The cuts that bleed: What happens when peace programs go dark

It was around 8 p.m. on a June evening when Haycenth Leva got the call. On the other end of the line, someone was crying. And immediately, Leva — a program officer at the peacebuilding organization Search for Common Ground — knew that what he had been bracing for had come to pass. “He said, ‘We are under attack,’” recalled Leva, who spoke to Devex from his home in Makurdi, Nigeria. “‘They are killing people.’” By night’s end, roughly 200 people would lose their lives in Yelwata, a region in Nigeria’s Middle Belt where Muslim herders and Christian farmers have long clashed over land. Hundreds were burned alive in their homes. Market stalls were torched to ashes. And nearly 4,000 people fled — with security forces only arriving long after the attackers had left. For Leva, it wasn’t just the loss of life that hurt. It was the fact that for years, Search for Common Ground had been operating a program to deter these types of attacks — and by the end of 2025, its violence prevention platform was set to be transferred to the state government. But in January, Search’s program was one of thousands terminated as the U.S. Agency for International Development collapsed — leaving communities without the early warning system that might have stopped the massacre in its tracks. “If this project was still on, [early warning] signs would have been sent to the relevant agencies for necessary action,” said Leva, speaking to Devex four months after the massacre. “Action would have been taken before the attack to prevent the attack.” What happened in Yelwata was a tragedy, but not an isolated one. Months after USAID’s closure, communities once buoyed by U.S.-funded projects are still feeling the void — in rising tensions, dwindling services, and a growing sense of abandonment. “The fact is, we had an early warning system in place,” said Bryan Weiner, a West Africa regional program manager at Search for Common Ground. “But now, we’re operating blind.” The U.S. Department of State did not respond to a request for comment on this story. Left in the dark Search for Common Ground began operating its program in Yelwata in 2021. Nigerian research firm Nextier reported that between 2020 and 2024, there had been nearly 2,350 deaths as a result of farmer-herder conflict, with the vast majority of those incidents occurring in northern regions of the country, including Benue State. Through a grant from the U.S. Department of State, Search for Common Ground trained community members to watch for warning signs of violence and report them to a newly established platform that would trigger a preventive response. That might mean installing police officers in an area that had seen an uptick in violence, or holding a mediation with influential community members — such as religious leaders or local political officials — if tensions between herder and farmer communities seemed to escalate. Staff from Search for Common Ground were also stationed in target communities to interpret early warning signs and ensure the right players were involved in the response, explained Gift Omoniwa, Search for Common Ground’s Nigeria country director. “Prior to every attack, there’s always an early warning sign,” Omoniwa added. “And if this is addressed early enough, usually it would not escalate.” That’s not to say the program prevented all the region’s attacks. In December, the last month that Search for Common Ground was operational in Benue State, the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, or ACLED, ranked Nigeria as the sixth deadliest country for civilians in the world, a rating driven by violence in the Middle Belt. But still, the problem was easing. Nextier reported that violent incidents between farmers and herders dropped from 102 in 2022 to 61 in 2024, while casualties dropped from 619 to 467 in the same time period, according to the firm’s latest countrywide report. By September of this year, Search for Common Ground was planning to transition its platform to the state government, which had already offered up an office space. The organization was set to train more early warning observers across several target communities, and procure the systems, training, and other resources — worth about $130,000 — to ensure state officials were ready to take over. “It’s hard to say this [attack] would have not happened if the project had been there,” said Weiner. “But we would have had a lot more resources to be able to help them escalate this information, call together some emergency meetings, and support the response to prevent this from happening.” That’s not to say people in Yelwata didn’t try. For several days before the attack — which occurred in June of this year — community members trained in identifying early warning signs reported incidents to Search’s platform, Omoniwa said. But at that point, five months had passed since the program’s cancellation, and most staff had been laid off or reassigned to other projects. Reverend Justine Tsukwa, chair of Search for Common Ground’s community-security dialogue in the area, described how, when the program was operational, monthly meetings had brought community leaders and security forces together. But by June, he added, trust between the community members and the local security forces had faltered — and despite rumors swirling about an attack days before the massacre actually occurred, local security forces “didn’t take [the rumors] seriously.” “The smooth relationship we’d had with the security agencies [before] was no longer there,” Tsukwa