Latest news with #U.S.A.I.D.
New York Times
05-05-2025
- Business
- New York Times
How Trump's Ending of U.S.A.I.D. Threatens a Nation's Fragile Peace
When Colombia signed a landmark peace agreement with rebels in 2016, it was celebrated internationally for ending a war that had ravaged much of the country for decades. The United States bolstered the peace efforts, helping displaced farmers return to their land and helping prosecute war crimes. Now, support from the U.S. government — the agreement's biggest foreign economic backer — has vanished. As the Trump administration has withdrawn most foreign assistance globally, including dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development, it has undercut a deal designed, in part, to curtail the flow of drugs to the United States. 'This puts wind in the wings of armed groups,' said León Valencia, director of the Bogotá-based Peace and Reconciliation Foundation, an organization that works on post-conflict issues and had received U.S. funds. 'They can tell demobilized guerrillas or victims that the government signed a peace agreement and didn't keep its promise.' Since 2001, U.S.A.I.D. has spent more in Colombia than any other South American country, about $3.9 billion. While the U.S. Defense and State Departments funneled military spending in the 2000s toward a much-debated plan to eradicate coca farming, U.S.A.I.D. poured money into related economic development projects. Then, after Colombia signed the peace deal with the country's biggest and oldest guerrilla group, the United States also directed spending to projects that helped Colombian officials fulfill the agreement — while also giving farmers alternatives to cultivating coca leaves, the base for cocaine. The rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, had been fighting the government for six decades. Compounding Colombia's challenges during the second Trump administration has been the withdrawal of support from the State Department, which helped pay for efforts like major counternarcotics operations and the tedious process of removing land mines. The results have been on-the-ground setbacks for the military and police that could benefit criminal groups. 'It's hard to overstate what a big paradigm shift this is for the Colombians because they're so interconnected with the Americans,' said Elizabeth Dickinson, an analyst at the International Crisis Group, which monitors and tries to prevent armed conflicts. 'It's a tectonic shift that the U.S. might not always be there.' In small towns and rural areas of Colombia where armed groups are still active, U.S.A.I.D. projects had been vital to helping maintain stability, according to interviews with 14 current or former agency employees or contractors based in Colombia. Most declined to be identified because they were not authorized to speak, and out of concern that it would jeopardize the possibility of future work. 'There are parts of the country where there's the bad guys and then there's U.S.A.I.D.,' said one former contractor, who was working with a nonprofit that suspended its work trying to prevent young people from joining armed groups, after its U.S. financing was stopped. U.S.A.I.D. had also helped Colombia provide services for the more than 2.8 million migrants from Venezuela who have arrived in the last decade, making Colombia the world's largest recipient of people fleeing Venezuela's political and economic crisis. Still, American support isn't entirely welcomed in Colombia. Many conservative politicians agree with the Trump administration's claims that it's an inefficient use of funds, while some leftist politicians say U.S. money is an instrument to control Colombian society. Colombia's leftist president, Gustavo Petro, questioned why U.S. aid was going toward beefing up the country's immigration and customs agencies, saying that type of spending infringed on the country's sovereignty. 'Trump is right,' Mr. Petro said in a televised address. 'Take your money.' Colombia's armed conflict goes back generations. Rooted in frustration over inequality and land distribution, it morphed into a complex battle among leftist guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries, drug cartels and the government, fueled by drug money and other illicit business. While FARC laid down its arms, offshoots remain, and existing and new armed groups have gained strength, according to analysts. Today, the country faces eight separate armed conflicts, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross, which described the country's humanitarian situation as reaching its most critical point since the signing of the peace accord. Ariel Ávila, a senator for the Green Party who worked in peace-related projects before holding office, said U.S.A.I.D.'s withdrawal eliminated resources for a web of nonprofits that relied on U.S. support for democracy-building efforts, some of which have shut down. 'For me, U.S.A.I.D. hasn't been just about peace building,' Mr. Ávila said. 