Latest news with #USaid
Telegraph
27-05-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
Ukraine counts the cost as military aid is cut back
As the bloody battle against Vladimir Putin's troops stretches into its fourth year, the toll on Ukraine is mounting. Hundreds of billions of pounds have been spent on fighting the Russian invaders, and at least 46,000 soldiers have died. Hopes that Donald Trump would bring a prompt end to the war have all but vanished. Instead, his constant flip-flopping has made many fear that the leader of the free world has abandoned Ukraine. For the war-torn country, this means crucial flows of US aid and weaponry could reduce to a trickle or cease completely. 'It is absolutely a risk. Ukraine is nervous about that. The strategy is to draw down as much as they can now, stockpile it for that time. There's not a lot of trust there,' says Timothy Ash, an associate fellow at Chatham House. 'It will make the fight more difficult, but they can still continue. They can sustain the war for at least six months to a year. The war grinds on without some peace process.' Making aid stretch For Kyiv, the uncertainty over funding means every dollar must stretch as far as possible. 'If the enemy's unmanned aerial vehicle [like a military drone] costs $50,000 [£37,000], and you hit it with a rocket that costs $1m, that's not cost-effective,' says Oleksandr Barabash, a software developer who has turned into a defence entrepreneur as a result of the war. 'You need to hit it with something cheaper, like we do with radio-controlled drones. 'The prices really make a difference, because all devices are being destroyed on a daily basis. You cannot spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a month on something that will be destroyed in a week or maybe in days.' The company Barabash co-founded with other volunteers, called Falcons, is just one example of Ukraine's rapidly growing and sprawling defence sector. The industry can now produce many essential types of military equipment for far less than European and American firms. The push to find ways to make the war less costly – both in terms of human and financial losses – is more acute than ever. 'We have enough commitments till the end of this year, mostly from the EU. But there is significant uncertainty for the next year,' says Yurii Haidai, a senior economist at the Centre for Economic Strategy in Kyiv. 'There are still no commitments that would ensure we can make it through the next year.' 'Paying a fair share' The threat to financing does not just come from the White House. Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister, has several times tried to block support for Ukraine. He may well try again this summer, says Ash. Ukraine is well financed for now – thanks in part to the Biden administration rushing through £22.5bn in the final months of last year. But Kyiv cannot rely on a similar windfall arriving after that runs out. 'There is an austerity approach visible,' says Haidai. 'The ministry of finance is very conservative now, focusing on financial resources to be used as wisely as possible to make them stretch as far as possible this year and probably into next year.' Volodymyr Zelensky's government funds half of the Ukrainian budget from taxpayer revenues, with the remainder coming from foreign grants and loans. Most of the funding is spent on the war effort. This comes in the form of manufacturing weapons and artillery shells, paying the salaries of 1m soldiers and compensating the families of those killed in battle. 'They are taking measures to collect as much as is feasible from the war-impacted economy,' Haidai says. 'So tax revenues in real terms are growing despite limitations like [the fact] that there are 5m people who fled the war and electricity is limited.' This means Ukraine's workers and private sector businesses must still keep paying the taxman while living under air raids, daily blackouts and inflation. 'Business and people of Ukraine pay their fair share to support this war effort and the defence. We would very much expect that the West would step in with their share,' Haidai says. Sprawling defence industry Boosting the domestic defence industry, which dates back to Soviet times, is crucial to making the money and military aid stretch further. 'After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Ukraine was left with a big chunk of the Soviet arms industry. But back then maintaining the arms industry was not a priority given that it was just after the Cold War. So there was a decline,' says Lorenzo Scarazzato, of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Putin's annexation of Crimea in 2014 and then the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 have sparked a revival. Ukraine's defence industry now supplies around 30pc of the munitions for the war and has been fuelled by start-ups and entrepreneurs like Barabash. 'After the full scale invasion, I tried to be drafted,' he says. 'But they never called me back, and I had no previous experience with combat. So I started to look how can I help. We connected with other volunteers and started to develop things that soldiers require on battlefield.' His company specialises in sensors that can transmit from the battlefield despite Putin's forces scrambling GPS signals, making it possible to quickly identity and take out incoming threats. 