said. Brokering a deal for peace When it comes to violence prevention, Search for Common Ground is hardly the only organization feeling a crunch. The United Nations’ peacekeeping operations have been hamstrung by budget shortfalls, in large part due to delayed or nonpayments by the United States. In a recent letter sent to U.N. staff, Secretary-General António Guterres said that the U.N. was owed more than $2 billion for peacekeeping since the start of the latest budget cycle, which began on July 1, 2025. “The consequences will be painful,” read Guterres’ letter, which was obtained by Devex and dated Oct. 10. The situation has triggered cuts across the U.N. system, with Guterres announcing that up to a quarter of U.N. peacekeepers — approximately 14,000 troops and police — are expected to be laid off due to lack of funds. That’s been aggravated by further constraints in the United States: Earlier this year, for example, Trump’s 2026 budget request suggested zeroing out U.N. peacekeeping funding entirely, and in August, his administration canceled some $800 million in peacekeeping funds appropriated for 2024 and 2025. “UN peacekeeping has been fraught with waste and abuse, as evidenced by the abject failure of the Lebanon peacekeeping mission to contain Hezbollah and the ongoing sexual exploitation and abuse in the Democratic Republic of the Congo,” wrote White House budget chief Russell Vought in the administration’s first rescission request to Congress. But throughout his second term, Trump has positioned himself as a global peacemaker, brokering ceasefire deals between Hamas and Israel; the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda; and, most recently, Thailand and Cambodia. "The Kuala Lumpur Peace Accords have been SIGNED, marking a historic milestone in resolving border tensions between Thailand and Cambodia,” the White House tweeted on Monday, alongside photos of Trump clasping hands with other world leaders. “THE PEACE PRESIDENT.” Trump’s push toward peacekeeping seems to have trickled into foreign aid. Secretary of State Marco Rubio signed off on $400 million for peacekeeping missions in Lebanon and the Democratic Republic of Congo — seemingly going against Vought’s earlier criticism — while the U.S. recently agreed to pay its share of costs for a U.N. gang-suppression force in Haiti. There’s also been some movement on the congressional side, especially as it relates to the Global Fragility Act, or GFA — a peace approach that was signed into law during Trump’s first term. In 2019, the act was passed to link the Departments of State and Defense with USAID, and create joint strategies to prevent violent conflict and address its root causes. In the wake of USAID’s collapse, work on the act was nearly shattered, with the administration slicing away more than $200 million in GFA-aligned funding earlier this year. The State Department also dismantled not just the USAID team that worked on GFA, but the State Department team, too: the Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations. In recent months, both Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill have come to the GFA’s defense. In April, Democratic Rep. Sara Jacobs and Republican Rep. Michael McCaul pushed for legislation to reauthorize GFA in the House; in August, Democratic Sen. Chris Coons and Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham introduced similar legislation in the Senate. Last month, some of that House text was incorporated into a State Department reauthorization package, which passed through the House Foreign Affairs Committee in September. The process is far from over, as the Senate still needs to pass its own version of the legislation, and the government has been at a standstill since a shutdown began Oct. 1. But for Kevin Melton, the co-founder of advisory firm Pax Strategies and former senior staffer at USAID, resurrecting GFA could codify Trump’s war-ending efforts. “We have a president who really wants to talk about peace,” Melton told Devex. “So let’s do that right. Let’s get it so that we’re actually supporting peace in the right way — not just at the executive level … but to figure out a way to get [peace] done and make sure it sticks.” ‘We feel abandoned’ Still, those efforts have yet to translate to places such as Yelwata. Search for Common Ground has five active projects in Nigeria, but none of them are operational in Benue State — and earlier this year, the organization shuttered its office there. But day after day, Tsukwa said that those in the community continue to ask him when Search for Common Ground is returning to Yelwata — especially as a fragile quiet has descended on the community in the wake of June’s attack. “We feel abandoned,” he said. “If they don’t come [back], our hope of being safe is not there.” The Center for Global Development has estimated that the Trump administration’s cull of USAID programs canceled nearly $180 million of activities in Nigeria, amounting to just under a quarter of USAID funds going to the West African country. Across the world, nearly $370 million was cut from programs specifically targeting conflict mitigation and reconciliation, the CGD analysis found, a 99% loss. “There’s been so much focus on humanitarian assistance … that when we start talking about accounts like this one, sometimes there’s an attitude that maybe, these are the cuts that don’t bleed,” said Mike Jobbins, Search for Common Ground’s head of global affairs and partnerships. “And yet, in Nigeria, this is exactly a place where the cuts are bleeding, and where we are seeing the impact.”