Mother Jones illustration; Adrien Vautier/Zuma, Ahmadi/Xinhua/Zuma, Oliver Weiken/Zuma
In Afghanistan, where millions are starving, the France-based NGO Action Against Hunger operates clinics treating severely malnourished children with individualized nutrition plans and feeding tubes. For now.
Thanks to President Donald Trump’s January 20 executive order pausing US foreign development assistance, as well as the administration’s subsequent cancellation of awarded contracts, Action Against Hunger had to cancel its already planned expansion of treatment beds in Kabul and has stopped accepting new patients. Children already being treated are continuing to receive care, but the organization fears it won’t be able to provide follow up treatment if current patients relapse or sustain its work to serve other children in need.
“We are now doing our best to discuss with other donors, to do advocacy, to try to sustain those facilities,” says Cobi Rietveld, the country director for Action Against Hunger in Afghanistan.
This is just one of nearly 10,o00 global development contracts the Trump administration abruptly canceled in the last two weeks. NGOs and intergovernmental organizations tell Mother Jones that other affected programs include one providing nutrition coaching and food to children and lactating women in Haiti; one supplying food, shelter, and clean water to tens of thousands of people in Colombia; and one that administers maternal healthcare and protection from violence to women in Yemen.
“These children are actually very sick. For example, we will have a child maybe one year old who will have the weight of a newborn. They are not yet able to crawl, not yet able to sit.”
The State Department was supposed to issue waivers to programs deemed life-saving in order for them to continue their work, but the Trump administration’s haphazard implementation of the funding freeze and the arbitrary selection of programs to cancel have left program workers in unfathomable situations: NGOs are owed millions for work they already completed, forcing some to lay off dozens of employees. In the past few weeks, aid groups on the ground have also had to turn away people who were promised mobility devices, cash benefits, and food.
In Bangladesh, for example, a 56-year-old refugee needed his old crutches replaced. When he showed up at the treatment center supported by Humanity & Inclusion, an NGO dedicated to helping people with disabilities and other vulnerable populations in conflict zones, nothing could be done for him. “I don’t know how I will be able to move around the camp without my crutches—to eat, to get water,” Shobbir Ahmed told an aid worker.
Humanity & Inclusion says the US government currently owes $19 million for services it completed in 2024. The organization received a limited waiver for its life-saving work in Bangladesh, but it’s unclear which activities will be covered. “We restarted activities there with the waiver we received, but it’s still a risk for us,” says executive director Hannah Guedenet. “We didn’t receive confirmation on which activities they will pay for us to do.”
While the Supreme Court ruled last week that the US government has to pay its debts to contractors for the global aid work they have already completed, no such ruling has been made for work-in-progress contracts that were awarded and now canceled.
Contrary to the administration’s stated mission of increasing efficiency and decreasing government waste, the impulsive withdrawal of foreign aid may cause irreparable—or vastly more expensive—damage down the road. Moreover, there will be no way to continue measuring the progress already completed with US tax dollars. But most importantly, advocates say, ending some of these programs may have dire consequences for the neediest populations.
“These children are actually very sick. For example, we will have a child maybe one year old who will have the weight of a newborn. They are not yet able to crawl, not yet able to sit, and are severely malnourished,” Rietveld says of the Afghanistan program. “If we can’t treat them, they have a very high risk of dying.”
Global aid work can be mutually beneficial. In addition to helping people in underdeveloped countries, the assistance can strengthen relationships with allies and ward off geopolitical adversaries. Without nearly as much US support, China and Russia may see openings to help these countries in exchange for political capital and influence.
“This was real investments of US dollars that we took seriously and managed efficiently and transparently,” says Guedenet. “We were investing money to support our neighbors in other countries for the good of everyone. And I just wish people could understand that.”
In the event that courts order abandoned projects to resume, or the programs can find new funding sources, restarting aid work will be expensive. NGOs must hire new staff, re-market their services, and repurchase fresh food, medications and health supplies. Meanwhile, programs and organizations will not be able to determine the progress their programs made before they were suspended.
This includes one nutrition program Action Against Hungry has been running in Haiti, where 5.4 million people struggle to eat every day.
“We were starting year four of a five year project… Now that we are stopping everything in the middle, we will not be able to measure the impact of the project we have done,” says Martine Villeneuve, Action Against Hunger’s country director for Haiti. “It’s like if you draw something on a board and then you erase it before having time to take a picture of it.”
And restarting the development work from scratch in the near future is the best-case scenario. Not a realistic one.
“The chances,” says Villeneuve, “are very low to find someone to be able to support that level of engagement.”
