing unjust trade, shifting power away from colonial financial institutions, reconnecting with the spirit of independence movements, and advancing progressive and feminist alternatives to finance development. There is a lot that can be done nationally but countries also need to come together to demand changes to the unjust international order.
Breaking aid dependency is important for organizations too. We must move away from reliance on government aid and instead build models that are sustained by the generosity and solidarity of people. It’s a paradigm shift, and we need to adapt, not for our own survival but to preserve the dignity and agency of the people we work with.
DevAid: Beyond the immediate financial strain, how does the uncertainty surrounding future funding affect ActionAid’s ability to plan and implement long-term projects?
Arthur Larok: When funding is uncertain, organizations are forced into short-term thinking –reacting instead of planning. This makes it harder to invest in long-term solutions that will build resilience and break cycles of poverty. We need to shift towards more stable, decolonized funding models built on true solidarity that can support community-led solutions and reduce dependency on government aid.
But in the bigger picture, this is not about us. It is about supporting a radical rethinking around how development is financed. We are supporting our colleagues in countries across the Global South to engage in critical national dialogues on the future of financing for development. In the context of declining aid and the mounting debt crisis, we need civil society and governments to be proactive in defining the ways forward, for example through ambitious and progressive tax reforms, bold action to call for debt cancellation and a radical move away from austerity policies and prioritizing universal and good quality public services.
DevAid: There’s a strong perception that the global aid system is facing a crisis of credibility and effectiveness. Do you agree? If so, what are the most critical systemic changes needed to address this, including adjustments to power dynamics and accountability?
Arthur Larok: We have to acknowledge that aid has played a critical role in many areas, whether tackling HIV/AIDS, responding to humanitarian crises, or by expanding access to education and healthcare. We have seen real impact. But we also have to be honest—let us not fall into the trap of thinking the aid system was without its problems. The trade and security interests of donor countries have been undermining aid effectiveness for many years. We have observed how donor countries increasingly spend their aid to cover the costs of migrants and refugees in their own countries. We have witnessed the growing capture of aid by private consultancy firms and the private sector. We have critiqued the ideological agenda behind too much aid that has supported the privatization of public services. And we have not succeeded in ending the white saviorism of much humanitarian aid.
For these reasons, we support the idea of a United Nations Convention on Development Cooperation that can reassert the important principles of aid effectiveness. We need greater accountability, more transparency, and a real commitment to locally driven solutions. In practice, that means moving beyond charity to solidarity—working with and being led by the communities to build their own futures, on their own terms.
Most fundamentally, aid has too often failed to address the root causes of why people need it in the first place. The unjust global economic system and chronic power imbalance internationally need to be addressed directly and not just patched over through aid. Our recent report, Who Owes Who, lays out the scale of the injustice involved by a system that drives so many countries into debt crisis, forcing them to cut spending on health and education to service debts, whilst rich countries get away without paying their climate debt or the vast debts they should owe for the transatlantic slave trade and wealth extraction during colonization.
DevAid: Beyond funding cuts, what are the systemic issues within the global aid architecture that contribute to its perceived ineffectiveness, and are there alternative models of international cooperation that could better address global challenges such as poverty and inequality?
Arthur Larok: The problem isn’t just the amount of aid, it’s how it is structured. Too much of it reinforces dependency rather than self-determination. Tied aid, donor-driven agendas, and top-down approaches undermine local leadership and decision-making. We need a shift towards solidarity-based partnerships and locally controlled financing. At ActionAid, we believe in human dignity and agency. These principles must be at the core of any aid system.
An aid system that undermines dignity and agency is not just ineffective, it is counterproductive but reforming aid in isolation of wider systemic changes will never be enough. We need to see wider shifts in power and an end to the present international architecture, which is dominated by colonial institutions, set up before any country in Africa achieved independence and which have not fundamentally reformed their voting structures in 80 years.
DevAid: Looking ahead, are you worried we are moving toward a world where global solidarity takes a backseat to national interests? Or do you see signs of hope that countries will still step up for the world’s most vulnerable?
Arthur Larok: There is reason to be concerned, but there is also hope. Yes, some governments are retreating behind nationalist policies, but we also see civil society, grassroots movements, and progressive leaders stepping up. People are demanding change. History has shown that real transformation doesn’t come from the top, it comes from the people. And I believe that the fight for justice, equity, and solidarity will continue, no matter what governments choose to do. It’s up to all of us to make sure that global solidarity isn’t just a slogan but a reality.
One of the most exciting developments in recent years has been the extent to which different movements are coming together. Economic justice movements (addressing tax justice or debt justice) are connecting with public service and anti-privatization movements, and these are all connecting with climate justice movements and feminist and youth movements. People are recognizing that their struggles are interconnected and that they need to come together to achieve the scale of system change that is needed.
DevAid: There is a growing argument that developing nations should move away from aid dependence and focus on economic self-reliance. Is that a realistic shift, or is it an oversimplification of the challenges these countries face?
