CAPE TOWN – Health groups and non-governmental organizations expressed surprise and outrage Thursday and said many humanitarian programs would collapse after the Trump administration's decision to cut 90% of USAID's foreign aid contracts.
The move, barely a month after U.S. President Donald Trump announced a 90-day review of spending, will permanently defund programs across the world that fight hunger and disease and provide other life-saving help for millions.
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“Women and children will go hungry, food will rot in warehouses while families starve, children will be born with HIV — among other tragedies,” said the InterAction group, an alliance of NGOs in the United States that work on aid programs across the world.
“This needless suffering will not make America safer, stronger, or more prosperous. Rather, it will breed instability, migration, and desperation.”
Organizations that receive funding from the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID, had received letters advising of the termination of their funding and programs overnight, people who spoke on condition of anonymity said. The Trump administration announced Wednesday it was stopping some $60 billion in overall aid and assistance around the world because it didn't advance American interests.
Some 10,000 USAID contracts with NGOs and others were terminated in the Trump administration's move, InterAction said, “effectively crippling American foreign assistance.”
Liz Schrayer, president and CEO of the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition, a non-profit that promotes U.S. diplomatic and humanitarian efforts, warned that the Trump administration's move would cede ground and international influence to China, Russia and Iran.
“The American people deserve a transparent accounting of what will be lost – on counterterror, global health, food security, and competition,” Schrayer said in a statement.
In South Africa, an alliance of health groups said that thousands of USAID contracts for HIV programs in the country had been permanently canceled overnight “as the United States government abandons thousands of the most vulnerable people in South Africa and abroad.”
USAID provides a large amount of funding to the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, which is credited with saving millions of lives in Africa and more than 26 million globally since it was started by Republican President George W. Bush in 2003.
The letters of termination cut life-saving services for people requiring treatment for HIV and tuberculosis, said the South African health group alliance called CHANGE.
South Africa has around 5.5 million people on treatment for HIV, the most in the world. While the U.S. only funds 17% of South Africa's HIV program, the cuts to USAID would put the entire program at risk because of how U.S. money helps in critical areas, CHANGE said.
Trump and ally and advisor Elon Musk have hit foreign aid harder and faster than almost any other target in their push to cut the size of the federal government. Both men say USAID projects advance a liberal agenda and are a waste of money.
Termination letters delivered by the administration to USAID partners across the world said their funding was being ended “for convenience and the interests of the U.S. government,” according to a person with knowledge of the letters who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the issue.
The person said the letters also advised the NGOs and programs affected that an administrator for USAID had “determined your award is not aligned with Agency priorities and made a determination that continuing this program is not in the national interests."
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced a waiver program in the days after Trump’s order freezing aid that was meant to save funding for life-saving services. Many of those waivers were not enacted, and groups said Thursday that even programs that had been initially identified as life-saving had lost their funding permanently in the new order.
Trump ordered what he said would be a three-month review of which foreign assistance programs deserved to continue in his first day back in office on Jan. 20, and cut off all foreign assistance funds almost overnight.
The administration and Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency teams have also pulled the majority of USAID staff off the job through forced leave and firings. Thousands of USAID workers were being given a 15-minute window Thursday and Friday to clear out their workspaces.
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