A 'death sentence for millions' as US cuts more aid

On Friday night, Peter Marocco — the director of the State Department’s Office of Foreign Assistance — sent a message to his team. “I’m fielding [White House] calls on whether we’ve complied yet with the President’s order to stop all payments to Afghanistan,” Marocco wrote in an email, which was later obtained by Devex. He then listed a series of questions relating to awards in that country, asking his team to confirm whether they had “stopped all payments of any kind” that go toward Afghanistan. Marocco also said that if there was any money obligated to the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, “we’d want to claw the entire amount (or more) back from any future payments to the UN if confirmed.” Within hours, the terminations began coming through — and by the end of the weekend, 42 programs were killed, including those that were previously slated to survive the final round of USAID cuts. That’s according to a document shared with Devex by staff in the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, which compiled terminations worth $1.3 billion across the world. That included awards not just in Afghanistan, but in Gaza, Yemen, Haiti, and beyond. The termination letters were laden with the same boilerplate reasoning as months past: “for the convenience of the U.S. government.” And while programs in Afghanistan were cut due to White House directives, most USAID staff were unclear as to why other countries — or frankly, even that nation — were singled out. “As we all continue to look for rationale or logic from this Administration for why exempted humanitarian awards are terminated despite having passed the [foreign assistance] review or going through the [Office of Management and Budget] review process, it’s clear there is none,” said one staffer at USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance. The latest round of cuts came as a shock to the aid sector, as the Trump administration had previously flagged many to Congress as programs that would remain active even as more than 80% of USAID awards were terminated. These latest cuts also included emergency food assistance, which the Trump administration had largely preserved despite its widespread slashing of foreign aid programs. The World Food Programme alone saw cancellations across 14 countries totaling $804.4 million — though USAID leadership tried to rescind six of those terminations soon after, according to an internal email sent on Monday morning. “If implemented this could amount to a death sentence for millions of people facing extreme hunger and starvation,” wrote the World Food Programme, posting on the social media platform X on Monday afternoon. The document doesn’t seem to be perfect: Devex has heard of one program cut over the weekend that didn’t make it into the latest termination list, for example. But as the State Department — which now oversees USAID — did not respond to a request for comment on this story, the full list of programs slashed in recent days is still unknown. The latest round of cuts It seemed to be an “attack on countries,” an employee at a United Nations agency told Devex, with all those working in the same crisis-affected nations receiving cancellations at the same time. While Afghanistan, Syria and Yemen were the hardest hit, the terminations also affected programs in Gaza, Haiti, Jordan, Lebanon, Niger, Palau, Papua New Guinea, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and Somalia, according to the document. In Afghanistan, there were eight terminations, including a $71 million program run by the International Rescue Committee — which has now been canceled, un-canceled, and re-canceled — one that was providing emergency food assistance to 2.5 million people. That also included a new $24 million grant from the United Nations Population Fund, or UNFPA, to fight gender-based violence, provide psychosocial support, and other health services across the country. It was slated to begin in August. “Stopping resettlement back in January was cruel enough, given that so many of those folks had to risk their lives to help us,” said another former USAID staffer, referring to an executive order that halted refugee admissions — including for Afghans — that month. “But this is pretty jaw dropping.” Syria was also heavily impacted by the cuts: eight programs are listed in the document shared by USAID staff, including a $17.1 million UNFPA grant for programming that was slated to run from October of 2024 to September of 2026. It provided sexual and reproductive health services and worked to fight against gender-based violence in Syria, and the organization had already received $10.1 million of that grant. The fourth round of a Humanity & Inclusion program was also shuttered in Syria, one that provided wheelchairs, walkers, and prosthetics to those who lost their limbs during the country’s civil war. From October of 2023 to September of 2024 alone, the organization had reached more than 100,000 people, but over the weekend, they were forced to close their doors. “I almost mentally can’t go to the place of thinking about all of the people who may have been fitted for a prosthetic, came to get those services on Sunday morning or on Monday morning, and come find out that we’ve had to terminate everything,” said Hannah Guedenet, the executive director of Humanity & Inclusion U.S. Guedenet added that the program — which had served more than 100,000 people before January 2025 — had first been terminated in late February. That cancellation was rescinded in early March, but the organization didn’t receive approval to proceed with programming until the end of the month. Humanity & Inclusion was still owed $1.4 million for work done through that project before Trump returned to office, despite a federal court mandating the administration pay its partners for those costs. Despite that, the organization rehired staff and began to resume activities — and exactly two weeks later, the program was terminated once again. “This award is listed as active in the list that was sent to Congress, so we felt confident it was going to continue,” said Guedenet, referring to a 281-page document that compiled all of USAID’s canceled and active awards for Capitol Hill late last month. “The information given to Congress is now not the information that’s actually true.” The same could be said for UNFPA, which on Friday was informed that its two grants in Syria and Afghanistan — which had previously been terminated and then were reinstated on March 4th — were now canceled again. Two U.S.-funded programs in Gaza were also terminated, which included a $275,000 United Nations Office for Project Services, or UNOPS, program to move aid across the border, as well as a $12 million program, implemented by a nongovernmental organization, to provide clean drinking water and medical care — supporting Gaza’s decimated health systems. And in Yemen, nine cancellations are listed in the document, including a program that had already been completed at the end of February: an $8.4 million project coordinated by FHI 360. For years, that program had helped women go door to door to treat children suffering from severe malnutrition — and though the program listed on both the congressional document and USAID list was already finished, a continuation was meant to start days after the earlier round ended. ‘Sorry for all the back and forth’ Aid organizations have been reeling from the cuts since Friday. But less than three days later, Jeremy Lewin — a member of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, who is also USAID’s new deputy administrator for policy and programs — seemed to have uncovered an error. Before noon on Monday, Lewin wrote an email to senior staff, asking if they could rescind terminations for six of the WFP awards that were purportedly canceled in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Somalia, Syria, and Ecuador, all of which are slated to end this year or next. “Sorry for all the back and forth on awards,” Lewin wrote in his email, which was later obtained by Devex. “There are a lot of stakeholders involved and we need to do better about balancing these competing interests — that is my fault and I take responsibility.” Lewin, who has played an instrumental role in dissolving USAID, then added a caveat. “I will try to keep you posted if there are other terminations to be taken or rescinded in the coming days,” he told a set of senior staff, including the director of USAID’s Office of Acquisitions and Assistance, Jami Rodgers; and newly appointed deputy administrator for management and resources, Kenneth Jackson. The back-and-forth has left USAID’s implementing partners on shaky ground, with many unclear on the finality of this latest set of terminations. Will their awards be canceled and then reinstated — many of them for the second or third time? Or is this the final round of slashes to USAID? “Some of these terminated awards were then turned back on this morning, some having already been terminated multiple times with zero explanation other than the email from Jeremy,” said another USAID staffer, speaking to Devex over Signal on Tuesday. Ayenat Mersie contributed reporting.