Arthur Larok: The problem isn’t that countries in the global majority world “want” aid; it’s that they have been trapped in a system of structural inequality. Unfair trade deals, tax evasion and aggressive tax avoidance, crushing debt, and resource exploitation mainly by the Global North make it nearly impossible for many nations to build true economic self-reliance. So yes, self-sufficiency is the goal but it won’t be achieved simply by donor withdrawal. It requires work to convene and connect movements and a commitment to real systemic change. Dismantling that system and replacing it with one that is just, fair, and rooted in global solidarity is the only way to achieve real economic independence. There are some things that countries in the Global South can do themselves – for example, working to build more ambitious and fairer tax systems – but they also need to come together to demand international changes, such as through advancing progress on a UN Framework Convention on Tax, so that global tax rules do not unfairly advantage rich countries as they have for the past 60 years. Similar coordinated action is needed to resolve the global debt crisis and create a new UN framework Convention on Debt, which is a central demand at the upcoming 4th UN Financing for Development conference in Seville in June. So yes, working on increasing self-reliance is important but this cannot be achieved by isolationism. Global South countries need to be assertive internationally to create a fairer global architecture because, without that, self-reliance will never be achievable.
DevAid: How do current geopolitical shifts, such as rising nationalism and competition for resources, influence the willingness of countries to engage in international aid?
Arthur Larok: Nationalism drives short-term, inward-looking policies that threaten global cooperation. But the reality is that global challenges, whether pandemics, climate crises, or economic instability, don’t respect borders. The more governments turn inward, the greater the risks of global crises, which will impact all countries. Civil society must step up. We must defend internationalism, justice, and cooperation because, in a world as interconnected as ours, isolationism is not a solution. In the face of attacks on multilateral institutions and processes (such as the US pulling out of COP and WHO and the UN Tax Convention), civil society must put pressure on other countries to actively work for a fairer global architecture as the key means to save multilateralism. Archaic colonial institutions cannot be defended, but a new fairer architecture is within reach if civil society is coordinated and countries step up to the challenge.
DevAid: How might reduced access to preventative healthcare due to aid cuts affect long-term public health outcomes and healthcare costs?
Arthur Larok: Cutting aid to healthcare is not just shortsighted, it is deadly. It means higher maternal mortality, a rise in preventable diseases, and health systems that collapse under crisis. In the long run, the economic and human costs will be far greater than any budget savings. But let us be clear that over 75% of low and lower-middle-income countries have been spending more on servicing their debts than they have on health (see Who Owes Who data tables). Indeed, over 50% of countries spend more than double the amount on debt-servicing than on health. So, the more important way to defend spending on health is to cancel those debts that are unfair and change the global debt architecture that plunges countries into a never-ending cycle of debt. Countries that are reducing their aid and are concerned about the impact on health should step up now to make advance progress on radical debt renegotiation or debt cancellation. Unfortunately, European countries are presently actively blocking progress on reforming the debt architecture and continue to cling to failed institutions and initiatives rather than getting behind a UN Framework Convention on Sovereign Debt.
DevAid: What are the potential impacts on educational attainment and child development when families lose access to essential support services?
Arthur Larok: Education is the foundation of any just society. When aid cuts affect schools, feeding programs, and child protection services, we’re not just talking about short-term setbacks, we’re talking about the risk of losing an entire generation to poverty and limited opportunities. The damage will last for decades. This is why we must fight to protect and expand access to education, no matter what. But the same argument as laid out for health applies. Half of all lower-income countries spend more on debt servicing than on education. To protect education funding, we need to use our collective voice to accelerate progress on debt negotiations. There are other steps we can take in line with the Call to Action that came out of the 2022 UN Heads of State Transforming Education Summit that argued for action on tax as the key to financing education. Most countries could expand their tax-to-GDP ratios by five percentage points by 2030 and, if they did this, they could double spending on education and health. The biggest breakthrough for education would be to stop the IMF from imposing public sector wage bill cuts that block the recruitment of teachers even in countries with desperate shortages. This is another example of the systemic change that we need to see and another example of how meaningful action can be taken to address the impact of aid cuts on education.
DevAid: How might the aid cuts affect the ability of individuals to escape cycles of poverty and achieve economic self-sufficiency
Arthur Larok: Aid, when used properly, is an investment in dignity and self-determination. Cutting it means cutting off opportunities whether for farmers adapting to climate change, women starting businesses, or communities rebuilding after conflict. The real question isn’t whether aid should exist, it’s how can it be better. There are opportunities to reassert the aid effectiveness agenda and change the global architecture and framing around aid. It is an interesting coincidence that 2025 has been declared the African Union Year of Reparations. Aid should not be about charity; it needs to be based on justice and solidarity.
I am confident that one consequence of the cuts to aid will be that countries in the Global South will have to radically rethink how they can finance development for themselves. ActionAid will be supporting processes of reflection and dialogue, looking at what can be done nationally and what can be done through new coordinated international action on debt justice, tax justice, trade justice, and ending austerity. These are much bigger forces can help people escape the cycles of poverty and injustice and, in the process, we will be arguing for a reframing of aid, based also on justice and redistribution, to be seen as part of the solution.