'We lack everything. So we were asked: can you produce this, because the cheapest one costs more than $100,000 a device? We came up with this first device with a sensor that cost 10 times less than the cheapest solution [on the] Ukrainian market, and 1,000 times less than any device from European on US market,' Barabash says. Slow international response Such ingenuity has not been driven only by Russian aggression. Ukraine has also learnt from delays in the international response, says Serhii Kuzan, a former adviser to Ukraine's ministry of defence. 'The several-month delay in the decision to provide American assistance and the EU's delays in the second half of 2022 after the successful counteroffensive by the defence forces in Kharkiv and Kherson regions, and a nine-month delay in aid in late 2023 early 2024, cost Ukraine dearly,' Kuzan says, who is now the chairman of Ukrainian Security and Cooperation Centre. 'These delays not only hampered the Ukrainian Defence Forces' capabilities, but also gave Russia a chance to recover from its defeats and mobilise its own armed forces. Therefore, Ukraine has prioritised the development of the defence industry.' Even still, there is only so much Ukraine can do. Experts warn there are some types of equipment the country could not replace if going at alone without US backing, such as some fighter jets. Losing equipment like this is a greater worry than running out of money. Kyiv's best hope may be to convince European leaders that investing in Ukraine is not just throwing money into a never-ending conflict: it is an investment in the future of the Continent's treatment efforts. 'The main obstacle is the lack of funding,' says Kuzan. 'Overcoming fear and making a decision to direct these funds to Ukrainian weapons production will allow Europe to both gain time and receive very specific dividends for itself – cheap and effective weapons for itself in the future.' It is an attractive proposition. But there is no guarantee leaders will buy in. For now, Kyiv is left to make every cent stretch as far as it can as Russia's assault on Ukraine grinds on.
The Independent
21-05-2025
- Business
- The Independent
This is the beginning of the end of international aid. What will the new world look like?
In recent months, international aid has been subject to the"shock and awe" of dramatic cuts by the largest donor in the world, the United States, as well as many European countries. But this reduction – recent projections suggest a $40 billion cut is expected in 2025 – is more than just a drop in funds. It increasingly looks like an assault on the norms and values – like solidarity and multilateral cooperation – that have been at the core of the Western liberal internationalist system since the Second World War. This attack has not happened overnight. In fact, it's been a long-time coming. Criticisms of aid stretch back several decades and are not unique to the US. Free marketeers have long taken issue with a model of economic development reliant on benevolent state intervention, while those leaning to the left have expressed frustrations with the neocolonial aspirations of development that seeks influence over formerly dependent colonies. The sector has trumpeted the effectiveness of aid to respond to criticisms that it doesn't deliver results, but has not robustly moved forward the true devolution of power needed to achieve real impact. The aid sector has talked about global institutional reform but not addressed real imbalances of decision-making and representation between countries. This glacial pace of change has frustrated both aid providers and recipients alike. Before Donald Trump 's executive order suspending aid and dismantling the US Agency for International Development (USAID), aid cuts had already been announced in several countries including Germany, France and the Netherlands. The UK has also recently cut its aid budget in order to grow its military spending. While global aid budgets grew to reach a notional peak of $223 billion (£166bn) in 2023, the amount of Official Development Assistance (ODA) spent beyond national borders has actually been falling in recent years, with more and more aid spent by major donors helping refugees inside their own countries, incentivising exports and external investment and reducing climate emissions. The reality is that foreign aid hit both peak legitimacy and peak volume prior to this Trump-induced upheaval. And now the clock is ticking to define what this new 'post-aid' paradigm should look like. In a series of meetings hosted by the think tank ODI Global, several government donors underwriting aid have been reflecting on how to manage short term political and fiscal pressures, while identifying a possible long-term vision for the next iteration of development cooperation and their role in it. But beyond these immediate challenges, officials recognise an opportunity to exploit this moment of disruption to redesign a global development cooperation system fit for the realities of a multipolar world, as well as new development challenges – from increased humanitarian crises to climate change. Several voices from the Global South have also expressed considerable enthusiasm for a fundamental rethink, perhaps even more so than officials from donor countries horrified by the collateral damage of the sudden, sharp withdrawal of funding. So what should come next? Our discussions