'It's been an agent for democracy.' Central to helping the country cement a lasting peace has been the creation of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, a court dedicated to trying crimes against humanity and war crimes committed during the internal conflict, which left at least 450,000 people dead. American assistance — through U.S.A.I.D. and the State Department — represents about 10 percent of the court's foreign support, court officials said. The U.S. government provided technical and logistical support in three of the court's large-scale cases — each representing thousands of victims — on sex crimes, crimes targeting Black and Indigenous people, and the systematic murder of leftist politicians. The agency also provided investigative tools, such as DNA test kits, to identify bodies found in mass graves. The loss of U.S. help will slow down the court's work, court officials said, which is worrisome because it has a 15-year deadline to reach verdicts and sentences in cases involving tens of thousands of victims and defendants living in rural and difficult to reach areas, said Judge Alejandro Ramelli, president of the court. 'We're committed to finding the answers to thousands of questions that the victims have had for many years and have never had answered,' Mr. Ramelli said. 'International aid is essential to being able to find that truth.' U.S.A.I.D. funding also helped the Colombian government map millions of acres in conflict-afflicted territories, which was key to the peace deal. Land inequality had been a core grievance since fighting erupted, so the government promised to give formal ownership to poor farmers working in rural lands. Government officials are in the process of mapping broad chunks of territory for which little or no formal government record exists. Colombia's National Land Agency, which oversees the process, said the U.S. government helped carry out land surveys, develop safety protocols for work in conflict areas and identify land used for illegal crops. Officials have mapped more than 3.2 million acres through a program funded by U.S.A.I.D. Just in the town of Cáceres, in the mountainous Antioquia region, they were able to issue titles to 230 families who agreed to stop farming coca leaves in exchange for formal land ownership. Without the support, much of that mapping is on hold because the National Land Agency does not have the budget to complete the work on its own, the agency said. 'The importance of U.S.A.I.D. is evident,' the agency said in a statement. U.S.A.I.D. support has also been key in regions experiencing new conflict. In the northeastern Catatumbo region, near the Venezuela border, the country is seeing its worst period of violence in a generation. Since January, 106 people have been killed and more than 64,000 displaced from their homes, according to a local government count. Theylor Villegas, 27, is among the displaced. In 2019, he helped found Corporación Pride, an L.G.B.T. advocacy group in the Catatumbo region, and last year his organization won a U.S.A.I.D.-financed contract to track violence affecting women, young people and minority groups. In January, two major events flipped Mr. Villegas's life upside down: Widespread gunfire erupted between offshoots of the disbanded FARC guerrillas, and the Trump administration ordered a global freeze on foreign aid. Mr. Villegas was forced to flee the region and lost both his contract and U.S.-sponsored psychological and legal support he was receiving for his work. Now, Mr. Villegas's future is uncertain, and his organization's work tracking and supporting victims in one of Colombia's most violent regions is on hold. 'I feel impotent,' he said. 'An organization like ours in this part of the world rarely gets noticed.'
New York Times
25-04-2025
- Business
- New York Times
Fired U.S.A.I.D. Workers to Keep Government-Issued Phones and Computers
Staff members being fired from the federal agency responsible for distributing foreign aid will be able to keep their government-issued electronic devices when it closes its doors this summer, according to an internal email, copies of which were shared with The New York Times. In the email, sent to employees of the U.S. Agency for International Development, Trump administration officials said that iPhones, iPads and laptops would 'be remotely wiped and marked as disposed.' The directive, the email stated, was adopted 'to simplify processes and to reduce burden' of terminating the thousands of direct hires and consultants who worked for the agency before it was slated to be closed this summer, its remaining functions to be folded into the State Department. Federal employees are typically required to return their government-issued devices, in part to reduce the security risk of leaving potentially sensitive information with workers whose service has been terminated. The letter stipulates that devices will not be marked as 'disposed' until they have been remotely wiped. It makes no request that the employees dispose of the devices. There is also no clear deadline stipulated in the email, which says merely that devices will be remotely sanitized 'on or around the employee Reduction in Force (RIF) date.' Staff based in the United States have been told that their employment will end by Aug. 15, which is also the date by which U.S.A.I.D.'s foreign service officers are expected to return to the United States. The email also says that the administration will reach out to U.S.A.I.D. contractors who were fired weeks ago to let them know how to wipe their devices remotely. With the planned closure of the agency, it was not clear what the government might have done with the returned devices. But their collective value is potentially significant. Before President Trump returned to office in January and began cutting the work force, U.S.A.I.D. had over 10,000 employees. Though it was not immediately clear how many devices employees were issued, the value of the devices could reach into the millions of dollars. Press officers for U.S.A.I.D. and the State Department did not immediately return requests for comment.
