Hundreds of internal contractors working for the US Agency for International Development (USAID) are being put on unpaid leave and some are being terminated after US President Donald Trump imposed a sweeping freeze on US foreign aid worldwide, Reuters reports.

Despite a recently announced waiver, health and humanitarian groups around the world are still uncertain if and how they could resume work and whether their programmes were covered by the exception.

The administration says it is conducting the review to ensure the tens of billions of dollars worth of US foreign assistance worldwide is aligned with Trump’s “America First” foreign policy and not a waste of taxpayer money.

The State Department said today that the pause in assistance stopped the provision of “condoms and other contraceptive services in Gaza”, clean energy programs for women in Fiji and family planning throughout Latin America, among other programmes.

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