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Reuters
18 minutes ago
- Reuters
Exclusive: Trump's funding cut stalls water projects, increasing risks for millions
TAVETA, Kenya, July 19 (Reuters) - The Trump administration's decision to slash nearly all U.S. foreign aid has left dozens of water and sanitation projects half-finished across the globe, creating new hazards for some of the people they were designed to benefit, Reuters has found. Reuters has identified 21 unfinished projects in 16 countries after speaking to 17 sources familiar with the infrastructure plans. Most of these projects have not previously been reported. With hundreds of millions of dollars in funding cancelled since January, workers have put down their shovels and left holes half dug and building supplies unguarded, according to interviews with U.S. and local officials and internal documents seen by Reuters. As a result, millions of people who were promised clean drinking water and reliable sanitation facilities by the United States have been left to fend for themselves. Water towers intended to serve schools and health clinics in Mali have been abandoned, according to two U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity. In Nepal, construction was halted on more than 100 drinking water systems, leaving plumbing supplies and 6,500 bags of cement in local communities. The Himalayan nation will use its own funds to finish the job, according to the country's water minister Pradeep Yadav. In Lebanon, a project to provide cheap solar power to water utilities was scrapped, costing some 70 people their jobs and halting plans to improve regional services. The utilities are now relying on diesel and other sources to power their services, said Suzy Hoayek, an adviser to Lebanon's energy ministry. In Kenya, residents of Taita Taveta County say they are now more vulnerable to flooding than they had been before, as half-finished irrigation canals could collapse and sweep away crops. Community leaders say it will cost $2,000 to lower the risk – twice the average annual income in the area. "I have no protection from the flooding that the canal will now cause, the floods will definitely get worse," said farmer Mary Kibachia, 74. Trump's dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development has left life-saving food and medical aid rotting in warehouses and thrown humanitarian efforts around the world into turmoil. The cuts may cause an additional 14 million deaths by 2030, according to research published in The Lancet medical journal. The Trump administration and its supporters argue that the United States should spend its money to benefit Americans at home rather than sending it abroad, and say USAID had strayed from its original mission by funding projects like LGBT rights in Serbia. With an annual budget of $450 million, the U.S. water projects accounted for a small fraction of the $61 billion in foreign aid distributed by the United States last year. Before Trump's reelection in November, the water projects had not been controversial in Washington. A 2014 law that doubled funding passed both chambers of Congress unanimously. Advocates say the United States has over the years improved the lives of tens of millions of people by building pumps, irrigation canals, toilets and other water and sanitation projects. That means children are less likely to die of water-borne diseases like diarrhea, girls are more likely to stay in school, and young men are less likely to be recruited by extremist groups, said John Oldfield, a consultant and lobbyist for water infrastructure projects. 'Do we want girls carrying water on their heads for their families? Or do you want them carrying school books?' he said. The U.S. State Department, which has taken over foreign aid from USAID, did not respond to a request for comment about the impact of halting the water projects. The agency has restored some funding for life-saving projects, but Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said American assistance will be more limited going forward. At least one water project has been restarted. Funding for a $6 billion desalination plant in Jordan was restored after a diplomatic push by King Abdullah. But funding has not resumed for projects in other countries including Ethiopia, Tanzania, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, say people familiar with those programs who spoke on condition of anonymity. That means women in those areas will have to walk for hours to collect unsafe water, children will face increased disease risk and health facilities will be shuttered, said Tjada D'Oyen McKenna, CEO of Mercy Corps, a nonprofit that worked with USAID on water projects in Congo, Nigeria and Afghanistan that were intended to benefit 1.7 million people. 