U.S. Aid response to the Nepal-Tibet Flood
How current U.S. assistance compares with the 2015 earthquake response, and the transfer of USAID functions to the State Department.
On August 26th, between the border of Nepal and Tibet, a mass of ice and rock gave way, sending a wall of water and debris down the Bhote Koshi and Trishuli rivers. The flood destroyed the Gyirong border port and affected multiple towns along the stretch of the Trishuli. The UN’s office in Nepal reported that 84,270 people were affected across this area. Death and missing-person counts have continued to increase in the weeks following the disaster, with recent counts putting the death toll above 1,000 and thousands still unaccounted for. Survivors told relief workers that the name “flood” did not capture the magnitude of this event, calling it a Himalayan tsunami.
The United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) preliminary modelling estimated roughly $158.6 million with a 30% uncertainty rate in potential building damage. Shortly after, the UN and other humanitarian organizations initiated a $49.6 million flash appeal with hopes to cover about four months of relief.
Compared with past crises in Nepal, the U.S. response has been substantially smaller. In response to the flood, the State Department released $500,000 for shelter, water, sanitation, and hygiene supplies through an existing global award to Catholic Relief Services (CRS). Furthermore, they released another $185,000 to CRS for protection and psychosocial services. Another global award of $3 million with the World Food Programme was released to cover three months of emergency food for 10,000 households and road repairs. Subsequently, the U.S. Military cargo aircraft sent 5,000 disaster-victim recovery supplies, along with first-aid kits and front-end loaders.
The department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs also approved $1 million on September 12th for forensic support to Nepal police, which brought total aid above $5 million. Jhpiego, FHI-360, and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) also raised $356,000 for health, nutrition, water, and sanitation work.
Despite this assistance , some reporters have compared the U.S. response with its response to Nepal’s April 2015 earthquake, a magnitude 7.8 quake that killed nearly 9,000 people and destroyed thousands of homes. Two days after this earthquake, USAID deployed a 128-member disaster response team, pledged $10 million in aid, supplied tarping for shelters, helped build temporary schools, and used mapping technology to locate clean water. By late May 2015, the U.S. had committed nearly $47 million, and total U.S. commitments to the earthquake response eventually reached $130 million.
That system no longer exists in the same form. The USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA) ran Disaster Assistance Response Teams (DARTs) designed to put American personnel on the ground within 24 to 48 hours, coordinating search and rescue and relief distribution efforts for a variety of disasters in countries across the globe. The Center for Strategic and International Studies states that once Trump dismantled USAID in 2025, the BHA staff went from over 1,000 to 50 people by July, embedded throughout the State Department.
Nothing comparable to the 2015 team has been deployed for the floods. Corey O’Hara, a development expert in Nepal, described the difference as “night and day,” and said, “At this point, the U.S. response is invisible.” However, the absence of a U.S. DART cannot be entirely attributed to USAID’s dismantling. Nepal’s foreign ministry initially declined several countries' offers of search-and-rescue teams, referencing coordination problems during the 2015 response before admitting specialists from India, China, Australia, and South Korea for tunnel rescue and forensic work.
USAID was created in 1961 to consolidate U.S. foreign development and humanitarian assistance under one agency.On January 20th, 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14169, pausing all U.S. foreign assistance pending a 90-day review to align it with “America First” objectives. In March, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the cancellation of 83% of USAID's programs, crediting the Department of Government Efficiency. State and USAID notified Congress of a reorganization that would move certain USAID functions to the State Department and discontinue the rest. USAID formally ceased implementing foreign assistance on July 1, 2025, with the State taking over distribution. Rubio stated that programs would be delivered with more accountability, strategy, and efficiency. He wrote, “The USAID strayed from its original mission long ago. As a result, the gains were too few, and the costs were too high.”
The “fiscal savings” Marco Rubio said would come from dismantling USAID represent a small share of overall federal spending. In the fiscal year 2023,foreign aid accounted for approximately about 1.2% of the budget. Additionally, under the Fiscal Year 2026 budget proposal, the International Disaster Assistance, Migration and Refugee Assistance accounts would be merged into a single $2.5 billion fund, which would be a 66% cut from their combined Fiscal Year 2025 appropriations.
A 2025 study published in Lancet, a leading medical journal, estimated that USAID-funded programs helped prevent more than 91 million deaths from 2001 to 2021 and projected 14 million additional deaths by 2030 if cuts persist.
The U.S. has held a long-standing relationship with Nepal; USAID has sent $695 million in development funding before closing, which is approximately a third of development-sector funding this country receives. According to the non-governmental organization (NGO) president Arjun Bhattarai, an estimated 30,000 jobs were lost to the cuts. The Kathmandu Post reported that $320.94 million in USAID assistance to Nepal was terminated, affecting around 300 NGOs, consultancies, and nonprofits that were receiving these funds.
Nepali nonprofits that had been U.S.-funded say they shut down programs after the agency shrank, leaving them less able to support relief and rescue. The reductions left Nepal with fewer locally based resources to rebuild towns, bridges, roads, schools, and care for thousands of displaced people.
In September 2026, the Nepali government submitted an urgent request to the UN fund, stating that because as a less-developed, climate-vulnerable mountain country, they receive the intensifying impacts of global warming while not contributing much to global emissions. As of now, they have received $485.77 million of the $822.71 million promised, but resources have not yet been disbursed to any country.
When the floods struck, Nepal faced not only smaller immediate assistance from the U.S. but also over a year of terminated contracts, 30,000 lost aid-sector jobs, and local NGOs that had already downsized before the floods. The effects of the disaster leads to a larger question: Could the U.S. response to the Nepal-Tibet flood be an early case study for the longer term implication of dismantling of USAID?