April 10, 2025e-Paper
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April 10, 2025e-Paper
Updated – April 10, 2025 01:19 pm IST – CAIRO
Dwindling resources: An Afghan woman receives food items at a World Food Programme distribution centre in Kabul. File | Photo Credit: Reuters
The Trump administration has reversed sweeping cuts in emergency food aid to several nations but maintained them in Afghanistan and Yemen, two of the world’s poorest and most war-ravaged countries, officials said on Wednesday (April 9, 2025).
The United States had initially cut funding for projects in more than a dozen countries, part of a dramatic reduction of foreign aid led the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) under billionaire Elon Musk.
Aid officials warned the cuts would deny food to millions of people and end health programmes for women and children.
Also read: Trump 2.0 as disruptor of the global legal order
The administration informed the World Food Programme (WFP) of its reversal on Tuesday (April 8, 2025), according to two UN officials. Two officials with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) confirmed that Jeremy Lewin, the Musk associate overseeing the dismantling of USAID, ordered the reversal of some of his weekend contract terminations after AP reported them. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to brief media.
The WFP said on Monday (April 7, 2025) it had been notified that USAID was cutting funding to the UN agency’s emergency food programme in 14 countries.
Funding has been restored for programmes in Somalia, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, and Ecuador, according to the USAID officials and one of the UN officials. The status of funding for six other unidentified countries was not immediately clear.
The USAID officials said Mr. Lewin sent a note internally expressing regret at what he described as a miscommunication.
One of the UN officials said the decision to restore funding came after intense behind-the-scenes lobbying of members of Congress by senior UN officials.
U.S. officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment. State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce acknowledged on Tuesday (April 8, 2025) that some of the programmes had been cut by mistake and said funding had been restored, without providing details.
“I do not know how much they know about the system they are dismantling. I do not know how much they care,” said Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the Humanitarian Research Lab at the Yale School of Public Health.
“The damage they have already done is a potential extinction-level event for two generations of transformational improvements in how we prevent people from dying from a lack of food,” Mr. Raymond added.
The cuts could prove disastrous for millions in Afghanistan and Yemen, reeling from decades of war and U.S.-led campaigns against militants.
The U.S. had been the largest funder of the WFP, providing $4.5 billion of the $9.8 billion in donations to the world’s largest food aid provider last year. Previous administrations had viewed such aid as a way of alleviating conflict and combating poverty and extremism while curbing migration.
Also read: Crippling aid work: On the U.S. freeze on foreign assistance
The Trump administration has accused USAID of advancing liberal causes, and has criticised foreign aid more broadly as a waste of resources.
More than half of Afghanistan’s population — some 23 million people — need humanitarian assistance.
It is a crisis caused by decades of conflict — including the 20-year U.S. war with the Taliban — as well as entrenched poverty and climate shocks.
Last year, the U.S. provided 43% of all international humanitarian funding to Afghanistan.
A WFP assessment showed that food assistance to 2 million people in Afghanistan would be terminated later this year. More than 6,50,000 malnourished children, mothers and pregnant women would would lose nutritional support.
The latest cuts would affect southern Yemen, where the internationally recognised government opposed to the Houthis is based. The WFP assessment warned that halting aid there “carries significant political and security implications and risks deepening the economic crisis and exacerbating instability.”
Published – April 10, 2025 01:17 pm IST
USA / World / Yemen / Afghanistan
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U.S. restores urgent food aid except in Afghanistan and Yemen, where millions need it – The Hindu
