Junta soldiers opened fire at a Chinese convoy of passenger vehicles carrying emergency supplies in northern Myanmar, the military chief admitted on Wednesday.
A nine-vehicle convoy with the Red Cross Society of China was travelling with supplies on Tuesday near Shan state’s Nawnghkio township when soldiers shot at them, said the junta spokesperson Zaw Min Tun, as cited by Myanmar’s state-owned media.
The convoy was part of international rescue and aid efforts in response to the devastating 7.7-magnitude earthquake that struck Myanmar on Friday, which has claimed more than 2,800 lives and left 4.600 injured, with figures expected to rise.
“There’s a security group near Ohmati village that was blocking the convoy,” he said. “From a distance of 100 meters, he pointed toward the sky and fired three shots.”
There were no injuries to the passengers or damage to their supplies, the spokesperson said, adding that the soldiers had not been informed about the convoy and that further investigations would be conducted.
The Chinese embassy in Yangon has not responded to Radio Free Asia’s request for comment.
Ming Aung Hlaing’s remarks came after the anti-junta force Ta’ang National Liberation Army, or TNLA, reported the incident, saying that the envoy would be escorted to Mandalay by their soldiers from that point forward.
Separately, TNLA, alongside three other allied groups, including the Arakan Army, declared a unilateral ceasefire to facilitate international humanitarian efforts.
The ceasefire, announced on Tuesday, is set to last for one month, during which the alliance pledged to refrain from offensive operations, engaging only in self-defense if necessary.
Similarly, the exiled civilian National Unity Government, comprised of members of the civilian administration ousted in a 2021 coup, declared a ceasefire shortly after the disaster.
But the junta rejected these proposals, with its chief accusing ethnic armed organizations of using the pause to regroup and conduct military training.
Responding to reports and witness accounts that the military continued operations – including airstrikes – that disrupted rescue efforts, the junta chief claimed they were only targeting “terrorist activities” by armed groups.
“Tatmadaw has not launched any attacks on the camps of ethnic armed groups but has only responded when attacked,” Min Aung Hlaing said, referring to the junta’s military. “The government has continuously kept the door open to meet and discuss with all ethnic armed organizations to make effective peace efforts.”
Translated by Kiana Duncan. Edited by Taejun Kang.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Burmese.
DHAKA, Bangladesh — The United Nations food agency said it managed to avoid drastic food aid cuts to Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh in the face of concerns that their monthly rations would be reduced by more than half.
Earlier this month, the U.N.’s World Food Program, or WFP, said it might be forced to reduce the monthly rations for the over 1 million Rohingya refugees from Myanmar, from US$12.50 per person to $6, beginning in April.
Instead, the ration for Rohingya living in camps in and around Cox’s Bazar is to be set at $12, while the ration for those living in Bhashan Char, an island in the Bay of Bengal, would be adjusted to $13, a WFP official told BenarNews on Thursday.
The Bangladesh government has encouraged Rohingya to relocate to Bhashan Char, in a bid to alleviate overcrowded conditions at the 33 camps in the Cox’ s Bazar region. Since 2021, about 35,000 refugees have relocated to the island, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.
On Thursday, the United States announced it would give millions in fresh funding through the WFP.
“The United States is providing $73 million in new assistance for Rohingya refugees,” U.S. State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said in a post on X. “This food and nutrition support through @WFP will provide critically needed food and nutrition assistance for more than 1 million people.
“It is important that our international partners engage with sharing the burden with life-saving assistance such as this.”
Since 2017, Washington has been the biggest aid donor to the Rohingya refugees, contributing nearly $2.4 billion, according to the State Department.
The administration of interim Bangladesh leader Muhammad Yunus thanked the American government for the influx of funds.
More is needed
The latest plight of the Rohingya came to light two weeks ago when the head of the United Nations appealed to the international community for help after the WFP had announced the planned food rations cuts.
“I can promise that we’ll do everything to avoid it [a humanitarian crisis], and I will be talking to all the countries in the world that can support us in order to make sure that funds are made available,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said during his first trip to the refugee camps in southeastern Bangladesh in nearly seven years.
A WFP official welcomed the news on Friday while warning that more was needed.