highlighted the need for a sound rationale for the modern-day purpose of public spending for development. Our research finds that narratives are most likely to succeed if they link to core national interests, cross-border challenges and international solidarity. New, compelling narratives for public spending on development can help taxpayers understand why such expenditure is important, which in turn can grow broader based political leadership that can champion such investment. Our first meeting detailed three plausible policy rationales: narrowing the focus of aid on the most vulnerable in fragile and humanitarian contexts; inviting all countries, rich or poor, to collectively tackle shared global challenges; and transforming the structural drivers of inequality by changing policies on trade and debt that disadvantage the Global South. To put these ideas into action we will need to change the way aid institutions function. For example, Western NGOs working internationally will need to transition away from delivering bags of rice and tents and being contracted to provide services, towards building progressive movements and actively trying to influence the policies of their own governments. Donor governments may spend less on big aid budgets, but focus more on other ways to create change, such as sharing intellectual property and changing their policies on migration or fossil fuel production. It may be time to retire the traditional concept of rich countries giving money directly to poor countries altogether, in favour of pooling funding through institutions, like the United Nations, designed to address collective challenges – though such international institutions will need to be revitalised and streamlined. In 1969, the Pearson Commission, named after Canadian Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson, was formed to recommend "a new basis for international cooperation" and ultimately led to an acceptance among donor countries to spend 0.7 per cent of their GDP on aid, creating the international aid architecture we know today. We have reached a similar turning point and require similarly robust thinking about a new paradigm for international cooperation in the 21st century. A modern-day independent commission of high-level experts could help to think through the strategic and operational choices that need to urgently be made.
Fast Company
16-05-2025
- Health
- Fast Company
Food that could feed millions may expire due to USAID cuts
Food rations that could supply 3.5 million people for a month are mouldering in warehouses around the world because of U.S. aid cuts and risk becoming unusable, according to five people familiar with the situation. The food stocks have been stuck inside four U.S. government warehouses since the Trump administration's decision in January to cut global aid programmes, according to three people who previously worked at the U.S. Agency for International Development and two sources from other aid organisations. Some stocks that are due to expire as early as July are likely to be destroyed, either by incineration, using them as animal feed or disposing of them in other ways, two of the sources said. The warehouses, which are run by USAID's Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA), contain between 60,000 to 66,000 metric tonnes of food, sourced from American farmers and manufacturers, the five people said. An undated inventory list for the warehouses – which are located in Djibouti, South Africa, Dubai and Houston – stated that they contained more than 66,000 tonnes of commodities, including high-energy biscuits, vegetable oil and fortified grains. Those supplies are valued at over $98 million, according to the document reviewed by Reuters, which was shared by an aid official and verified by a U.S. government source as up to date. That food could feed over a million people for three months, or the entire population of Gaza for a month and a half, according to a Reuters analysis using figures from the World Food Programme, the world's largest humanitarian agency. The U.N. body says that one tonne of food – typically including cereals, pulses and oil – can meet the daily need of approximately 1,660 people. The dismantling of USAID and cuts to humanitarian aid spending by President Donald Trump come as global hunger levels are rising due to conflict and climate change, which are driving more people toward famine, undoing decades of progress. According to the World Food Programme, 343 million people are facing acute levels of food insecurity worldwide. Of those, 1.9 million people are gripped by catastrophic hunger and on the brink of famine. Most of them are in Gaza and Sudan, but also in pockets of South Sudan, Haiti and Mali. A spokesperson for the State Department, which oversees USAID, said in response to detailed questions about the food stocks that it was working to ensure the uninterrupted continuation of aid programs and their transfer by July as part of the USAID decommissioning process. 