'This isn't just the loss of aid — it's the unraveling of progress, stability, and human dignity,' she said. In eastern Congo, where fighting between Congolese forces and M23 rebels has claimed thousands of lives, defunct USAID water kiosks now serve as play areas for children. Evelyne Mbaswa, 38, told Reuters her 16-year-old son went to fetch water in June and never came home – a familiar reality to families in the violence-wracked region. 'When we send young girls, they are raped, young boys are kidnapped.... All this is because of the lack of water,' the mother of nine said. A spokesperson for the Congolese government did not respond to requests for comment. In Kenya, USAID was in the midst of a five-year, $100 million project that aimed to provide drinking water and irrigation systems for 150,000 people when contractors and staffers were told in January to stop their work, according to internal documents seen by Reuters. Only 15% of the work had been completed at that point, according to a May 15 memo by DAI Global LLC, the contractor on the project. That has left open trenches and deep holes that pose acute risks for children and livestock and left $100,000 worth of pipes, fencing and other materials exposed at construction sites, where they could degrade or be looted, according to other correspondence seen by Reuters. USAID signage at those sites makes clear who is responsible for the half-finished work, several memos say. That could hurt the United States' reputation and potentially give a boost to extremist groups seeking fresh recruits in the region, according to a draft memo from the U.S. embassy in Nairobi to the State Department seen by Reuters. The al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab group based in Somalia has been responsible for a string of high-profile attacks in Kenya, including an assault on a university in 2015 that killed at least 147 people. "The reputational risk of not finishing these projects could turn into a security risk," the memo said. In Kenya's Taita Taveta, a largely rural county that has endured cyclical drought and flooding, workers had only managed to build brick walls along 220 metres of the 3.1-kilometre (1.9 mile) irrigation canal when they were ordered to stop, community leaders said. And those walls have not been plastered, leaving them vulnerable to erosion. 'Without plaster, the walls will collapse in heavy rain, and the flow of water will lead to the destruction of farms,' said Juma Kobo, a community leader. The community has asked the Kenyan government and international donors to help finish the job, at a projected cost of 68 million shillings ($526,000). In the meantime, they plan to sell the cement and steel cables left on site, Kobo said, to raise money to plaster and backfill the canal. The county government needs to find "funds to at least finish the project to the degree we can with the materials we have, if not complete it fully," said Stephen Kiteto Mwagoti, an irrigation officer working for the county. The Kenyan government did not respond to a request for comment. For Kibachia, who has lived with flooding for years, help cannot come soon enough. Three months after work stopped on the project, her mud hut was flooded with thigh-deep water. "It was really bad this time. I had to use soil to level the floor of my house and to patch up holes in the wall because of damage caused by the floods," she said. 'Where can I go? This is home.'
Reuters
3 hours ago
- Reuters
Japan tariff negotiator Akazawa to hold more trade talks in US next week
TOKYO, July 19 (Reuters) - Japan's top tariff negotiator, Ryosei Akazawa, said on Saturday he planned to visit Washington next week to hold further ministerial-level talks with the U.S. Tokyo is hoping to meet an August 1 deadline to reach a deal to avert President Donald Trump's tariff of 25% on imports from Japan.