“While April ration cuts are averted, given the immense needs, we still need continued funding support or we will soon run out of funds again,” said Kun Li, WFP’s head of communication and advocacy in Asia and the Pacific.
Human rights advocates also expressed concerns about the ongoing plight of the Rohingya, a stateless Muslim minority group, many of whom were forced from their homes in Myanmar’s Rakhine state following the August 2017 crackdown by government forces.
A Rohingya leaves the United Nations World Food Program center in Teknaf, Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, March 14, 2025.(Abdur Rahman/BenarNews)
Last-minute support from donors had prevented “a worst-case scenario,” said Daniel Sullivan, the director for Africa, Asia and the Middle East at Refugees International.
“Renewed donor funds, including $73 million for WFP announced by the United States, will maintain rations at near the same levels,” he said in a statement. “However, broader aid cuts are already negatively affecting refugees and we remain deeply concerned that failure to renew more than minimal aid will lead to increased hunger, disease and avoidable deaths.”
A human rights advocate who lived in a Rohingya camp for six years spoke out about the plight of the refugees.
“I appreciate and thank the United States for stepping in to respond to the food reduction crisis and request other donor countries to continue funding the much-needed lifesaving assistance programs in the camps,” Refugees International Fellow Lucky Karim said in a statement.
“As past smaller cuts have shown, the drastic cut in rations would have accelerated malnutrition, disease, and negative coping mechanisms, including child marriage and human smuggling,” she said.
Back in Cox’s Bazar, a Rohingya expressed relief.
“We were worried, but now relieved,” Mohammad Nur, a leader of the Jadimura camp in the Teknaf sub-district, told BenarNews. “How can a person live with only $6?”
BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated news service.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Kamran Reza Chowdhury for BenarNews.
SYDNEY – Tonga and the Federated States of Micronesia will receive notable increases in Australian foreign aid this year, as analysts say there are indications that Canberra is stepping in to fill a regional void left by a U.S. freeze on development assistance.
Overall, Australia announced A$5.1 billion (US$3.2 billion) for foreign aid in the 2025-26 budget released Tuesday, a 2.7% increase on the previous year, but about flat in real terms.
Pacific island nations were allocated A$2.157 billion, up from A$2.05 billion for the 2024-25 financial year, budget documents show.
The region now accounts for about 42% of Australian aid, almost doubling from a decade ago and making it the Pacific’s biggest donor, partly in response to China’s inroads with Pacific island states.
In a statement Tuesday, Foreign Minister Penny Wong said in “uncertain times” Australian aid was going to the Pacific and Southeast Asia, “where Australia’s interests are most at stake.”
Australian defense force, emergency services personnel and relief supplies onboard an Australian Air Force C-17A Globemaster cargo plane en route Port Vila, Vanuatu, March 16, 2015.(Dave Hunt/Reuters)
In the Pacific, the largest aid increases are directed towards the Federated States of Micronesia and Tonga, the latter of which will receive A$85 million over the next four years to support its economy.
Tonga’s small and fragile economy is under strain amid looming debt repayment obligations to China of about US$120 million, which is roughly a quarter of its gross domestic product, according to a Lowy Institute analysis.
Assistance to Tonga is part of a broader A$296 million package for Pacific island nations to respond to shocks and bolster economic resilience. A total of A$355 million will also be provided over four years for climate resilience projects in Pacific and Southeast Asian countries.
Australia will spend about A$81 million over three years on health in the Pacific and Southeast Asia to continue services for HIV and tuberculosis, maternal and child health, family planning and sexual and reproductive health.
The announcement comes amid widespread fears that U.S. President Donald Trump’s executive order in January to freeze almost all U.S. foreign aid would wind back progress made in containing deadly diseases such as tuberculosis and HIV.
“TB and HIV programs in PNG and Fiji might be affected by the U.S. cuts,” said Cameron Hill, a senior research officer at Australian National University’s Development Policy Center.
“That is an area where I think the government is concentrating some effort and also some civil society programs in the Pacific … which aren’t big in dollar terms, but the U.S. has traditionally played a big role in those,” he said at a panel Wednesday on the budget’s aid component.
