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Fact check: Which countries received the most humanitarian aid from the US in 2023?
Executive Summary
The available analyses show no single authoritative public list that cleanly ranks countries by humanitarian aid received from the United States in 2023; instead, disparate datasets and budget documents point to Ukraine as the largest single recipient of U.S. foreign assistance overall in 2023, with other major recipients varying by account and purpose such as humanitarian, development, or security assistance. Policymakers and trackers use different definitions and accounting methods—so the headline depends on whether one counts total foreign aid, humanitarian-only accounts, or agency-level obligations [1] [2] [3].
1. Why the numbers don’t align — a funding tangle that confuses rankings
U.S. support is split across multiple agencies and budget accounts—State Department bureaus, USAID, emergency food programs, and security assistance—so no single federal spreadsheet captures "humanitarian aid" exclusively for 2023. The Department of State’s supplemental tables and Congressional budget justifications enumerate country and account summaries, but they present requests and program categories rather than a neat ranking of 2023 humanitarian disbursements [3] [4]. Analysts must reconcile obligation dates, account purposes (e.g., humanitarian assistance vs. security aid), and transfers between agencies to produce a comparable top-recipient list.
2. Where evidence points: Ukraine leads in total U.S. assistance in 2023
Country-level compilations that aggregate U.S. foreign aid show Ukraine receiving the largest U.S. assistance package in 2023—about $16.2 billion in the dataset reviewed, reflecting a mix of security, economic, and humanitarian flows tied to the war response [1]. That figure emerges in datasets labeled “US Foreign Aid by Country 2025” which report 2023 flows; it is consistent with USAID reporting that a large portion of the agency’s 2023 outlays included substantial direct payments and program dollars flowing to Ukraine [2]. This means Ukraine was the top recipient of U.S. funds overall, though not all were strictly humanitarian.
3. Other high‑receipt countries vary depending on what counts as ‘humanitarian’
When analysts narrow to accounts explicitly labeled humanitarian—emergency food aid, international disaster assistance, refugee and migration programs—the list shifts toward countries experiencing acute crises such as Ethiopia, Jordan, Yemen, and others historically prominent in U.S. humanitarian budgets. Older compilations indicate Ethiopia, Jordan, Yemen, and South Sudan were top recipients in earlier years, but those references do not specifically enumerate 2023 humanitarian totals [5]. Thus, per-account and per-agency definitions materially change which countries appear at the top.
4. Recent U.S. regional commitments that shaped 2023 totals
In April 2024 the State Department announced nearly $485 million in additional humanitarian assistance for the Western Hemisphere in 2023, split between the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration and USAID, targeted primarily to Latin America and the Caribbean [6]. That allocation demonstrates how administrative supplements and regional packages can elevate certain countries’ humanitarian totals within a calendar year without appearing as top recipients in aggregated country-level foreign aid datasets that combine multiple account types.
5. What the budget documents say—and what they withhold
Congressional Budget Justifications and supplementary tables provide granular line-items for fiscal requests and country-account summaries but tend to present estimates, requests, and program classifications rather than audited 2023 disbursements [3]. Those documents are essential for understanding intent and planned allocations, but they do not substitute for reconciled, audited country-level flows for humanitarian purposes during calendar year 2023. Analysts must therefore cross-reference budget requests, agency obligation reports, and third-party compendia to approximate actual humanitarian receipts.
6. Data limitations and possible agendas behind different tallies
Different sources reflect distinct agendas: government tables emphasize budget authority and planned assistance, advocacy groups and trackers emphasize humanitarian need and crisis funding, and aggregated “foreign aid” datasets sometimes conflate military/security and humanitarian support into single totals. Each framing can over- or under-state humanitarian receipts depending on classification choices [2] [3]. Users seeking top humanitarian recipients should demand transparent methodology: which accounts were included, which dates counted, and whether in-kind, bilateral, multilateral, and security-linked transfers were excluded.
7. Bottom line for researchers seeking a definitive 2023 list
If the question is strictly “which countries received the most U.S. humanitarian aid in 2023,” no single source in the provided analyses delivers a definitive ranked list—one must compile data from USAID obligation reports, State/PRM refugee allocations, and independent foreign aid datasets and then apply a clear account-definition. For broader “U.S. assistance” in 2023, Ukraine appears as the largest recipient, while Ethiopia, Jordan, Yemen, and other crisis-affected countries rank highly when focusing on humanitarian accounts historically [1] [5] [2].