The global humanitarian community is in turmoil following US President Donald Trump’s sweeping freeze on foreign assistance, a move that has abruptly halted critical health and security programs, leaving millions vulnerable across Africa, Haiti, and beyond.
Nowhere is the impact more stark than in Africa, where USAID’s 90-day suspension of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) has thrown HIV treatment programs into disarray. The initiative, which supports over 20 million HIV patients and funds 270,000 health workers, has been forced to stop life-saving treatments.
According to an analysis by the Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR), the suspension will likely result in 135,987 babies acquiring HIV due to the sudden disruption in services for pregnant women living with the virus.
Frontline workers report that clinics have already shut down, and research projects have been abandoned midstream. Aghan Daniel, head of a USAID-funded Kenyan health journalism team, confirmed that programs testing experimental HIV drugs like lenacapavir have ceased, leaving study participants at serious risk.
“The people who were the study candidates are going to have adverse health results because the study has just stopped all of a sudden,” Daniel said, noting that his own team of six science journalists had lost their jobs. “A lot of people are going to die because of lack of knowledge.”
The consequences extend beyond HIV programs. A Kenyan USAID staffer described the freeze as a “bombshell” that has left workers in a state of “panic.”
“We will have more people succumbing to diseases like tuberculosis and cholera,” the staffer warned. Some organizations have already been forced to place employees on unpaid leave, while others are unable to pay rent or maintain operations.
At a USAID office in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, AFP reporters witnessed workers clearing out their desks. The uncertainty surrounding what constitutes “life-saving” aid—especially in nutrition and vaccination programs—has compounded the crisis.
“Stopping some of these programs even for a few days could make the difference between life and death,” said an aid worker from an NGO working in conflict zones.
Trump’s aid freeze is also hitting security efforts in Haiti, where Washington has suspended $13.3 million in pledged contributions to the United Nations fund supporting a multinational security mission.
The force, led by Kenya and backed by the UN, was meant to help Haiti’s government combat powerful criminal gangs controlling much of the capital, Port-au-Prince. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that without urgent financial support, the country’s security institutions could collapse entirely.
Haiti’s Foreign Minister Jean-Victor Harvel Jean-Baptiste echoed these concerns, describing the funding halt as a blow to both the nation’s stability and the survival of the state itself.
Despite the humanitarian fallout, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who now oversees USAID, has brushed aside concerns, claiming that organizations struggling to navigate the freeze may be “deliberately trying to score political points.”
“I would say if some organization is receiving funds from the United States and does not know how to apply a waiver, then I have real questions about the competence of that organization,” Rubio said during a press conference in Costa Rica.
The Trump administration insists that “immediate” and “life-saving” aid will continue. However, aid groups report widespread confusion about which programs qualify for exemptions, leaving critical initiatives — including demining efforts in Cambodia and universal education programs in Uganda — in limbo.
The crisis within USAID itself is escalating, with the agency announcing that it will place all global staff on administrative leave starting 7 February. Only a select few overseeing “mission-critical functions” will remain in place.
The move follows billionaire Elon Musk’s aggressive push to dismantle the agency, which he has described as a “viper’s nest of radical-left Marxists” and accused — without evidence — of engaging in rogue intelligence operations. Musk, a key Trump ally, has personally endorsed the shutdown, claiming USAID funds were used for bioweapon research, including COVID-19, an allegation experts dismiss as baseless.
The United Nations has also sounded the alarm over the funding freeze, warning that the abrupt withdrawal of US aid has created widespread uncertainty. The US accounted for nearly half of the UN’s global humanitarian appeal last year, making the cuts especially destabilizing.
“In Afghanistan, over nine million people will lose access to health and protection services,” said Pio Smith, UNFPA’s Asia-Pacific director. The agency projects that the absence of US support between 2025 and 2028 will lead to an additional 1,200 maternal deaths and 109,000 unintended pregnancies.
As the world scrambles to adjust, humanitarian workers and government officials alike are left grappling with an unfolding crisis that, many warn, was entirely avoidable.
(Sources: Dan Lawler, Eric Randolph, with contributions from Dylan Gamba and Shaun Tandon, AFP)