Trump administration's foreign aid freeze undermines global hunger relief efforts - Reuters
Kyiv • UNN
The Trump administration has frozen foreign aid programs for 90 days for review. 500,000 tons of food worth $340 million are awaiting authorization for distribution.
U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to cut and restructure U.S. foreign aid is paralyzing a complex global system aimed at preventing and responding to hunger. This is reported by Reuters, according to UNN.
Details
The international system for monitoring and assisting the hungry, which has been trying to cope with the famine crisis engulfing developing countries, has been hit hard by the sudden cessation of foreign aid from the United States.
After Trump took office on January 20, all international aid spending was suspended for 90 days to review foreign aid programs. The only exception was made for emergency food aid, but it is largely under threat.
The problem is exacerbated by Trump's move this week to shut down the U.S. government's main aid provider, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
According to a former senior USAID official, Marcia Wong, about 500,000 tons of food worth $340 million are in limbo, in transit or in storage while humanitarian organizations await approval from the U.S. State Department to distribute it.
U.S. aid to help people buy food and other basic necessities in Sudan and the Gaza Strip has also been halted, aid workers told Reuters.
The Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET), an American organization that regularly reported on food security and famine prevention, was also closed. Therefore, humanitarian organizations are left without a key source that would inform them about where and how to provide humanitarian assistance, the newspaper writes.
In addition, the US government has reportedly ordered the shutdown of two major food supplement manufacturers, leading to a reduction in the supply of vital food for children suffering from acute malnutrition around the world.
"We are the one thing that almost everyone agrees on: young children who are starving and in need of emergency assistance need help," said Mark Moore, CEO of Mana Nutrition of Georgia, one of the two suppliers ordered to stop producing the supplements. - "It's not hype, it's not speculation, it's not hand-wringing, and it's not even a controversial use of statistics to say that hundreds of thousands of malnourished children would die without USAID.
Shortly after this story was published, the U.S. government reportedly notified Mana and another manufacturer, Edesia Nutrition of Rhode Island, that the stop-work orders had been lifted.
Recall
Earlier, UNN wrote that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that foreign aid should primarily promote US interests, not be charity. Therefore, the decision to freeze aid for 90 days was made so that the Trump administration could review the programs and their effectiveness.
