Sweden ends aid to Liberia in a hammer blow to women’s rights and healthcare

Sexual and reproductive services face an uncertain future as the country’s second-largest donor halts support worth hundreds of millions of pounds

Isabel Choat, in Monrovia
Mon 31 Aug 2026

The Swedish flag is still flying above the pale blue building overlooking the Atlantic in Liberia’s capital, Monrovia, but the doors of the embassy are now closed to visitors. On 31 August, the Swedish embassy in Liberia ends a presence in the country that dates back to 1961.

The billions of kronor of aid that Sweden pipes into the west African country will end on the same day, as sweeping cuts to Swedish development funding come into effect.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/aug/31/sweden-ends-aid-liberia-hammer-blow-womens-healthcare

Kenya – Shelves Go Dry, Services Collapse, Anti-rights Forces Surge And Deepen The Crises

Monday, 10 August 2026

Two health and gender rights leaders delivered a stark assessment of what happens when major external funding disappears overnight and organised opposition fills the vacuum. The sudden withdrawal of US government's funding support has not merely reduced services - it has fractured health systems, emptied pharmacy shelves, driven up unplanned pregnancies and unsafe abortions, and enabled anti-rights groups.

"Shelves go dry": The immediate collapse of care
Nelly Munyasia, Executive Director of the Reproductive Health Network Kenya (RHNK), did not soften her language. “We saw shelves go dry,” she said. When the US Agency for International Development (USAID) stop-work order took effect in January 2025, a system that had long operated in silos simply stopped functioning. HIV treatment, lifesaving antiretroviral refills, routine check-ups, counselling and testing outreaches, and community-based services for women, girls and key populations came to a standstill.

Continued: https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO2608/S00053/shelves-go-dry-services-collapse-anti-rights-forces-surge-and-deepen-the-crises.htm

Emails detail confusion in State Department over Trump plan to destroy contraceptives

“There is no one here that knows definitively what is in the warehouse,” one official wrote of a USAID storage facility in Belgium as its contents were left to expire.

July 14, 2026
By Adam Taylor and Meg Kelly

Newly disclosed emails reveal confusion at the State Department during the Trump administration’s push last year to destroy almost $10 million worth of family planning commodities in a Belgian warehouse that were intended for distribution in some of the world’s poorest nations.

U.S. diplomats in the region were left in the dark about the supplies sitting in the warehouse in Geel, while a senior official privately shared erroneous information that suggested some of the contraceptives could be used to induce abortions.

Continued: https://archive.is/hZ8Nb
(https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/07/14/emails-detail-confusion-state-department-over-trump-plan-destroy-contraceptives/)

Locked Away and Left to Expire: The Trump Administration’s Destructive Denial of Contraceptive Care

Samira Damavandi, Jessica D. Rosenberg, Guttmacher Institute
June 22, 2026

The Trump administration has wasted $434,317 in taxpayer dollars since January 2025 to store contraceptives that it refuses to distribute to women and girls in low-income countries. A report from the Office of Inspector General of US Agency for International Development (USAID) reveals that the administration has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in storage and transportation costs for the $9.7 million worth of family planning supplies that it abandoned in Belgium rather than allowing them to be used. (The supplies were originally purchased by USAID.) With every additional month that passes after June 2026, the administration will spend over $24,000 to store these products, which include birth control pills, implants, injectable contraceptives and IUDs.

This wasteful misuse of US government resources is part of the fallout from the administration’s disastrous and chaotic dismantling of USAID last year, which has already denied tens of millions of people in low-income countries access to the family planning services on which they relied to improve their health and futures.

Continued: https://www.guttmacher.org/2026/06/locked-away-and-left-expire-trump-administrations-destructive-denial-contraceptive-care

22.06.2026

Commentary

Guttmacher Institute

Saving Lives and Taxpayer Dollars Act

UNFPA

United Nations Population Fund

US Agency for International Development

Empowering Ethiopian Health: Sustainable Models and Domestic Financing

By Sisay Sahlu
June 20, 2026

For more than three decades, MSI Ethiopia has stood at the forefront of advancing reproductive healthcare and family planning across the nation. Dr. Abebe Shibru, country director for MSI Ethiopia Reproductive Choices (formerly Marie Stopes International Ethiopia), spoke with The Reporter’s Sisay Sahlu about his leadership and the organisation’s strategic shift amidst global financial cuts for the health sector.

The Director explained how MSI Ethiopia is transforming from a donor-dependent model into a financially self-sustaining social enterprise, reinvesting domestic revenue into outreach programs that reach Ethiopia’s most underserved communities. By partnering with religious and community leaders, as well as likeminded civic service organizations MSI Ethiopia has successfully challenged cultural misconceptions, expanded public awareness, and contributed to landmark policy reforms that drastically reduced maternal mortality and deaths by advancing choices of reproductive health.