New York Times
20-04-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Strawberries Aren't Ripe for Africa? His Farms Disprove That, Deliciously.
When Thierno Agne was a student casting about for a lucrative career, he told his agriculture professor he was considering growing strawberries in Senegal. 'You will fail,' he remembered the professor warning. He didn't listen, and now, at 36, Mr. Agne runs one of the biggest strawberry farms in the country. He had not even wanted to be a farmer. He had started his higher education by studying law. But then, he shocked his family by switching to agriculture when he realized there were already more law graduates in Senegal than there were jobs available. Still, despite the glut of legal graduates, his shift in focus was an unusual move for an ambitious young man in a country where farming is seen as a job for old, uneducated or poor people. Mr. Agne has shown, however, that farming can be a profession that requires education, commands as much respect and remuneration as a lawyer, and demands as much innovation as any high-tech entrepreneur is expected to show. On a recent morning at his farm just outside Dakar, the capital, Mr. Agne quietly trod the rows of vibrant strawberry plants, checking how his delicate crop was doing. This crop would be sold in Dakar supermarkets and by roadside vendors — part of Mr. Agne's mission to turn what was recently a luxury treat into an everyday fruit. 'We want to demystify the idea that strawberries are not for Africans,' Mr. Agne said on his farm. 'That they can be grown here, sold here, and locals, especially our kids, should enjoy them.' His mission just got harder. Until recently, he received support from the U.S. Agency for International Development to hire seasonal staff and train people to expand strawberry production in Senegal. That assistance was terminated in February as part of the Trump administration's gutting of the aid agency. But students are still coming to the farm in Bayakh, a village in the Thiès region. Strawberries are the favorite fruit of Rama Diane, 16, a student from Dakar who recently visited one of Mr. Agne's farms. But she hadn't eaten one in a whole year. Standing on the edge of a field full of them, she and her classmates were eager for a taste. Ms. Diane popped one in her mouth and immediately started making comparisons to the one she had last year. 'It wasn't as sweet,' she said of last year's berry. 'I guess it was imported.' The unique taste of his locally grown strawberries is a point of pride for Mr. Agne. He is hoping to ultimately end strawberry imports, which currently account for about 80 percent of Senegal's consumption. But he is also determined to demonstrate that farming can be a source of good jobs in a country where they're acutely scarce — 20 percent of young people are unemployed in Senegal. Farming can also keep young people at home, he said, instead of pouring out of the country by the thousands every year, often risking dangerous routes for opportunities in Europe and the United States. U.S.A.I.D. had been helping with goals like these. In Senegal, where the agency spent $27 million last year, the dismantling of such support will make young people feel hopeless and will fuel illegal migration, according to Mr. Agne. Several young people he mentored had been considering migrating to the United States through a circuitous route via Nicaragua, but he managed to change their minds. A big part of his pitch was the success that he had managed to find in Senegal — and that he had a valid American visa but was too busy and satisfied at home to want to cross the Atlantic with it. Mr. Agne grew up outdoors and around agriculture, tending — and often singing to — his father's mango trees. But he never thought his future would be in fruit production. 'It was fun,' he said, smiling as he reminisced about his emotional bond with his father's banana and mango plants. But he saw his career path far from the fields of his hometown, Tambacounda. He wanted to be a lawyer and follow in the footsteps of his grandfather, a respected imam and colonial-era Muslim jurist. After completing his secondary-level education, he hopped a train to Dakar, which he knew of only by the tales of its beauty, vibrant life and allure of opportunities. 