'USAID is continuously consulting with partners on where to best distribute commodities at USAID prepositioning warehouses for use in emergency programs ahead of their expiration dates,' the spokesperson said. Some food likely to be destroyed Although the Trump administration has issued waivers for some humanitarian programmes – including in Gaza and Sudan – the cancellation of contracts and freezing of funds needed to pay suppliers, shippers and contractors has left food stocks stuck in the four warehouses, the sources said. A proposal to hand the stocks to aid organizations that can distribute them is on hold, according to the U.S. source and two former USAID sources briefed on the proposal. The plan is awaiting approval from the State Department's Office of Foreign Assistance, the two former USAID sources said. The office is headed by Jeremy Lewin, a 28-year-old former operative of Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, who is now overseeing the decommissioning of USAID. The Office of Foreign Assistance, DOGE and Lewin himself did not respond to requests for comment. Nearly 500 tonnes of high-energy biscuits stored at a USAID warehouse in Dubai are due to expire in July, according to a former USAID official and an aid official familiar with the inventories. The biscuits could feed at least 27,000 acutely malnourished children for a month, according to Reuters calculations. The biscuits are now likely to be destroyed or turned into animal feed, the former USAID official said, adding that in a typical year only around 20 tonnes of food might be disposed of in this way because of damage in transit or storage. Some of those stocks were previously intended for Gaza and famine-stricken Sudan, the former official said. The State Department spokesperson did not directly respond to questions on how much of the food aid in storage was close to expiry and whether this would be destroyed. USAID plans to fire almost all of its staff in two rounds on July 1 and Sept. 2, as it prepares to shut down, according to a notification submitted to Congress in March. The two former USAID sources said many of the critical staff needed to manage the warehouses or move the supplies will depart in July. Children dying The United States is the world's largest humanitarian aid donor, amounting to at least 38% of all contributions recorded by the United Nations. It disbursed $61 billion in foreign assistance last year, just over half of it via USAID, according to government data. U.S. food aid includes ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF) such as high-energy biscuits and Plumpy'Nut, a peanut-based paste. Navyn Salem, the founder of Edesia, a U.S.-based manufacturer of Plumpy'Nut, said termination of transportation contracts by USAID had created a massive backlog that had forced the firm to hire an additional warehouse to store its own production. The resulting stockpile of 5,000 tonnes, worth $13 million, could feed more than 484,000 children, she said. Salem said that email exchanges with Lewin have left her 'hopeful' that a way will be found soon to get her product to the desperate children who need it. The UN children's agency UNICEF warned in late March that RUTF stocks were running short in 17 countries due to funding cuts, potentially forcing 2.4 million children suffering from severe acute malnutrition to go without these crucial supplies for the rest of the year. The four USAID warehouses contain the majority of the agency's pre-positioned food stockpiles. In normal times, these could be rapidly deployed to places like Sudan, where 25 million people – half the country's population – face acute hunger. Jeanette Bailey, director of nutrition at the International Rescue Committee, which receives much of its funding from the U.S., said it was scaling back its programmes following the cuts. She said the impact of global shortages of therapeutic foods due to the disruption to U.S. aid flows is difficult to measure, particularly in places where aid programmes no longer operate. 'What we do know, though, is that if a child's in an inpatient stabilization centre and they're no longer able to access treatment, more than 60% of those children are at risk of dying very quickly,' she said. Action Against Hunger, a non-profit that relied on the United States for over 30% of its global budget, said last month the U.S. cuts had already led to the deaths of at least six children at its programmes in the Democratic Republic of Congo, after it was forced to suspend admissions. Cuts causing chaos The Bureau for Humanitarian Affairs, which coordinates the U.S. government's aid efforts overseas, was plunged into chaos by the Trump administration's cutbacks, the five sources said. The bureau's staff were among thousands of USAID employees put on administrative leave pending their terminations. While some staff were brought back to work until their severence dates, aid administration has not recovered. Three sources told Reuters that the contract to maintain USAID warehouses in the South African port city of Durban had been cancelled, raising questions about future aid distribution. Reuters was unable to confirm that independently. Two former USAID officials said that the Djibouti and Dubai facilities would be handed over to a team at the State Department which has yet to be formed. The State Department did not comment. A spokesperson for the WFP, which relies heavily on U.S. funding, declined to comment on the stranded food stocks. Asked if it was engaged in discussions to release them, the spokesperson said: 'We greatly appreciate the support from all our donors, including the U.S., and we will continue to work with partners to advocate for the needs of the most vulnerable in urgent need of life-saving assistance'.