The Solomon Islands Red Cross receives an Australian Aid shipment delivered for the Pacific Games in Honiara, Nov. 4, 2023.
(LSIS Jarrod Mulvihill/Australian Defence Force)
Hill said about A$120 million, or about 2.3% of aid spending, had been reprioritized in 2025-26 away from multilateral and global programs.
The “unprecedented divergence between defense and development spending is still growing” and will likely rise to a ratio of about 13:1 by the end of the decade, he said.
Canberra announced last year it will spend an additional A$50.3 billion on defense over the next decade.
Australia’s aid budget has held relatively steady amid a global retreat in foreign development assistance, led by the Trump administration’s dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development. Trump on Jan. 20 ordered a 90-day program-by-program review of which foreign assistance programs deserved to continue.
Robin Davies, an honorary professor at the Development Policy Center, said about 10 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries –including the three largest the U.S., Germany and Britain — have announced significant cuts to foreign aid over the past year.
He estimated that anywhere from a third to a half of existing aid from OECD sources might disappear within the next few years.
“I think the real impact in our region of the U.S. cuts will be through the weakening of multilateral organisations that we really want to remain in places like Suva, Port Moresby or Jakarta,” he said at the panel discussion.
An Australian Army CH-47 Chinook helicopter delivers aid to Futuna Island in Vanuatu, March 21, 2023, following destructive cyclones.(LSIS Daniel Goodman/Australian Department of Defence)
Total American aid spending reached US$3.4 billion in the Pacific between 2008-22, according to the Lowy Institute, with most money directed towards the Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Palau.
The three Pacific Island countries give the U.S. exclusive military authority in their territories in exchange for economic assistance under compacts of free association.
“About 80% of American aid to the Pacific goes to those three countries, and it is still unclear what shape that compact assistance will take in the future,” said Hill.
“The Biden administration signed last year new 20-year compact agreements, but it’s not clear whether the Trump administration will honor those or the new congress will honor those.”
BenarNews is an online news outlet affiliated with Radio Free Asia.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Harry Pearl for BenarNews.
The Trump administration might let hundreds of millions of dollars in aid pledged to Pacific island nations during former President Joe Biden’s time in office stand, says New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters.
The Biden administration pledged about $1 billion in aid to the Pacific to help counter China’s influence in the strategic region.
However, Trump last month froze all disbursements of aid by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), for 90 days pending a “review” of all aid spending under his “America First” policy.
Peters told reporters on Monday after meetings with Trump’s USAID acting head, Peter Marocco, and his national security adviser, Mike Waltz, “more confident” about the prospects of the aid being left alone than he was before.
Peters said he had a “very frank and open discussion” with American officials about how important the aid was for the Pacific, and insisted that they “get our point of view in terms of how essential it is”.
NZ Foreign Minister Winson Peters . . . . “We are looking ahead with more confidence than when we arrived.” Image: TVNZ 1News screenshot RNZ
“In our business, it’s wise to find out the results before you open your mouth, but we are looking ahead with more confidence than when we arrived,” Peters said, pushing back against claims that the Trump administration would be “pulling back” from the Pacific region.
“We don’t know that yet. Let’s find out in April, when that full review is done on USAID,” he said. “But we came away more confident than some of the alarmists might have been before we arrived.”
Frenzied diplomatic battle The Biden administration sought to rapidly expand US engagement with the small island nations of the Pacific after the Solomon Islands signed a controversial security pact with China three years ago.
The deal by the Solomon Islands sparked a frenzied diplomatic battle between Washington and Beijing for influence in the strategic region.
Biden subsequently hosted Pacific island leaders at back-to-back summits in Washington in September 2022 and 2023, the first two of their kind. He pledged hundreds of millions of dollars at both meets, appearing to tilt the region back toward Washington.
The first summit included announcements of some $800 billion in aid for the Pacific, while the second added about $200 billion.
But the region has since been rocked by the Trump administration’s decision to freeze all aid pending its ongoing review. The concerns have not been helped by a claim from Elon Musk, who Trump tasked with cutting government waste, that USAID would be shut down.