'It was my first time ever leaving Tambacounda,' he said. 'I got lost, and I didn't have enough money.' A few days later, Mr. Agne showed up at Cheikh Anta Diop University and enrolled in a law program. But when one of his professors told him that more than 2,000 recent graduates from the law school still did not have jobs, he was bitterly disappointed. Dejected, he went back to his hometown, worrying about his prospects. But on that trip home, he learned for the first time that his beloved grandfather had been not only a jurist, but also a major farmer who supplied millet and corn to French forces during World War II, earning medals and French citizenship. Upon returning to Dakar, he abandoned his law program and signed up to study agriculture. The decision divided his family. 'Some thought I was mad,' he said. On a recent morning, Mr. Agne welcomed over 60 students from a Senegalese school, and as he explained the science he had applied to grow strawberries against the odds, the biology teacher who brought the students started nodding along. The teacher, Alieu Bah, said his students picture farming as something the poor do. 'I want them to change that perception,' he said. It was harvest season, and such organized visits to Mr. Agne's farms were frequent. With the earth softened by recent watering, the delighted students ran wild through the fields, picking ripe strawberries. 'I am so, so excited to be here,' Rama said, adding that it was her first visit to a farm, and even more thrilling, it was a strawberry farm. Before Mr. Agne started FraiSen — the name of his company, which is short for Fraise Sénégalaise, or Senegalese Strawberry — the berry's production on a commercial scale was unheard-of in Senegal. The West African country's hot and humid climate and erratic rains were simply not suitable for it, many thought. Mr. Agne himself was 22 when he first saw strawberries, on a school exchange in France. Until then, the main crop he had seen was peanuts, Senegal's primary export crop, and millet, a grain grown for local consumption. So what drove him to embrace such an unexpected crop? 'It's sexy,' he said, as he moved in between rows of the berry on his sun-drenched farm. 'It's different.' He began his experiment by planting a few strawberries on his balcony in Dakar, and they thrived. He then rented a 2,150-square-foot plot for $250 to begin commercial operations. He earned nearly $6,000 with his first crop in 2015. His second year, after scaling up to a little over 5,000 square feet, he profited around $13,000. That gave him the confidence to expand further, to 2.5 acres. But then his plants spoiled midway through the growing season. 'I guess I was overambitious,' he admitted. 'Now, I take things step by step.' Eight years after that hard lesson, Mr. Agne now cultivates a total of 12 acres on three fields, producing 50 tons of strawberries annually. His plan is to acquire a 50-acre field next year, which would put him into a small circle of large-scale agricultural producers in Senegal, where 95 percent of farms are small, mostly subsistence holdings. He has trained hundreds of young people over the years, some of whom have become strawberry farmers, and others who process the strawberries into juice. 'There are now 50 of us,' he said, referring to an association of strawberry farmers he created. 'Together, we produce 180 tons every year.' With this homegrown production, strawberries are now cheaper in Senegal's groceries and even sold by hawkers on the streets. But at $9 to $11 per kilogram (a little over two pounds), they're still unaffordable for many. As the visiting students left, each holding a box of strawberries, Mr. Agne inspected his plants, which miraculously survived the stomping. 'I am proud of what I have achieved,' he said. 'I have put my country on the map of strawberry producers.'
