Fact check: How much of the USAID budget for 2024 is allocated to humanitarian assistance?

1. Bold claim: USAID spent roughly $10.5 billion on humanitarian assistance in FY2024 — what the reports say

Multiple official documents converge on a single headline figure: USAID delivered about $10.5 billion in humanitarian assistance during fiscal year 2024. The FY2024 Annual Performance Review — produced jointly by the Department of State and USAID — reports that the agency responded to 84 crises in 66 countries and delivered approximately $10.5 billion in humanitarian aid ^[1]. The FY2024 President’s Budget Request to Congress also includes a humanitarian assistance line consistent with that scale, describing $10.5 billion in humanitarian funding overall with $6.5 billion routed through USAID-administered accounts ^[2]. The Congressional Research Service overview corroborates that humanitarian assistance was the top-funded sector within an agency managing more than $35 billion in total FY2024 appropriations ^[3]. These independent documents align on the magnitude and centrality of humanitarian funding in FY2024.

2. How the $10.5 billion figure is sourced and why it’s credible

The $10.5 billion number first appears in the agency’s formal performance reporting and budget materials, where it is presented as the total expended on emergency food aid, disaster response, protection for displaced populations, and related humanitarian activities during FY2024 ^{[1] [2]}. The President’s Budget framework and the Annual Performance Review are the primary instruments used by USAID and the State Department to report planned and actual programmatic expenditures to Congress and the public; their alignment lends credibility to the figure ^{[2] [1]}. The CRS overview, produced for Congress, further confirms the scale of agency appropriations and identifies humanitarian assistance as the top-funded sector, which supports the interpretation that the $10.5 billion constitutes the bulk of USAID’s humanitarian spending that fiscal year ^[3].

3. What “humanitarian assistance” includes and accounting complexities to watch

“Humanitarian assistance” in these documents encompasses emergency food aid, rapid disaster response, refugee and internally displaced person protection, and immediate health and shelter interventions. Budget lines are split across multiple accounts and implementing partners, and the President’s Budget notes that $6.5 billion of the $10.5 billion is through USAID‑administered accounts while other portions may flow through State Department or international organization channels ^[2]. Accounting complexities arise because some humanitarian activities are funded via global food security, migration, or multilateral instruments that are not always tagged in consolidated figures; this can produce slight discrepancies between budget request line items and actual obligations reported later in performance reviews ^{[2] [1]}.

4. Where the numbers diverge: regional allocations and granular differences

Performance reports give the consolidated $10.5 billion figure, while regional or program-specific oversight documents show much smaller, targeted obligations. For example, the Lead Inspector General report for Operation Enduring Sentinel documents $231.6 million obligated for Afghanistan humanitarian assistance in FY2024 under 18 active awards ^[4]. That regional figure is a concrete subset of the global total and illustrates how humanitarian funding is fragmented across crises. Differences between global totals and regional sums reflect timing of obligations, reprogramming of funds, emergency supplemental appropriations, and whether certain multilateral contributions are counted under USAID or other U.S. accounts ^{[4] [1]}.

5. Why some official sources say little and what that omission means

Certain USAID bureau reports and congressional hearing transcripts mention humanitarian priorities without providing consolidated dollar allocations; these documents focus on programmatic outcomes and oversight rather than headline budget totals ^{[5] [6]}. The absence of a dollar figure in a bureau annual report or a hearing does not contradict the $10.5 billion number but reflects different reporting purposes: performance/outcome narratives versus budgetary accounting. For a definitive dollar figure, the budget request and the joint Annual Performance Review are the authoritative public records that reconcile planned accounts with reported obligations ^{[2] [1]}.

6. Bottom line for policy watchers and journalists

The best-supported answer to “How much of the USAID budget for 2024 is allocated to humanitarian assistance?” is that about $10.5 billion of USAID’s FY2024 spending was devoted to humanitarian assistance, roughly one-third of the agency’s total $35+ billion appropriations for that year ^{[1] [3]}. Regional and program-specific reports — such as the Afghanistan obligations of $231.6 million — illustrate the distribution of that total across crises and do not contradict the global figure ^[4]. Readers should treat the $10.5 billion as the consolidated, agency‑reported humanitarian total while using regional IG and program reports to track where and how that funding was obligated on the ground ^{[1] [4]}.