“You’ve got to basically get rid of the whole thing. It’s beyond repair. We’re shutting it down,” Musk said in a February 3 livestreamed video.
However, the New Zealand foreign minister, who also met with Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday, said he held out hope that Washington would not turn back on its fight for influence in the Pacific.
“The first Trump administration turned more powerfully towards the Pacific . . . than any previous administration,” he said, “and now they’ve got Trump back again, and we hope for the same into the future.”
Radio Free Asia is an online news service affiliated with BenarNews. Republished from BenarNews with permission.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
WASHINGTON – The Trump administration might let hundreds of millions of dollars in aid pledged to Pacific island nations during former President Joe Biden’s time in office stand, New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters said after talks in Washington on Monday.
The Biden administration pledged about $1 billion in aid to the Pacific to help counter China’s influence in the strategic region.
However, Trump last month froze all disbursements of aid by the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, for 90 days pending a “review” of all aid spending under his “America First” policy.
New Zealand’s foreign minister told reporters on Monday that he had exited meetings with Trump’s USAID acting head, Peter Marocco, and his national security adviser, Mike Waltz, “more confident” about the prospects of the aid being left alone than he was before.
Peters said he had a “very frank and open discussion” with American officials about how important the aid was for the Pacific, and insisted that they “get our point of view in terms of how essential it is.”
Solomon Islands Prime Minister Jeremiah Manele meets with China’s President Xi Jinping in Beijing, July 12, 2024.(Vincent Thian/Reuters)
“In our business, it’s wise to find out the results before you open your mouth, but we are looking ahead with more confidence than when we arrived,” Peters said, pushing back against claims that the Trump administration would be “pulling back” from the Pacific region.
“We don’t know that yet. Let’s find out in April, when that full review is done on USAID,” he said. “But we came away more confident than some of the alarmists might have been before we arrived.”
Pacific theater
The Biden administration sought to rapidly expand U.S. engagement with the small island nations of the Pacific after the Solomon Islands signed a controversial security pact with China three years ago.
The deal by the Solomon Islands sparked a frenzied diplomatic battle between Washington and Beijing for influence in the strategic region.
Biden subsequently hosted Pacific island leaders at back-to-back summits in Washington in September 2022 and 2023, the first two of their kind. He pledged hundreds of millions of dollars at both meets, appearing to tilt the region back toward Washington.
The first summit included announcements of some $800 billion in aid for the Pacific, while the second added about $200 billion.
But the region has since been rocked by the Trump administration’s decision to freeze all aid pending its ongoing review. The concerns have not been helped by a claim from Elon Musk, who Trump tasked with cutting government waste, that USAID will be shuttered.
“You’ve got to basically get rid of the whole thing. It’s beyond repair. We’re shutting it down,” Musk said in a Feb. 3 livestreamed video.
However, the New Zealand foreign minister, who also met with Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday, said he held out hope that Washington would not turn back on its fight for influence in the Pacific.
“The first Trump administration turned more powerfully towards the Pacific … than any previous administration,” he said, “and now they’ve got Trump back again, and we hope for the same into the future.”
Edited by Malcolm Foster
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Alex Willemyns.
DHAKA, Bangladesh — The United Nations is discussing the possibility of a humanitarian aid corridor to Myanmar from Bangladesh in an effort to create equitable conditions for Rohingya refugees to eventually return, the U.N. chief said in Dhaka on Saturday.
However, the Rohingya refugees sheltering in Bangladesh could not make and immediate, “dignified return to their homeland in Myanmar’s Rakhine state amid the continued fighting there, added U.N. Secretary General António Guterres at a media briefing.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres and Bangladesh Foreign Advisor Md. Touhid Hossain speak to reporters in Dhaka, March 15, 2025.(Jesmin Papri/BenarNews)
“We need to intensify the humanitarian aid inside Myanmar to create a condition for that return to be successful,” Guterres said on the penultimate day of his four-day visit to Bangladesh.
Setting up a humanitarian aid channel “is obviously a matter that would require authorization and cooperation,” he said without further specifying.
Humanitarian corridors are designated and secure routes that allow for the safe passage of humanitarian relief, according to Southeast Asian NGO Fortify Rights.
