Jan Egeland interview: ‘It’s time for China and India to really start providing foreign aid’

The head of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), one of the world’s largest humanitarian groups, said there was too much focus on the impact of US aid cuts and not enough on the fact that countries such as China and India continue to provide very little foreign aid. Independent.

In a wide-ranging interview at the NGO’s headquarters in Oslo, NRC secretary-general Jan Egeland warned that insufficient attention was being paid to the climate crisis and suggested that current plans to increase NATO military spending to five per cent of GDP at the expense of foreign aid were a “major strategic mistake” that countries would regret.

Mr. Egeland, who served as the U.N.’s humanitarian chief in the 2000s and as state secretary at the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the 1990s, said the NRC was severely affected by President Trump’s dumping of U.S. foreign aid programs, resulting in the NGO’s global headcount falling from 15,000 to 14,000.

“Until last year, the US was our biggest donor, followed by the Norwegian government. Then US funding was frozen overnight,” he said. Mr. Egeland added that the months that followed were extremely chaotic, with the U.S. government often receiving repeated stop and restart orders for the same programs.

Although the US recently signaled support for foreign aid once again after a year of global turmoil, Mr Egeland said there remained a “big question mark” over the level of funding the NRC would receive from the US in the future.

Major humanitarian projects, including one providing cash transfers to thousands of war victims in Ukraine and another providing free flour to 500 bakeries in Sudan so they can produce subsidized bread, have now been permanently halted for 2026 after receiving multiple cease and desist orders throughout 2025.

But while U.S. actions may cause turmoil for NGOs like the NRC, Egeland believes industrialized Asian countries beyond Japan and South Korea that already provide minimal foreign aid should be criticized in the same way.

“A much more aggressive call needs to be made not only to the United States, but also to other countries such as China and Southeast Asian countries,” he said. “I think we can get too obsessed with what Trump has done in the last few hours and ignore the bigger picture.

“How come India can land on the dark side of the moon but cannot provide assistance to our operations in Sudan,” he continued. “Russia has hundreds of billions of dollars to wage a senseless war in Ukraine, but no money for our aid efforts.”

Mr. Egeland added that Norway is a country of only 5.5 million people, neither on the UN Security Council nor a member of the G20, yet it has become the largest country in the world. ninth largest national donor on humanitarian aid as a result of its continued commitment to provide foreign aid worth one percent of its Gross National Income (GNP). The country may have made a fortune from oil in recent years, but other equally rich countries contribute significantly less.

The UN’s foreign aid target is for rich countries to provide aid worth 0.7 percent of GNP. In contrast, the United Kingdom only 0.3 percent of GNP following the cuts announced last year.

China and India, still frequently classified as “developing countries” in some UN frameworks, are not formally obligated under agreements such as the 1992 climate agreement to provide foreign aid to poorer countries, even though their economies have grown significantly since those classifications were made.

Last year, China contributed $16 million (£12 million) to UN-coordinated humanitarian aid schemes, while India contributed nothing. Norway and the United Kingdom contributed $921 million and $1.9 billion respectively.

‘We will regret the aid cuts’

Mr Egeland also warned that the strategy of cutting foreign aid to significantly increase military spending, adopted by countries including Britain, Germany and France, would not achieve its intended goals of stabilizing Europe’s security situation.

“I understand that countries feel threatened by what Russia is doing in Ukraine, but we will regret it if we forget what is needed to bring stability to other parts of the world,” he said.

The possible target of five per cent of GDP to be spent on defence, agreed by NATO countries with Donald Trump, was described by Mr Egeland as both “astronomical” and “unprecedented”.

“You have to go back to previous world wars to see such spending,” he said. “We are looking for stability in Europe, but in fact we are becoming more inward-looking and nationalistic.”

The continuation of foreign aid should be considered to be in the interest of rich nations and not merely self-centeredness, he continued.

Mr. Egeland said that during the European migration crisis of 2015, caused in part by the civil war in Syria, many Western politicians looked forward to a time when the war would end and Syrians could return home. But now that the war is over, so far Too little money promised to help rebuild SyriaTherefore, Syrians will have to stay in Europe.

Likewise, Mr. Egeland described a recent visit to a refugee camp in Eastern Chad; Here, Sudanese refugees described their intention to cross to Europe on small boats, despite the lack of economic opportunities where they are located and despite the risks involved in the journey.

“They said, ‘We are pooling together enough money to make the trip to the Mediterranean.’ This was despite following 20 friends on social media who had attempted to make the journey last year, 19 of whom had drowned,” Mr. Egeland said.

“I told them these deaths were clearly a sign that they shouldn’t go,” Mr. Egeland continued. “But they told me: ‘We’ve been waiting for something to happen here for so long, but nothing has happened. Yes, the journey may be dangerous, but there is a silver lining, but there’s nothing here.'”

On the climate crisis, Mr. Egeland also pointed out the hypocrisy of politicians who continue to publicly call for climate action while cutting aid to climate programs abroad.

“There’s the same positive rhetoric around climate change in most parts of the world, but when it comes to the people most affected by the climate crisis, instead of getting more money to help them survive, they’re actually getting less,” he said.

His comments came just before the UK announced it would reduce climate aid to £6bn over the next three years (to around £2bn a year, down from £2.3bn a year in the previous five-year arrangement); this move was described as “a great betrayal”.

Mr Egeland continued: “If we want to prevent uncontrolled migration fueled by conflict and the climate crisis, and uncontrolled epidemics of disease from displaced people in the least developed countries, then we need to provide more support.”

Looking ahead, he warned that expected further disruptions meant there was a risk the world could return to the “dark days of the 1980s”, when the “Biblical famines” killed thousands.

“We’re eliminating very hungry people right now to prioritize those who are on the brink of starvation. We have to eliminate a lot of vulnerable communities, and I’m very concerned about what the consequences of all this might be,” Mr. Egeland said.

This article was produced as part of The Independent. Rethinking Global Aid project