Reuters
4 hours ago
- Reuters
Kyiv residents descend into subway to escape Russian bombardment
KYIV, July 19 (Reuters) - Several nights a week, Daria Slavytska packs a yoga mat, blankets and food into a stroller and descends with her two-year-old Emil into the Kyiv subway. While air raid sirens wail above, the 27-year-old tries to snatch a few hours' sleep safely below ground. For the past two months, Russia has unleashed nighttimedrone and missile assaults on Kyiv in a summer offensive that is straining the city's air defences, and has its 3.7 million residents exhausted and on edge. Other towns and villages have seen far worse since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in early 2022 - especially those close to the frontline far to the east and south. Many have been damaged or occupied as Russia advances, and thousands of people have fled to the capital, considered the best-defended city in the country. But recent heavy attacks are beginning to change the mood. At night, residents rush to metro stations deep underground in scenes reminiscent of the German "Blitz" bombings of London during World War Two. Slavytska has started nervously checking Telegram channels at home even before the city's alarms sound, after she found herself in early July running into the street to reach the metro with explosions already booming in the sky. The number of people like Slavytska taking refuge in the cavernous Soviet-era ticket halls and drafty platforms of Kyiv's 46 underground stations soared after large-scale bombardments slammed the city five times in June. Previously, the loud air raid alert on her phone sent Emil into bouts of shaking and he would cry "Corridor, corridor, mum. I'm scared. Corridor, mum," Slavytska said. Now, accustomed to the attacks, he says more calmly "Mum, we should go". "We used to come here less often, about once a month," Slavytska said, sheltering in Akademmistechko station in western Kyiv. "That was six months ago. Now we come two or three times a week." She spent the night curled up on her pink mat with Emil by a column lining the subway tracks. The subway system recorded 165,000 visits during June nights, more than double the 65,000 visits in May and nearly five times the number in June last year, its press service told Reuters. More people were heading to the shelter because of "the scale and lethality" of attacks, the head of Kyiv's military administration, Tymur Tkachenko, told Reuters. He said strikes killed 78 Kyiv residents and injured more than 400 in the first half of the year. U.S. President Donald Trump cited Russia's strikes on Ukrainian cities when announcing his decision on Monday to offer Kyiv more weapons, including Patriot missiles to boost its air defences. "It's incredible that (people) stay, knowing that a missile could be hitting your apartment," Trump said. In April, a strike destroyed a residential building a couple of kilometres from Slavytska's apartment block. "It was so, so loud. Even my son woke up and I held him in my arms in the corridor," she said. "It was really scary." With the threat of losing her home suddenly more tangible, she now takes her identity documents with her underground. After seeing how stressed Emil became after the air alerts, Slavytska sought help from a paediatrician, who recommended she turn off her phone's loud notifications and prescribed a calming medication. Slavytska tells Emil the loud sound during attacks is thunder. Scientists and psychologists say that the lack of sleep is taking its toll on a population worn down by more than three years of war. Kateryna Holtsberh, a family psychologist who practices in Kyiv, said sleep deprivation caused by the attacks was causing mood swings, extreme stress and apathy, leading to declined cognitive functions in both kids and adults. "Many people say that if you sleep poorly, your life will turn into hell and your health will suffer," said Kateryna Storozhuk, another Kyiv region resident. "I didn't understand this until it happened to me." Anton Kurapov, post-doctoral scholar at the University of Salzburg's Laboratory for Sleep, Cognition and Consciousness Research, said it was hard to convey to outsiders what it felt like to be under attack. "Imagine a situation where you go out into the street and a person is shot in front of you ... and what fear you experience, your heart sinks," he said. "People experience this every day, this feeling." Kurapov warned that the impact of such stress could result in lifetime consequences, including chronic illnesses. A study he led that was published, opens new tab in the European Journal of Psychotraumatology in August 2024 showed that 88% of Ukrainians surveyed reported bad or very bad sleep quality. Lack of sleep can significantly impact economic performance and soldiers' ability to fight, said Wendy Troxel, senior behavioural scientist at RAND Corporation, a U.S. think-tank. RAND research, opens new tab in 2016 which Troxel co-authored showed that lack of sleep among the U.S. working population was costing the economy up to $411 billion a year. As she tries to squeeze out more hours of sleep in the subway, Slavytska is looking into buying a mattress to bring underground that would be more comfortable than her mat. Danish retailer JYSK says the air strikes prompted a 25% jump in sales of inflatable mattresses, camp beds and sleep mats in Kyiv in three weeks of June. Others are taking more extreme measures. Small business owner Storozhuk, who had no shelter within three km of her home, invested over $2,000 earlier this year in a Ukrainian-made "Capsule of Life" reinforced steel box, capable of withstanding falling concrete slabs. She climbs in nightly, with her Chihuahua, Zozulia. "I developed a lot of anxiety and fear," Storozhuk said. "I realized that in order to be able to sleep peacefully in Ukraine, I needed some kind of safe shelter."