Continued: https://www.thereporterethiopia.com/51277/

20.06.2026

Interviews/Podcasts

Dr. Abebe Shibru

Marie Stopes International Ethiopia

Here’s how much USAID has spent storing unusable contraceptives

The findings from the oversight report offer the latest evidence that the dismantling of the agency incurred large costs and disrupted lifesaving programs.

Jun. 16, 2026
By Julianne McShane

The U.S. Agency for International Development has spent more than $360,000 to transport and store mostly unusable contraceptives at a warehouse in Belgium after the Trump administration decided not to distribute the products to women in poor countries, a new oversight report estimates.

The agency will continue to spend more than $24,000 a month to store those products, which include hormonal implants and injectable contraceptives, until it provides instructions to Chemonics International, the contractor responsible for the contraceptives, on what to do with them, according to the report, prepared by the Office of the Inspector General.

Continued: https://www.ms.now/news/usaid-has-spent-360000-storing-unusable-contraceptives

16.06.2026

Chemonics International

Donald Trump

hBeth Schlachter

MSI Reproductive Choices

USAID

US: Global Health Aid Tied to Harmful Conditions

Pacts Require Abortion Surveillance, Rights to Specimen Sharing, Data Access

June 8, 2026
Human Rights Watch

(Washington, DC) – The United States government is conditioning lifesaving health assistance on broad access to surveillance data and extractive rights to pathogen samples and data for pharmaceutical development, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch issued an assessment of seven bilateral health agreements signed in late 2025 with Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Liberia, and Uganda.

“The agreements show the US intends to condition vital health assistance for millions of people on acquiescence to troubling conditions,” said Julia Bleckner, senior health researcher at Human Rights Watch. “After the sudden and devastating pullback from US assistance in 2025, governments are now being pressured to accept agreements with contingencies that jeopardize human rights.”

Continued: https://www.hrw.org/news/2026/06/08/us-global-health-aid-tied-to-harmful-conditions

08.06.2026

US Agency for International Development

Too many global funders are overlooking women in Latin America

Alyse Lopez-Salm and Daniela Perdomo

1 June 2026

Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) is one of the most dangerous regions in the world to be a woman—yet it remains one of the most underfunded.

Despite systemic denial of reproductive rights, high levels of gender-based violence, accelerating climate risk, and worsening restrictions on civil society’s freedoms of association, assembly, and expression, global investments in women in LAC fall short—with drastic consequences in a region rife with extreme inequality.

Continued: https://www.alliancemagazine.org/blog/too-many-global-funders-are-overlooking-women-in-latin-america/

01.06.2026

gender-based violence

global funders of abortion

“We are going to die”: The frontline costs of Uganda’s new US health agreement

“We are fighting political and cultural wars. Wars that are not ours.”

Soita Khatondi Wepukhulu
6 May 2026

On an early morning in February, 23-year-old Suzan Akello was found lying dead on a veranda outside a house she had visited in Namataala, Mbale town, in eastern Uganda. Friends said she could not afford a clinic and had taken herbal medicine to terminate a pregnancy. By the time Akello needed urgent care, it was too late.

Post-abortion care services (PAC) are legal in Uganda, secured through years of advocacy and government-NGO collaboration, some under US-supported programmes. But health workers, activists, and patients told The New Humanitarian that in recent months, post-abortion care and critical HIV/AIDS services are increasingly caught in the fallout of a new $2.3 billion health agreement between Uganda and the United States, one that is integrating donor-funded programmes into Uganda’s public health system while reducing reliance on NGOs.

Continued: https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news-feature/2026/05/06/frontline-costs-uganda-new-us-health-agreement

Whistleblower says Trump officials thought USAID did ‘just abortions,’ asked for ‘Barney-style’ slides before gutting agency, per new book

Marisa Kabas
April 13, 2026

One of the first acts by the second Trump administration was the complete gutting of the US Agency for International Development, a workforce of more than 10,000 people that had administered humanitarian aid and public health support to nations around the world since 1961. Thousands of jobs were immediately slashed by Elon Musk’s para-governmental Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and political appointees took over posts previously held by career civil servants. An agency once charged with fighting poverty, curbing the spread of infectious diseases, and promoting education and democracy abroad had been effectively thrown in the woodchipper.

Continued: https://www.thehandbasket.co/p/trump-usaid-abortions-barney-nicholas-enrich-into-the-wood-chipper-book-exclusive