New York Times
14-04-2025
- Business
- New York Times
Pete Marocco, Who Helped Gut Foreign Aid for Trump, Leaves State Department
Pete Marocco, who worked with Elon Musk's team to oversee the gutting of foreign aid and the dismantling of the main U.S. aid agency, has left the State Department, administration officials said on Monday. The abrupt departure comes in the middle of the department's efforts to merge the remnants of that aid group, the U.S. Agency for International Development, into the department by mid-August. Mr. Marocco had been acting as the head of foreign aid at the department and would have overseen the remaining aid operations, which amount to only a fraction of those active before President Trump took office. Mr. Marocco is expected to take another job in the administration, U.S. officials say. The State Department did not provide official comment on Mr. Marocco's departure. But a statement from the department's press office that was attributed to a 'senior administration official' praised Mr. Marocco for finding 'egregious abuses of taxpayer dollars' during his tenure. The statement provided no examples of such abuses. Mr. Marocco's critics said they planned to continue scrutinizing how he and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have gutted foreign aid. 'Pete Marocco's tenure brought chaos to U.S.A.I.D., reckless and unlawful policy to the State Department, and dismantled longstanding U.S. foreign policy,' Senator Brian Schatz, Democrat of Hawaii, said in a statement, adding, 'His actions deprived millions of people around the world of lifesaving aid and jeopardized U.S. credibility with our partners.' Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
New York Times
11-04-2025
- Health
- New York Times
Children Seeking Cholera Care Die After U.S. Cuts Aid, Charity Says
At least five children and three adults with cholera died as they went in search of treatment in South Sudan after aid cuts by the Trump administration shuttered local health clinics during the country's worst cholera outbreak in decades, the international charity Save the Children reported this week. The victims, all from the country's east, died on a grueling three-hour walk in scorching heat as they tried to reach the nearest remaining health facility, the agency said in a statement. The American aid cuts, put into effect by the Trump administration in January, forced 7 of 27 health facilities supported by Save the Children across Akobo County to close and 20 others to partly cease operations, the charity said in a statement. Some clinics are now run only by volunteers, and they no longer have the means to transport sick patients to hospitals. In an interview on Thursday, Christopher Nyamandi, Save the Children's country director for South Sudan, said he had visited a health clinic in Akobo County that was providing nutrition assistance and helping with the cholera response shortly after the cuts were announced. The scene he described was dire. Tents that were supposed to hold 25 people were crammed with hundreds, he said. People were sleeping outside, facing exposure to mosquitoes and withering heat while they tried recovering from cholera. Mr. Nyamandi said health care workers on the scene described 'how difficult it is to manage the situation where people are just out there. And when somebody dies,' he added, the workers can only 'try to protect the children from seeing that scene.' Cholera is caused by the ingestion of contaminated food or water and is often prevalent in areas where people are living in cramped conditions and amid poor sanitation. The disease can cause death by dehydration but is easily treated with medication that costs pennies. South Sudan is in the midst of its worst cholera outbreak in two decades, the United Nation's Children's Fund said in a March statement. More than 47,000 suspected and confirmed cases have been reported there since September 2024, according to data from the World Health Organization. The United States spent $760 million on aid for South Sudan in 2023, and the Trump administration's aid cuts have worsened an already bleak humanitarian situation in a young nation teetering on the brink of war. The Department of Government Efficiency, headed by the South Africa-born billionaire Elon Musk, has gutted the U.S. Agency for International Development, which has been Washington's primary distributor of foreign aid for decades. The State Department has been charged with taking over U.S.A.I.D.'s remaining responsibilities by mid-August. U.S.A.I.D. and the State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. South Sudan has been dependent on foreign aid since its independence in 2011, and people there face the compounding tragedies of war and malnutrition, making cholera outbreaks even more deadly. With the country plagued by widespread instability and lack of infrastructure, Mr. Nyamandi said he believes the number of cholera deaths are being underreported and are likely to rise with the aid cuts. 'The sudden withdrawal of funding that was the key to the survival of vulnerable families and children is going to result in more deaths,' he said.
