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USAID Has Big Impact Across the Globe 02/06 06:16
(AP) -- The Trump administration's decision to close the U.S. Agency for
International Development has drawn widespread criticism from congressional
Democrats and raised questions and concern about the influence billionaire ally
Elon Musk wields over the federal government.
The United States is by far the world's largest source of foreign
assistance, although several European countries allocate a much bigger share of
their budgets to aid. USAID funds projects in some 120 countries aimed at
fighting epidemics, educating children, providing clean water and supporting
other areas of development.
Here is a look at USAID's impact around the world:
Protecting the Amazon rainforest and fighting cocaine in South America
USAID has been critical in providing humanitarian assistance in Colombia,
conservation efforts in the Brazilian Amazon and coca eradication in Peru.
Recent USAID money has also supported emergency humanitarian aid to more than
2.8 million Venezuelans who fled economic crisis.
In 2024 alone, the agency transferred some $45 million to the U.N. World
Food Program, mostly to assist Venezuelans.
In Brazil, USAID's largest initiative is the Partnership for the
Conservation of Amazon Biodiversity, which focuses on conservation and
improving livelihoods for Indigenous peoples and other rainforest communities.
Over in Peru, part of USAID's $135 million funding in 2024 was dedicated to
financing cocaine-production alternatives such as coffee and cacao. The
humanitarian agency has been seeking to curb production of the drug since the
early 1980s.
Disease response, girls' education and free school lunches in Africa
Last year, the U.S. gave the sub-Saharan region more than $6.5 billion in
humanitarian assistance. But since Trump's announcement, HIV patients in Africa
found locked doors at clinics funded by an acclaimed U.S. program that helped
rein in the global AIDS epidemic.
Known as one of the world's most successful foreign aid program, the
President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, has been credited with
saving more than 25 million lives, largely in Africa.
"The world is baffled," said Aaron Motsoaledi, the health minister of South
Africa, the country with the most people living with HIV, after the U.S. freeze
on aid.
Motsoaledi says the U.S. funds nearly 20% of the $2.3 billion needed each
year to run South Africa's HIV/AIDS program through PEPFAR, and now the biggest
response to a single disease in history is under threat.
The effects of halting U.S. aid are also rippling across sub-Saharan Africa.
In Ghana, the Chemonics International development group said it's pulling
logistics for programs in maternal and child health, malaria response and HIV.
Education programs have been halted in Mali, a conflict-battered West
African nation where USAID has become the country's main humanitarian partner
after others left following a 2021 coup.
In civil-war-torn Sudan, which is grappling with cholera, malaria and
measles, the aid freeze means 600,000 people will be at risk of catching and
spreading those diseases, said an official who spoke on condition of anonymity
because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.
Hospitals in war-ravaged Syria
Doctors of the World Turkey says it has been forced to lay off 300 staff and
shutter 12 field hospitals it runs across northern Syria, a region devastated
by years of war and a huge 2023 earthquake. Hakan Bilgin, the organization's
president, said it relies on USAID for 60% of its funding and has had to cut
its daily consultations from 5,000 to 500.
"As a medical organization providing life-saving services, you're basically
saying, 'Close all the clinics, stop all your doctors, and you're not providing
services to women, children, and the elderly," Bilgin said.
Bilgin said the impact on northern Syria, where millions rely on outside
medical aid, could be catastrophic.
"The real impact is bigger than we can measure right now," he said in the
group's Istanbul office, surrounded by half-unpacked boxes and worried
colleagues.
Support for marginalized communities from the Balkans to Uganda
In Kosovo, which has received more than $1 billion from USAID since 1999,
women's groups fear the impact of losing American funding for gender and
diversity-related projects in the conservative country.
"This might leave women's groups stranded and unsupported," said Ariana
Qosaj Mustafa of the Kosovo Women's Network.
Emina Bosnjak of the Sarajevo Open Center said USAID promotes awareness of
discrimination, violence and hate speech, and marginalized groups would suffer
if that stops.
"Stronger narratives that stand against human rights and stand against
democracy and rule of law will actually become more visible," she said.
A non-profit organization supporting LGBTQ people in Uganda also feels under
threat. Pius Kennedy, a program officer with the Kampala-based nonprofit Africa
Queer Network, said he and five other permanent employees had been ordered by
USAID to stop work.
He said the funding freeze could erase years of gains made in protecting
sexual minorities in Uganda, one of more than 30 African countries where
homosexuality is criminalized.
"We would always look at the United States as something that we would always
run to in case you are facing a number of insecurities in the country," Kennedy
said -- but that may no longer be the case.
Support for media in Myanmar and mine clearance in Cambodia
The freeze of foreign assistance from USAID include $39 million for rights,
democracy, and media in Myanmar, whose military seized power from the elected
government of Aung San Suu Kyi in 2021, a human rights group said Thursday.
The group Human Rights Myanmar said the frozen funds "are vital for
organizations challenging military rule and promoting democracy, which advance
U.S. interests by upholding American values and countering China's
authoritarian influence."
Myanmar's military government is the most repressive in Southeast Asia,
clamping down on free media, imprisoning thousands of nonviolent critics and
political rivals and carrying out a brutal war against pro-democracy resistance
forces, heedless of civilian casualties.
Human Rights Myanmar said the freeze also "suspended $22 million for
humanitarian aid, $36 million for agriculture, $22 million for health and $30
million for education."
The U.S. has also frozen funding for landmine removal in Cambodia. In an
illustration of the geopolitics of foreign aid, China has stepped in to fill
the gap. Beijing and Washington vie for influence in Southeast Asia, with China
gaining ground in the past decade.
Heng Ratana, director-general of Cambodian Mines Action Center said China
has released $4.4 million to support continuing demining operations in seven
Cambodian provinces. Days earlier, he had said demining programs in eight other
provinces that were funded by the United States had to stop.
A busy shelter left without a doctor in Mexico
In the southern Mexican city of Villahermosa, the Peace Oasis of the Holy
Spirit Amparito shelter is one of several beneficiaries of U.S. humanitarian
assistance to those fleeing persecution, crisis or violence.
However, under the funding freeze, the charitable organization that runs the
shelter had to cut its only doctor as well as a social worker and child
psychologist. The shelter has since appealed to the Mexican government for
alternate funding for programs managed by the United Nations to pay for flights
and bus rides to Mexico's border with Guatemala for migrants who want to return
home.
"The crisis is only going to worsen," the shelter said in a statement. "The
most affected will be the population we serve."
Wartime help in Ukraine
U.S. funding in Ukraine has helped to pay for fuel for evacuation vehicles,
salaries for aid workers, legal and psychological support, and tickets to help
evacuees reach safer locations.
That includes the cost of using a concert hall in eastern Ukraine as a
temporary center for civilians fleeing the relentless Russian bombardment. That
shelter is now in peril because 60% of the costs -- equivalent of $7,000 a
month to run -- were being covered by the U.S.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says his government expects $300
million to $400 million in aid to be cut. Most of that was for the energy
sector that has been targeted by Russia.
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