Globe and Mail
16-05-2025
- Health
- Globe and Mail
U.S. aid cuts leave food rations for millions mouldering in storage around the world, sources say
Food rations that could supply 3.5 million people for a month are mouldering in warehouses around the world because of U.S. aid cuts and risk becoming unusable, according to five people familiar with the situation. The food stocks have been stuck inside four U.S. government warehouses since the Trump administration's decision in January to cut global aid programs, according to three people who previously worked at the U.S. Agency for International Development and two sources from other aid organizations. Some stocks that are due to expire as early as July are likely to be destroyed, either by incineration, using them as animal feed or disposing of them in other ways, two of the sources said. The warehouses, which are run by USAID's Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA), contain between 60,000 to 66,000 metric tonnes of food, sourced from American farmers and manufacturers, the five people said. An undated inventory list for the warehouses – which are located in Djibouti, South Africa, Dubai and Houston – stated that they contained more than 66,000 tonnes of commodities, including high-energy biscuits, vegetable oil and fortified grains. Those supplies are valued at over $98-million, according to the document reviewed by Reuters, which was shared by an aid official and verified by a U.S. government source as up to date. That food could feed over a million people for three months, or the entire population of Gaza for a month and a half, according to a Reuters analysis using figures from the World Food Programme, the world's largest humanitarian agency. The UN body says that one tonne of food – typically including cereals, pulses and oil – can meet the daily need of approximately 1,660 people. The dismantling of USAID and cuts to humanitarian aid spending by President Donald Trump come as global hunger levels are rising due to conflict and climate change, which are driving more people toward famine, undoing decades of progress. According to the World Food Programme, 343 million people are facing acute levels of food insecurity worldwide. Of those, 1.9 million people are gripped by catastrophic hunger and on the brink of famine. Most of them are in Gaza and Sudan, but also in pockets of South Sudan, Haiti and Mali. A spokesperson for the State Department, which oversees USAID, said in response to detailed questions about the food stocks that it was working to ensure the uninterrupted continuation of aid programs and their transfer by July as part of the USAID decommissioning process. 'USAID is continuously consulting with partners on where to best distribute commodities at USAID prepositioning warehouses for use in emergency programs ahead of their expiration dates,' the spokesperson said. Although the Trump administration has issued waivers for some humanitarian programmes – including in Gaza and Sudan – the cancellation of contracts and freezing of funds needed to pay suppliers, shippers and contractors has left food stocks stuck in the four warehouses, the sources said. A proposal to hand the stocks to aid organizations that can distribute them is on hold, according to the U.S. source and two former USAID sources briefed on the proposal. The plan is awaiting approval from the State Department's Office of Foreign Assistance, the two former USAID sources said. The office is headed by Jeremy Lewin, a 28-year-old former operative of Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, who is now overseeing the decommissioning of USAID. The Office of Foreign Assistance, DOGE and Lewin himself did not respond to requests for comment. Nearly 500 tonnes of high-energy biscuits stored at a USAID warehouse in Dubai are due to expire in July, according to a former USAID official and an aid official familiar with the inventories. The biscuits could feed at least 27,000 acutely malnourished children for a month, according to Reuters calculations. The biscuits are now likely to be destroyed or turned into animal feed, the former USAID official said, adding that in a typical year only around 20 tonnes of food might be disposed of in this way because of damage in transit or storage. Some of those stocks were previously intended for Gaza and famine-stricken Sudan, the former official said. The State Department spokesperson did not directly respond to questions on how much of the food aid in storage was close to expiry and whether this would be destroyed. USAID plans to fire almost all of its staff in two rounds on July 1 and Sept. 2, as it prepares to shut down, according to a notification submitted to Congress in March. The two former USAID sources said many of the critical staff needed to manage the warehouses or move the supplies will depart in July. The United States is the world's largest humanitarian aid donor, amounting to at least 38 per cent of all contributions recorded by the United Nations. It disbursed $61-billion in foreign assistance last year, just over half of it via USAID, according to government data. U.S. food aid includes ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF) such as high-energy biscuits and Plumpy'Nut, a peanut-based paste. Navyn Salem, the founder of Edesia, a U.S.