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Measuring impact on Eurasia of US foreign assistance cutoff [1]
['Luka Linich']
Date: 2025-03
A group discussion during a USAID co-sponsored Media CAMP Fest for mass media professionals of Central Asia. The recent funding cutoff has upended operations at dozens of non-governmental organizations and independent media outlets across the Caucasus and Central Asia. (Photo: USAID, Internews, CC BY-ND 2.0, tinyurl.com/ure4su7w)
Watchdogs have suddenly become an endangered species across Eurasia due to the US government’s decision to suspend virtually all foreign assistance.
The funding cutoff has upended operations at dozens of non-governmental organizations and independent media outlets across the Caucasus and Central Asia specializing in holding those in power accountable for their actions. Since the collapse of communism in the early 1990s, the US government had been the largest backer of local groups working on civil society development. The abrupt cutoff of funding has forced many organizations to lay off employees and make other cutbacks, while sowing doubts about long-term viability.
The Trump administration, meanwhile, has circumvented a ruling by US Federal District Court Judge Amir Ali to lift the funding freeze. After appealing the ruling, administration lawyers secured a temporary stay from the Supreme Court. In addition, the State Department sent notices this week to many organizations notifying them that their funding awards were being terminated.
Local activists say the US funding cutoff will lead to an increase in corrupt practices and anti-democratic behavior by regional governments. “This is a boon to autocrats and dictators around the world,” Drew Sullivan, the head of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, told the New York Times.
In the Caucasus and Central Asia, the cutoff is having a particularly devastating impact in Georgia, a country that was on track to join the European Union, but which has taken an authoritarian turn away from the West over the past 18 months. Watchdog groups and independent media outlets in Tbilisi had been leading efforts to resist the government’s efforts to erode democratic practices. The loss of US government support, however, has taken a lot of airout of those efforts.
In 2024, US government agencies provided just over $114 million in assistance to Georgia, only a small percentage of which was earmarked for “civil society engagement activity” and media support.
“With [Georgian] government targeting of civil society organizations, stalwart American support, philosophical, diplomatic and financial, has been a lifeline for Georgian civil society organizations,” Julie George, a professor of comparative politics at City University of New York, wrote in response to questions posed by Eurasianet. “European support has also been critical, but this sort of battle [against Georgian Dream’s embrace of authoritarian practices] requires many allies and the Americans have shown themselves (ourselves) to be a poor ally in this case.”
Watchdog groups are reeling. Some, like OC Media, a Tbilisi-based outlet, have turned to crowdfunding to help plug the budget gap. On February 27, the organization announced that the loss of US government assistance, including the suspension of a grant from the congressionally funded National Endowment for Democracy, could force it to cease operations entirely.
“We could be about to witness an extinction-level event for the entire media landscape of the Caucasus,” said Dominik K Cagara, an OC Media co-founder.
Even for a Georgian NGO with a diversified funding base, the Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association, the loss of US government assistances creates a sizeablehole in its operating budget: US assistance accounted for roughly 15 percent of the organization’s income.
The ability for Georgian non-profits to tap into other sources to make up for the loss of US funding is limited, George said. “NGOs in Georgia have difficulty obtaining local funding, in part because of the economic challenges there, but also because NGOs are part of a larger polarized political arena that deters local philanthropic funding,” she noted.
EU-based donors will also be hard-pressed to fill the US funding void, she added. “Replacing all those gaps will be too much for the Europeans; they will need to make some choices.”
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