USAID freeze: how does it affect world?

Trump administration's freeze on USAID funds has shocked the world of aid. Shutting down of USAID, which last year covered 47 per cent of all humanitarian aid that flowed to the regions of the world in need of food, health and disaster relief, is no doubt bad news for the organisations carrying out relief programmes. Other types of aid geared to strengthen democratic institutions, addressing issues related to human rights, gender equality etc., in the developing countries will also come under the purview Trump administration's agenda of federal spending cuts. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) headed by Elon Musk is doing the job. Already, such programmes have got the DOGE axe in Bangladesh and other South Asian countries. The USAID fund for the project titled 'Strengthening Political Landscape in Bangladesh (SPL)'worth USD20.9 million has been cancelled. A DOGE notice in an X-post informed Bangladesh of the action last Saturday. Funding for similar projects in India and Nepal has also been stopped. In all these cases of cessation of project funding, it is the organisations distributing the aid and their international and local staff who will be affected immediately rather than the end users of the funds. USAID's own staff of around 10,000 working across the world will lose their jobs. What is most unfortunate is that the employees losing their jobs have been denied the time to get prepared to look for new jobs. But when it comes to the issue of recipients of the aid on the ground, especially in the case of manmade disasters, it is a different story.

So far as the recipients of the aid, especially the victims of civil strife or war between countries are concerned, relief is but a temporary arrangement. It gives relief to the affected population of a country or a region or those who flee their homeland and become refugees in other countries for the time being. For if the conflicts that cause such human misery are prolonged in a particular area, then the aid providers gradually reduce the flow of fund for the victims of that particular area, since they have also to look after the victims of social conflicts and wars erupting in other parts of the world! Poverty, for the alleviation of which aid funds from big powers are usually channelled through multilateral agencies like the World Bank, relevant UN bodies etc., is also in the ultimate analysis the result of exploitation of post-colonial countries by the powerful and rich nations. The sad part of the story is that the aid hardly ever reaches the victims of war or social conflicts or natural disasters. A lion's share of the aid money goes to meet programme costs, while another chunk of the aid fund goes to line the pockets of corrupt bureaucrats and politicians of the recipient countries. And it is not that the aid givers do not know that. In fact, it is an accepted part of the aid regime and is meant to keep the aid giving nations' cronies in the recipient countries' governments happy. From that point of view, it cannot be said that the suspension of the USAID is a big disaster for the end users of aid funds across the globe.

However, aid being part of the soft power that the US and other rich nations use to influence the politics of developing and less developed countries, its (USAID's) closure will significantly reduce that role (of US) in some 130 aid-recipient countries. Evidently, the US's departure will leave a big void in the global landscape of aid. And since nature abhors void, other financial powers including the European Union (EU) or even non-conventional sources like China might step in to fill the void.

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