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.