With so much turbulence in the world last week almost no one noticed the definitive demise of United States’ foreign aid (development assistance) program funding — except Barack Obama, George Bush, Bono and millions of women, children, and families.
On Friday, President Trump signed the bill passed by both the US Congress and Senate to claw back US$9 billion of funding from the US’s foreign aid program, USAID (the Agency for International Development), and public radio. USAID itself was eliminated earlier this month, and all employees terminated. USAID — and the US’s humanitarian assistance program — are no more
According to Health Policy Watch: That saga began in January, when Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, famously tweeted he had skipped “some great parties” to put USAID “into the wood chipper,” telling the agency: “Time to die.”
USAID was the world’s largest humanitarian aid organisation with on average US$50 billion in aid projects annually. Its scope of activities was extremely wide: from supplying malaria nets to tuberculosis treatments to women’s education and entrepreneurship to small farmer crop support to massive food aid for millions of people displaced. Much of its funding was channelled through highly experienced and respected non-government organisations, including its largest recipient, Catholic Relief Services.
In recent years, a major country recipient was Ukraine, while disaster relief continued to help vulnerable people in South Sudan, Somalia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, among others.
I worked for USAID for nearly 10 years, initially managing projects in the field and then for nearly six years as its global lead in health and water policy and budget. I may be seen to be biased, so the rest of this memorial conveys the reactions of other experts.
Former US President George Bush stated:
“You’ve showed the great strength of America through your work – and that is your good heart,’’ Bush told USAID employees. “Is it in our national interests that 25 million people who would have died now live? I think it is, and so do you.”
From former US president Obama,
“Gutting USAID is a travesty, and it’s a tragedy,” he said. “Because it’s some of the most important work happening anywhere in the world…sooner or later, leaders on both sides of the aisle will realize how much you are needed.”
Bono went further on the Joe Rogan show:
“To destroy, to vandalise, it felt like with glee, that these life support systems were being pulled out of the walls. [One aide worker said], ‘We don’t have the funds, we have to choose which child to pull off the IVs.’ It just seems to me, I don’t know if ‘evil’ is too strong a word, but what we know about pure evil is that it rejoices in the deaths, in the squandering of human life — particularly children. It actually rejoices in it.”
For those who rely on numbers as evidence, the final word comes from the prestigious journal The Lancet published a few weeks ago. Its findings:
“Over a period of two decades USAID-supported programs saved 92 million lives in low- and middle-income countries…. Without this support, researchers project 14 million additional premature deaths by 2030….
“Unless the abrupt funding cuts announced and implemented in the first half of 2025 are reversed, a staggering number of avoidable deaths could occur by 2030….”
Vale USAID. Vale millions of women and children.