Trump Administration Terminates Some Usaid Contracts Providing Lifesaving Food Aid

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump management has notified nan World Food Program and different partners that it has terminated immoderate of nan past remaining lifesaving humanitarian programs crossed nan Middle East, a U.S. charismatic and a U.N. charismatic told The Associated Press connected Monday.

The projects were being canceled “for nan convenience of nan U.S. Government” astatine nan guidance of Jeremy Lewin, a apical lieutenant astatine Trump advisor Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency whom nan Trump management appointed to oversee and decorativeness dismantling nan U.S. Agency for International Development, according to letters sent to USAID partners and viewed by nan AP.

About 60 letters canceling contracts were sent complete nan past week, including for awesome projects pinch nan World Food Program, nan world’s largest supplier of nutrient aid, a USAID charismatic said. An charismatic pinch nan United Nations successful nan Middle East said nan World Food Program received termination letters for U.S.-funded programs successful Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.

Both officials said connected nan information of anonymity because they were not authorized to remark publicly.

Some of nan past remaining U.S. backing for cardinal programs successful Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan and nan confederate African federation of Zimbabwe besides was affected, including for those providing food, water, aesculapian attraction and shelter for group displaced by war, nan USAID charismatic said.

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The U.N. charismatic said nan groups that would beryllium deed hardest see Syrian refugees successful Jordan and Lebanon. Also affected are programs supporting susceptible Lebanese group and providing irrigation systems wrong Syria, a state emerging from a sadistic civilian warfare and struggling pinch poorness and hunger.

In Yemen, different war-divided state that is facing 1 of nan world’s worst humanitarian disasters, nan terminated assistance apparently includes nutrient that has already arrived successful distribution centers, nan U.N. charismatic said.

Aid officials were conscionable learning of galore of nan cuts Monday and said they were struggling to understand their scope.

Another of nan notices, sent Friday, abruptly pulled U.S. backing for a programme pinch beardown support successful Congress that had sent young Afghan women overseas for schooling amid Taliban prohibitions connected women’s education, said an administrator for that project, which is tally by Texas A&M University.

The young women would now look return to Afghanistan, wherever their lives would beryllium successful danger, according to that administrator, who was not authorized to speak publically and said connected nan information of anonymity.

The Trump management had pledged to spare those astir urgent, lifesaving programs successful its cutting of assistance and improvement programs done nan State Department and USAID.

The Republican management already has canceled thousands of USAID contracts arsenic it dismantles USAID, which it accuses of wastefulness and of advancing wide causes.

The recently terminated contracts were among astir 900 surviving programs that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had notified Congress he intended to preserve, nan USAID charismatic said.

There was nary contiguous remark from nan State Department.

Magdy reported from Cairo.