The largest donor in the world, the United States, stopped almost all foreign aid on Friday, with the exception of emergency food and military support for Egypt and Israel.
Days after President Donald Trump took office, Secretary of State Marco Rubio released an internal memo pledging to implement a “America First” policy that severely limits aid abroad.
“No new funds shall be obligated for new awards or extensions of existing awards until each proposed new award or extension has been reviewed and approved,” said the memo to staff seen by AFP.
The broad directive seems to impact everything from military aid to development assistance, including that given to Ukraine, which is attempting to fend off a Russian invasion and has received billions of dollars in armaments under Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden.
The edict also means that US financing for PEPFAR, the anti-HIV/AIDS program that purchases anti-retroviral medications to treat the disease in underdeveloped nations, mostly in Africa, would be halted for at least a few months.
PEPFAR, which was started in 2003 under President George W. Bush, is said to have saved about 26 million lives and, up until recently, had widespread support in Washington across party lines.
But the memo explicitly made exceptions for military assistance to Israel — whose longstanding major arms packages from the United States have expanded further since the Gaza war — and Egypt, which has received generous US defense funding since it signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979.
Additionally, Rubio included an exemption for US donations to emergency food assistance, which the US has been making in response to global crises, such as those in Syria and Sudan.
According to lawmakers from the opposing Democratic Party, 63 million people depended on US-funded anti-malaria initiatives, such as nets, and over 20 million people were dependent on medication through PEPFAR.
“For years, Republicans in Congress have decried what they see as a lack of U.S. credibility vis-a-vis countries like China, Russia, and Iran,” said Representative Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Relations Committee, and Representative Lois Frankel.
“Now our credibility is on the line, and it appears we will cut and run from American commitments to our partners around the world,” they wrote in a letter.
For a long time, Washington has used aid as an instrument of its foreign policy, claiming to care about development and setting itself apart from China, which is mostly focused on resource extraction.
Meeks and Frankel added that Congress has the authority to authorize foreign aid and promised to work for its execution.
