The Richest Nation Walked Away from Congo. Women Are Paying the Price
I recently returned to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in July to see Oxfam’s work in action, hear directly from people caught in a protracted crisis, and bring their stories to decisionmakers worldwide. There, the scars of armed conflict run deep. What I saw was heartbreaking and enraging.
Entire communities are being torn apart by yet another surge of mass violence, displacement and deprivation. And after the Trump Administration slashed lifesaving assistance earlier this year, millions that would normally have access to strategic, timely humanitarian aid to survive are left without the most basic necessities at their time of acute need: food, clean water, shelter and medical care.
Among the many people I met in Eastern DRC was Charlotte*, a mother of eight. I sat with her in North Kivu, and heard that her two teenage daughters — just 17 and 18 — are both pregnant after being raped by combatants. These young women once had access to U.S.-funded programs that would have restored access to clean water and sanitation, provided hygiene and dignity kits, responded to the spread of preventable diseases, such as cholera and Mpox, supported women and girls who had experience sexual violence, or provided seeds and agricultural tools to support the livelihoods of local farmers. But when the Trump administration cut humanitarian aid just a few months ago, they were forced to go out in a conflict zone in search of day labor to scrape a living together for their families.
Women like Charlotte’s daughters have been forced to walk to other people’s fields to find work, traveling long distances alone, leaving them vulnerable to sexual violence committed by those on both sides of the conflict, as well as civilians, bandits, and intimate partners. Now, they face the unimaginable: raising children born of violence, with no safety net and no justice.
Our trip came amid ongoing peace negotiations brokered by the U.S. and Qatar. One agreement, which was signed in late June in the Oval Office, just days before my visit, aimed to end the conflict in eastern DRC and another set of negotiations concluded soon after my return. As always, we welcome progress towards urgently-needed peace, but many living in the Eastern DRC are still left wondering what the future will bring. First, while ostensibly a peace deal, the agreement signed in the Oval Office connected peace directly to access to minerals, making American access to minerals, not peacebuilding, the clear priority. The process appears to have been carried out without involvement of local communities, specifically women, whose participation is essential to any sustainable peace process.
Second, the agreements do not appear to include explicit provisions regarding the withdrawal of armed groups operating in eastern DRC. As long as these actors continue to sow insecurity, it is difficult to imagine any sort of peace. Moreover, the absence of a clear reference to the cessation of cross-border support raises questions about the genuine desire to stabilize the region. Third, the deals are silent on transitional justice for local communities, meaning there is no mechanism for them to address local grievances and concerns. And finally, despite the ceasefire, insecurity, roadblocks, and ongoing clashes have severed vital supply routes, cutting off communities from lifesaving food, clean water, and medicine.
Pockets of fighting continue daily in many parts of the province, and aid organizations like Oxfam are now forced to make detours through neighboring countries, seriously hampering relief efforts. This leaves communities, like the ones I visited in July, uncertain of their future, worried about ongoing violence and personal safety, their ability to feed their children, and without access to lifesaving aid.
Charlotte’s story is not an anomaly; there have been 67,000 reported incidences of rape in the DRC just in the last five months of conflict – about 450 every single day. This is a reflection of what happens when conflict is allowed to escalate, and when the United States — the richest country in the world that once provided the largest overall share of foreign aid to the Congo last year — turns its back on the people most impacted by a crisis while publicly stating they are seeking to create peace.
Abby Maxman and Beatrice Vaugrant meet with women from Ngumba on July 10, 2025. Pictured left to right: Kahindo Salumu Tantine, Kahindo Muhima Charline, Francine Ruyange, Chance Wabo Alice, Madeleine Cibalonza of Oxfam Goma, Béatrice Vaugrante, President of Oxfam Quebec, Abby Maxman, President of Oxfam America, and Joyce Basunga of Oxfam Goma. Credit: Oxfam America
In my 30+ years working alongside communities living through crises — from Gaza, to Rwanda, to Georgia, among many others — I have seen firsthand how conflict rips communities apart and how humanitarian aid can mean the difference between life and death, dignity and security, and a vital path to rebuild. As President and CEO of Oxfam America, I have spoken directly with countless women and families who were surviving and held hope for better futures thanks to emergency food, water and healthcare provided by U.S. humanitarian aid. So when the Trump administration launched its reckless and illegal assault on humanitarian assistance, I knew the consequences would be catastrophic and inhumane.
And they were. Overnight, local organizations Oxfam works with across the DRC were cut off — unable to provide aid they had already received agreements from the U.S. to deliver. Humanitarian operations were thrown into chaos. Lives were left hanging in the balance. Women and girls, who historically bear the brunt of conflict and disaster, felt the impacts most severely. Earlier this year, Congolese women, youth and families, already displaced multiple times over decades of conflict, were forcibly displaced again when fighting resumed in eastern DRC. When families returned, they found their homes reduced to rubble, their farmland destroyed, and their tools gone with no way to grow food. USAID would have helped rebuild — providing seeds, tools and support. But that lifeline was severed. Now, millions are living through the dual catastrophe of brutal armed conflict compounded by the deliberate and abrupt withdrawal of U.S. humanitarian assistance which once supported 70 percent of the region’s humanitarian response.
I also met Francine, a 24-year-old community volunteer who had been forced to flee a displacement camp in Eastern DRC that she was residing in and return to her home village. The village had been pillaged while she was away, her neighbors murdered. U.S. aid programs that once offered a vital lifeline to their community were gone. She described the desperation of young women around her, resorting to taking up sex work just to eke out a living. All Francine wanted was a chance to build a life with dignity and security — a way to possibly start a small business and avoid the same fate as many of her friends. But that chance was stolen.
Despite everything I knew before traveling to the DRC, nothing prepares you to stand face to face with women like Charlotte and Francine — women who have lost everything, and who now face a future without support because those holding power in their country have failed them, and now my own government has decided unilaterally and without warning to walk away from longstanding commitments and abdicate its global responsibility and commitment to our common humanity.
As I stood in the Congo, news broke that the U.S. government was destroying 500 tons of life-saving food aid in one of their warehouses. At the same time, global health clinics and programs to support women and girls have been shuttered. In July, Reuters reported the Trump Administration even cancelled a contract that would have delivered emergency rape kits and life-saving medication to prevent sexually transmitted diseases to 100,000 survivors.
Safe spaces for women and girls, trauma counseling, entrepreneurship programs, education initiatives, and male allyship training aimed at teaching men how to support their wives and daughters to alleviate mass violence against women are additional programs that have systemically disappeared due to the Trump administration’s cruel draw-down of life-saving aid.
Yet we know that when we invest in women and girls, we invest in the future. But how can women begin to build that future when they don’t know how they will survive the next day? What I also came away with is deep admiration for the women meeting these unthinkable circumstances with immense bravery and the will to do all they can to support their families, their neighbors and their communities.
Let me be clear: the U.S. cuts to lifesaving and development aid are not just a funding issue — this is a moral failure by the U.S. government.
My stories from the Congo are only a few of the countless stories of betrayal that are the hallmarks of the Trump administration’s deadly actions. From the DRC, to Gaza, to South Sudan, to Ukraine and around the world, women deserve better, youth deserve better, families deserve better, and the richest country in the world can do better than this.
That’s why I will not stop fighting to hold the Trump administration accountable for abandoning women, youth and families in crisis. Humanitarian assistance is a strategic and humane investment in a better, more just and sustainable world for others and for ourselves. It is a reflection of who we are as a country and who we aspire to be.
And it is worth saving.