President Donald Trump takes aim at foreign aid and the United Nations, famine concerns mount in four countries, and Syria’s war is six years old. This week in development.
President Trump illustrated his policy priorities Thursday with a budget request that strips funding from the State Department, U.S. Agency for International Development, climate change programs, and international organizations and redirects it to the military. If enacted in its entirety — which is seen as highly unlikely — Trump’s spending plan would see U.S. foreign affairs funding slashed by 28 percent overall, with a handful of U.S. development agencies eliminated and U.S. contributions to the United Nations reduced. The so-called “skinny budget” is merely a starting point in budget negotiations that will continue for two months, with the U.S. congress, not the White House, ultimately holding the purse strings on budget appropriations. Trump’s proposal — which reflects views put forward in the past by conservative groups such as the Heritage Foundation, but contradicts the advice of his own military leadership — met an immediate volley of resistance, both from global development organizations dependent on government support to carry out their missions and from U.S. lawmakers in both political parties.
Six years ago, peaceful protests erupted in Syria after 15 boys were arrested and tortured for showing their support for the Arab Spring uprisings in graffiti. Since then, an estimated 400,000 people have died in a conflict that has seen international norms brushed aside and provoked the worst refugee crisis since World War II. This week, doctors who have been battling to treat patients on the front lines of the conflict told lawmakers in Washington, D.C., what it has been like for them to operate in hospitals that have become the preferred air strike targets of Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Along with humanitarian leaders, they pressed U.S. senators to support U.N. humanitarian system reform, to prosecute war crimes, and to sustain U.S. and international support for lifesaving aid to the Syrian people.
About the author
Michael Igoe@AlterIgoe
Michael Igoe is a Senior Reporter with Devex, based in Washington, D.C. He covers U.S. foreign aid, global health, climate change, and development finance. Prior to joining Devex, Michael researched water management and climate change adaptation in post-Soviet Central Asia, where he also wrote for EurasiaNet. Michael earned his bachelor's degree from Bowdoin College, where he majored in Russian, and his master’s degree from the University of Montana, where he studied international conservation and development.