-based manufacturer of Plumpy'Nut, said termination of transportation contracts by USAID had created a massive backlog that had forced the firm to hire an additional warehouse to store its own production. The resulting stockpile of 5,000 tonnes, worth $13-million, could feed more than 484,000 children, she said. Salem said that e-mail exchanges with Lewin have left her 'hopeful' that a way will be found soon to get her product to the desperate children who need it. The UN children's agency UNICEF warned in late March that RUTF stocks were running short in 17 countries due to funding cuts, potentially forcing 2.4 million children suffering from severe acute malnutrition to go without these crucial supplies for the rest of the year. The four USAID warehouses contain the majority of the agency's pre-positioned food stockpiles. In normal times, these could be rapidly deployed to places like Sudan, where 25 million people – half the country's population – face acute hunger. Jeanette Bailey, director of nutrition at the International Rescue Committee, which receives much of its funding from the U.S., said it was scaling back its programmes following the cuts. She said the impact of global shortages of therapeutic foods due to the disruption to U.S. aid flows is difficult to measure, particularly in places where aid programmes no longer operate. 'What we do know, though, is that if a child's in an inpatient stabilization centre and they're no longer able to access treatment, more than 60 per cent of those children are at risk of dying very quickly,' she said. Action Against Hunger, a non-profit that relied on the United States for over 30 per cent of its global budget, said last month the U.S. cuts had already led to the deaths of at least six children at its programmes in the Democratic Republic of Congo, after it was forced to suspend admissions. The Bureau for Humanitarian Affairs, which co-ordinates the U.S. government's aid efforts overseas, was plunged into chaos by the Trump administration's cutbacks, the five sources said. The bureau's staff were among thousands of USAID employees put on administrative leave pending their terminations. While some staff were brought back to work until their severance dates, aid administration has not recovered. Three sources told Reuters that the contract to maintain USAID warehouses in the South African port city of Durban had been cancelled, raising questions about future aid distribution. Reuters was unable to confirm that independently. Two former USAID officials said that the Djibouti and Dubai facilities would be handed over to a team at the State Department which has yet to be formed. The State Department did not comment. A spokesperson for the WFP, which relies heavily on U.S. funding, declined to comment on the stranded food stocks. Asked if it was engaged in discussions to release them, the spokesperson said: 'We greatly appreciate the support from all our donors, including the U.S., and we will continue to work with partners to advocate for the needs of the most vulnerable in urgent need of life-saving assistance'.
CNA
16-05-2025
- Business
- CNA
US aid cuts leave food for millions mouldering in storage
Food rations that could supply 3.5 million people for a month are mouldering in warehouses around the world because of US aid cuts and risk becoming unusable, according to five people familiar with the situation. The food stocks have been stuck inside four US government warehouses since the Trump administration's decision in January to cut global aid programmes, according to three people who previously worked at the US Agency for International Development and two sources from other aid organisations. Some stocks that are due to expire as early as July are likely to be destroyed, either by incineration, using them as animal feed or disposing of them in other ways, two of the sources said. The warehouses, which are run by USAID's Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA), contain between 60,000 to 66,000 metric tonnes of food, sourced from American farmers and manufacturers, the five people said. An undated inventory list for the warehouses - which are located in Djibouti, South Africa, Dubai and Houston - stated that they contained more than 66,000 tonnes of commodities, including high-energy biscuits, vegetable oil and fortified grains. Those supplies are valued at over US$98 million, according to the document reviewed by Reuters, which was shared by an aid official and verified by a US government source as up to date. That food could feed over a million people for three months, or the entire population of Gaza for a month and a half, according to a Reuters analysis using figures from the World Food Programme, the world's largest humanitarian agency. The UN body says that one tonne of food - typically including cereals, pulses and oil - can meet the daily need of approximately 1,660 people. The dismantling of USAID and cuts to humanitarian aid spending by President Donald Trump come as global hunger levels are rising due to conflict and climate change, which are driving more people toward famine, undoing decades of progress. According to the World Food Programme, 343 million people are facing acute levels of food insecurity worldwide. Of those, 1.9 million people are gripped by catastrophic hunger and on the brink of famine. Most of them are in Gaza and Sudan, but also in pockets of South Sudan, Haiti and Mali. A spokesperson for the State Department, which oversees USAID, said in response to detailed questions about the food stocks that it was working to ensure the uninterrupted continuation of aid programs and their transfer by July as part of the USAID decommissioning