The Trump administration’s cuts to USAID have frozen hundreds of millions of dollars in contractual payments to aid groups, leaving them paying out of pocket to preserve a fragile ceasefire, the Associated Press reports, citing officials from the agency.
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) was supposed to fund much of the aid to Gaza as the ceasefire progressed, and the Trump administration approved over $383 million on January 31 to that end, AP said, quoting three USAID officials.
But since then, there have been no confirmed payments to any partners in the Middle East, the officials “who have survived multiple rounds of furloughs” told AP on the condition of anonymity.
“The US established very specific, concrete commitments for aid delivery under the ceasefire, and there is no way … to fulfill those as long as the funding freeze is in place,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, president of Refugees International and a former USAID official.
Some organizations have already reported laying off workers and scaling down operations, AP said, citing internal USAID information it had seen.