The Trump administration’s cancellation of $60 billion in U.S. Agency for International Development contracts is already unraveling significant programs and caused profound harm to many of the world’s most vulnerable people, humanitarian officials tell NBC News.
The pace of change has jumped since Wednesday, when the White House unveiled plans to cut more than 90% of contracts held by USAID, which has been the world’s largest single aid provider for decades. In January, an official freeze on foreign aid was cast as part of a temporary review.
The recently announced cuts essentially eliminate most U.S. development and humanitarian help abroad and come amid the dramatic contraction of government spending carried out under the aegis of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. President Donald Trump and Musk allege that USAID promotes a liberal agenda and wastes money.
Some of the programs at risk support drought-prone populations in Africa, school feeding programs in West Africa, outreach to youth at risk of recruitment to extremist organizations like the Islamic State group, and public health efforts focused on HIV/AIDS, according to multiple officials familiar with the cuts.
Several representatives for nongovernmental organizations that have been affected by the USAID cuts requested anonymity to speak to NBC News while they determined how to best work with the Trump administration and dealt with the devastating directive. One spokesperson said they were afraid they could lose funding for the few remaining programs that weren’t hit by Wednesday’s cuts while another hoped the administration would reconsider the cuts altogether.
UNAIDS, the joint United Nations program responding to HIV/AIDS globally, on Friday said it had received a letter from the administration terminating funding with immediate effect. The U.S. has been the leading contributor through the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, known at PEPFAR, which has been credited with saving more than 26 million lives in 55 countries since its creation in 2003, according to UNAIDS.
“The U.S. funding cuts are dismantling the system,” International AIDS Society President Beatriz Grinsztejn said in a statement to NBC News. “HIV treatment is crumbling. TB services are collapsing. No data means no tracking of who’s in care. No counsellors, no HIV testing — even in hospitals. No outreach means people fall through the cracks. Services for the most vulnerable people, including mobile clinics and drop-in centres, are shut down. Lives are on the line.”
Organizations combating gender-based violence are also feeling immediate impact. A spokesperson for a large international NGO that provides medical care, counseling and legal assistance in war-torn Sudan said it is scrambling to find alternative funding in order to continue providing those essential services. The spokesperson requested anonymity for fear of retaliation from the Trump administration while they lobby Republican lawmakers to pressure the administration to reverse the cuts.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Peter Marocco, the deputy administrator-designate at USAID, “have determined your award is not aligned with Agency priorities and made a determination that continuing this program is not in the national interest,” according to a copy of a termination notice obtained by NBC News that was sent to companies with USAID contracts Wednesday.
“There seems to be no pattern to it” other than shutting down U.S. foreign aid, one humanitarian official said.
USAID provided assistance to around 130 countries in fiscal year 2023. The top 10 recipients of aid in that year were Ukraine, Ethiopia, Jordan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Nigeria, South Sudan and Syria.
A spokesperson for the United Nations International Organization for Migration told NBC News that the cuts directly affect the organization’s “ability to support some of the world’s most vulnerable people.”
The Trump administration is fighting two lawsuits challenging the dissolution of USAID and the subsequent freeze on foreign aid. One of those suits has reached the Supreme Court, with the court on Wednesday temporarily pausing a lower court order that required the administration to release frozen foreign aid funding by midnight Wednesday.
There will likely be more lawsuits against the administration as a result of the termination notices, with organizations on the hook for work that’s already been done, and potentially costs to wind down these programs, while the USAID payment system remains shut down.
DAI, a USAID-funded international development organization that says it works in 160 countries, received termination notices for more than 90% of its contracts.
As a result, the group has been forced to furlough 500 employees, according to spokesman Steven O’Connor. Not only that, the government still owes DAI for work already delivered, he said.
“We prefinance all that work, then we invoice the government for reimbursement; without that reimbursement, we can’t pay our staff, our partners, our vendors, our creditors,” he said.
In the meantime, the effects are already being felt in communities that rely on that assistance for emergency relief, with trust potentially eroding between those communities and USAID and its partner organizations.
“It’s going to be really hard to drive this truck in reverse, because they’ve washed out the road behind us,” a humanitarian official said.
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