The Trump-Vance administration’s sudden freeze on nearly all foreign aid has disrupted global aid efforts, throwing international food security, health, and development programs into peril.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio outlined the suspension of foreign aid in a diplomatic cable last Friday. The order put a pause on all new foreign aid, grants, and contracts for 90 days, pending review. On Monday, the Trump administration placed more than 60 senior officials with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) on administrative leave.
“The aggregation of these actions seem to lead to no longer having a USAID,” says Marcia Wong, the former deputy assistant administrator for USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA).
USAID leads international humanitarian assistance and development efforts in sectors including education, health, water and sanitation, nutrition, and food security. The agency’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA) is the world’s largest single donor of international food assistance, reaching over 60 million people in 65 countries annually. BHA provides emergency food aid to communities affected by conflict and natural disasters. They also support longer-term resilience programs aimed at reducing malnutrition, improving economic outcomes, and supporting climate resilience.
The freeze has also stalled Feed the Future, a USAID program fighting global hunger through agricultural extension and nutrition programs. According to USAID, this program has helped reduce extreme poverty by 19 percent, hunger by 30 percent, and child stunting by 26 percent in its partner countries. It has also helped farmers generate US$115.3 billion in new agricultural sales, USAID reports.
On January 24, the State Department announced an exemption to the freeze for “emergency food assistance.” On January 28, Rubio followed up with a broad waiver for humanitarian aid, defined as “life-saving medicine, medical services, food, shelter, and subsistence assistance, as well as supplies and reasonable administrative costs as necessary to deliver such assistance.”
But multiple international aid workers report that there is widespread confusion about what the humanitarian aid waiver actually means and what it covers. The humanitarian official told CNN there was “no clarity at all.”
The meaning of “emergency food assistance” is also ambiguous, and does not specify whether the changes affect initiatives including school meal programs, food assistance in the form of cash or vouchers, or therapeutic foods for malnutrition.
A source working in the U.S. foreign aid industry says the humanitarian aid waiver does not include most development aid. This includes projects that improve food security like agricultural research and extension services as well as research on climate resilient agriculture.
This distinction may put USAID programs like AGRI-Ukraine—which has supported over 15,000 Ukrainian farmers by providing seeds, fertilizers, crop protection, storage, and financing, and generated over US$1 billion agricultural revenue—at risk.
Meanwhile food aid remains in limbo. ONE Campaign, an international anti-poverty organization, says that in Mozambique some 2,000 metric tons of U.S. food—valued at US$3.5 million—may spoil if it cannot reach the 99,000 people for whom it was procured.
Reverend Eugene Cho, President and CEO of Bread for the World, an anti-hunger advocacy organization, tells Food Tank he is “deeply concerned” about the disruptions. “Every day of delay means millions of people going hungry and thousands of tons of food spoiling instead of being distributed.”
The freeze is also impacting access to crucial health services, resulting in the closure of HIV/AIDS clinics across the globe. This affects 20 million people, according to Atul Gawande, USAID Assistant Administrator for Global Health. Despite the subsequent humanitarian assistance waiver, the clinics have not resumed their services and there remains widespread confusion.
Gawande also says that the waiver does not seem to include programs that are working to eradicate polio or tropical diseases.
Rubio has defended the pause on foreign assistance, stating “the U.S. government is not a charity.”
But Cho points out that “U.S. foreign assistance that addresses hunger and malnutrition improves U.S. national security and upholds the importance of U.S leadership. With hunger at an all-time high, this is not the time to roll back our commitments.”
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Photo courtesy of USAID
