Cairo (AP) – The administration of American president Donald Trump has reversed new Cutoffs in emergency food aid to several nations But maintained them in Afghanistan and Yemen, two of the poorest and most delighted countries in the world, according to the State Department and the officials who spoke to the Associated Press.
He marks the latest series of sudden Cancellations of foreign aid contracts go through The American Agency for International Development And just as sudden inversions. The movements of the whip came while the republican administration and the advisor of Trump Elon Musk Government Department of Effectiveness Dispermn the USAID and considerably reduce foreign assistance, saying that expenses are waste and advances liberal causes.
The United States during the weekend has sent licensed fundraising opinions for the UN global food program emergency programs In more than a dozen countries. Aid officials have warned that cuts could threaten the lives of millions of refugees and other vulnerable people, highlighting the risks of additional destabilizing regions mounted by conflicts.
The State Department confirmed on Wednesday that it had reversed these cuts in Somalia, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Ecuador. He said he would keep the cancellations of Afghanistan and Yemen, but left the fate of food aid in six other unidentified nations.
Even in Syria, Somalia and other areas of crisis where he had restored support for vital food programs, the United States would work with the UN to modify its funding “to better align itself with the priorities of the administration,” said the State Department by email. He gave no details.
Two USAID officials said Jeremy Lewin, the Doge Partner supervising the dismantling of the aid agency, ordered the inversion of some of his contractual dismissals on Tuesday, after the AP reported. Officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to inform the media.
Trump administration inverse certain cuts
USAID officials said Lewin had sent a note expressing the regrets for sudden contracts and inversions. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and others had promised that the type of targeted vital aid was spared.
An official of the United Nations said that the decision to restore funding has occurred after intense lobbying behind the scenes of the members of the Congress by senior United Nations officials.
On Wednesday, the State Department defended some of the new financing reductions, notably for Yemen and Afghanistan, saying that they were based on “credible and long -standing concerns that funding benefited from terrorist groups, including the Houthis and the Taliban”.
During a briefing this week, the department spokesman Tammy Bruce cited the US government’s surveillance program in 2024 that the departmental entrepreneurs said they had paid at least $ 10.9 million in the Taliban government in Afghanistan in taxes, public service payments and costs.
“Other programs with WFP that were dismissed were contrary to a first program in America and did not make America stronger, safer or more prosperous,” the department said on Wednesday.
Remaining cuts could still be disastrous
Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the classification democrat of the senatorial foreign relations committee, urged the administration to restore the funding of other critical programs.
“Despite the continuous insurance that rescue programs would be protected during the” journal “of the Trump Administration of Foreign Aid, Doge spent the weekend again cutting help from the global food program to feed people in crisis,” said New Hampshire senator.
This “will weaken America’s position in the world,” she added.
Nathaniel Raymond, Executive Director of the Humanitarian Research Lab of the Yale School of Public Health, described the cups “a potential event in terms of extinction” for two generations of progress in the limitation of the suffering of people taken in crises.
The United States had been the largest PAM funder, offering $ 4.5 billion from $ 9.8 billion in donations to the largest food aid provider in the world last year. Previous administrations had considered aid such as the American national security service by attenuating conflicts, poverty and extremism and the reduction of migration.
Afghanistan is marked by decades of war
More than half of the Afghan population – some 23 million people – needs humanitarian aid. It is a crisis caused by decades of conflict – including the 20 -year American war with the Taliban – as well as rooted poverty and climatic shocks.
Last year, the United States provided 43% of all international humanitarian funding in Afghanistan.
Cups affect approximately $ 560 million in humanitarian aid, in particular for emergency food aid, the treatment of malnutric babies, medical care, drinking water and mental health treatment for survivors of sexual and physical violence, according to an assessment of current and former USAID and partner organizations. The figure was not confirmed by the United States government.
A separate evaluation of the WFP obtained by PA has shown that food assistance at 2 million people in Afghanistan would be dismissed later this year. More than 650,000 children of malnutrition, mothers and pregnant women would lose nutritional support.
The United Nations Fund for the United Nations said that the United States had reduced $ 100 million in maternal health services for millions of women, as well as sex-based violence services.
The International Rescue Committee, whose programs include nutritional assistance for tens of thousands of children under the age of 5 and consulting services, said the cuts would affect nearly a million people.
“The children who have seen great violence, who benefit from social work and the psychosocial care that we provide, will be cut,” said Bob Kitchen, responsible for the IRC global emergency.
Some in Yemen have risked famine
The poorest Arab country was immersed in war in 2014 when the Houthi rebels supported by Iran seized a large part of the North, including the capital, Sanaa. The United States has supported a coalition led by Saudi Arabia which intervened the following year in the name of the government. The conflict has been deadlocked in recent years.
The war has led to generalized hunger, and the experts warned that recently that 2024 that parts of Yemen risked famine.
The American cuts would end the food aid for life at 2.4 million people and have arrested nutritional care per 100,000 children, WFP said.
The United States realizes An air strike campaign against Houthis In retaliation for their attacks on international expeditions related to war in the Gaza Strip.
PAM had already suspended its programs in northern Yemen, where the rebels have owned dozens of staff and people associated with aid groups, civil society and the US Embassy now closed.
The last cuts would affect southern Yemen, where the internationally recognized government opposed to Houthis is based. WFP warned that stopping aid there “includes significant political and security implications and risks deepening the economic crisis and exacerbating instability”.
Last year, WFP helped 8.6 million people in Yemen, more than a quarter of its population, including more than 330,000 people displaced internally and 1.2 million with disabilities. Half were women and children.
More shots on USAID
Also on Wednesday, the Trump and Dogi administration informed thousands of local staff employed by USAID missions abroad that they would lose their job by August 15. The group had been one of the last savers of dismissals.
The administration indicates that it will move around 1,000 surviving humanitarian and development programs within the State Department, after having ended 5,000 others. The email opinions, which were sent on Wednesday and examined by the AP, invited the newly dismissed workers abroad to apply to jobs from the State Department.
All except a few hundred thousands of other members of USAID staff have already been licensed or received from departure notices effective this summer.
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Butt reported Islamabad, Washington Knickmeyer. The editors of the Associated Press Matthew Lee in Washington, Sam Mednick in Tel Aviv, Israel and Sarah El Deeb in Beirut contributed to this report.