process. "USAID is continuously consulting with partners on where to best distribute commodities at USAID prepositioning warehouses for use in emergency programs ahead of their expiration dates," the spokesperson said. SOME FOOD LIKELY TO BE DESTROYED Although the Trump administration has issued waivers for some humanitarian programmes - including in Gaza and Sudan - the cancellation of contracts and freezing of funds needed to pay suppliers, shippers and contractors has left food stocks stuck in the four warehouses, the sources said. A proposal to hand the stocks to aid organisations that can distribute them is on hold, according to the US source and two former USAID sources briefed on the proposal. The plan is awaiting approval from the State Department's Office of Foreign Assistance, the two former USAID sources said. The office is headed by Jeremy Lewin, a 28-year-old former operative of Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, who is now overseeing the decommissioning of USAID. The Office of Foreign Assistance, DOGE and Lewin himself did not respond to requests for comment. Nearly 500 tonnes of high-energy biscuits stored at a USAID warehouse in Dubai are due to expire in July, according to a former USAID official and an aid official familiar with the inventories. The biscuits could feed at least 27,000 acutely malnourished children for a month, according to Reuters calculations. The biscuits are now likely to be destroyed or turned into animal feed, the former USAID official said, adding that in a typical year only around 20 tonnes of food might be disposed of in this way because of damage in transit or storage. Some of those stocks were previously intended for Gaza and famine-stricken Sudan, the former official said. The State Department spokesperson did not directly respond to questions on how much of the food aid in storage was close to expiry and whether this would be destroyed. USAID plans to fire almost all of its staff in two rounds on Jul 1 and Sep 2, as it prepares to shut down, according to a notification submitted to Congress in March. The two former USAID sources said many of the critical staff needed to manage the warehouses or move the supplies will depart in July. CHILDREN DYING The United States is the world's largest humanitarian aid donor, amounting to at least 38 per cent of all contributions recorded by the United Nations. It disbursed US$61 billion in foreign assistance last year, just over half of it via USAID, according to government data. US food aid includes ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF) such as high-energy biscuits and Plumpy'Nut, a peanut-based paste. Navyn Salem, the founder of Edesia, a US-based manufacturer of Plumpy'Nut, said termination of transportation contracts by USAID had created a massive backlog that had forced the firm to hire an additional warehouse to store its own production. The resulting stockpile of 5,000 tonnes, worth US$13 million, could feed more than 484,000 children, she said. Salem said that email exchanges with Lewin have left her "hopeful" that a way will be found soon to get her product to the desperate children who need it. The UN children's agency UNICEF warned in late March that RUTF stocks were running short in 17 countries due to funding cuts, potentially forcing 2.4 million children suffering from severe acute malnutrition to go without these crucial supplies for the rest of the year. The four USAID warehouses contain the majority of the agency's pre-positioned food stockpiles. In normal times, these could be rapidly deployed to places like Sudan, where 25 million people - half the country's population - face acute hunger. Jeanette Bailey, director of nutrition at the International Rescue Committee, which receives much of its funding from the US, said it was scaling back its programmes following the cuts. She said the impact of global shortages of therapeutic foods due to the disruption to US aid flows is difficult to measure, particularly in places where aid programmes no longer operate. "What we do know, though, is that if a child's in an inpatient stabilisation centre and they're no longer able to access treatment, more than 60 per cent of those children are at risk of dying very quickly," she said. Action Against Hunger, a non-profit that relied on the United States for over 30 per cent of its global budget, said last month the US cuts had already led to the deaths of at least six children at its programmes in the Democratic Republic of Congo, after it was forced to suspend admissions. CUTS CAUSING CHAOS The Bureau for Humanitarian Affairs, which coordinates the US government's aid efforts overseas, was plunged into chaos by the Trump administration's cutbacks, the five sources said. The bureau's staff were among thousands of USAID employees put on administrative leave pending their terminations. While some staff were brought back to work until their severence dates, aid administration has not recovered. Three sources told Reuters that the contract to maintain USAID warehouses in the South African port city of Durban had been cancelled, raising questions about future aid distribution. Reuters was unable to confirm that independently. Two former USAID officials said that the Djibouti and Dubai facilities would be handed over to a team at the State Department which has yet to be formed. The State Department did not comment. A spokesperson for the WFP, which relies heavily on US funding, declined to comment on the stranded food stocks.