The NGO said this week that the Bangladesh government and the rebel Arakan Army comprising ethnic Rakhine should immediately facilitate humanitarian aid and cross-border trade to reach war-affected civilians the state.
U.N. chief António Guterres at a photo exhibition in Dhaka for the 50th anniversary this year of Bangladesh joining the United Nations, March 15, 2025.(Chief Adviser GOB via Facebook)
“The crisis in Myanmar demands urgent global attention and action,” said Ejaz Min Khant in a statement Wednesday.
“A humanitarian corridor between Myanmar and Bangladesh would be a lifeline for civilians impacted by the conflict.”
The statement said Bangladesh should also lift restrictions on border trade with Myanmar “to help ease access to basic commodities for civilians in Rakhine state.”
The NGO noted that Bangladesh’s interim leader, Chief Adviser Muhammad Yunus had said in an interview aired earlier this month on Sky News that his government was in ongoing negotiations with the Arakan Army to create a “safe zone” for Rohingya refugees to return to Rakhine.
Bangladesh’s Foreign Adviser Touhid Hossain, who also spoke at the joint media briefing, said the establishment of a humanitarian channel was not discussed with the U.N. chief during his visit.
“This is much more of an operational matter, which we will of course deal [on] with the local offices of the U.N.,” Hossain said.
Nearly a million Rohingya, a persecuted minority Muslim community in Myanmar, live in refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar in southeastern Bangladesh.
Almost 800,000 of them crossed into neighboring Bangladesh to flee a deadly Myanmar military crackdown in 2017.
Their return to Rakhine has been prolonged after civil war broke out in Myanmar following the military coup of February 2021.
U.N. human rights experts had said on Thursday that the Myanmar junta had not been allowing in relief supplies, with the situation “particularly critical in Rakhine,” which is home to the Rohingya and other ethnic minorities.
Rakhine State was “on the brink of famine,” with two million people at risk of starvation, the statement added citing another U.N. agency.
Meanwhile, heavy fighting continues in Rakhine between the Myanmar military and the rebel Arakan Army, Guterres said on Saturday.
“There is a consensus that it would be extremely difficult in such a situation for an immediate and dignified return of the Rohingya,” he told the mrdia in Dhaka on Saturday.
Guterres further noted that in the past, the relationship between the ethnic Rakhine and the Rohingya has not been an easy one.
“So I think it is important to engage with the Arakan Army in order for ensure full respect of the rights of the Rohingya population in Rakhine,” the U.N. chief said.
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres observes a traditional tool used by Rohingya to thresh rice, March 14, 2025.(Press Wing of the Chief Adviser)
The Arakan Army founded in 2009 is fighting to “liberate” Rakhine towards its goal of self-determination. It has made significant gains over the past year to root out the military and now controls a majority of Rakhine’s townships, reported radio Free Asia, a news service affiliated with BenarNews.
Comprising mainly Rakhine Buddhists, the Arakan Army claimed it respects the rights of Rohingya. But experts have said there was plenty of evidence that the Arakan Army carried out mass arson attacks on Rohingya villages in May and August last year.
Guterres again made an impassioned plea to donor nations for more humanitarian aid for the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, whose food ration is set to be cut by more than half starting next month due to a funds shortage.
“With the announced cuts in financial assistance, we are facing the dramatic risk of having only 40% in 2025 of the resources available for humanitarian aid in 2024,” he said.
“This would have terrible consequences starting with the drastic reduction of food rations. That would be an unmitigated disaster. People will suffer and people will die.”
He said that by offering the Rohingya refuge, Bangladesh had shown its humanitarian spirit.
“By offering Rohingya refugees sanctuary, Bangladesh has demonstrated solidarity and human dignity, often at significant social, environmental and economic cost,” he said.
“The world must not take this generosity for granted.”
BenarNews is an online news organization affiliated with Radio Free Asia.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by BenarNews staff.
A former US diplomat, Nabeel Khoury, says President Donald Trump’s decision to launch attacks against the Houthis is misguided, and this will not subdue them.
“For our president who came in wanting to avoid war and wanting to be a man of peace, he’s going about it the wrong way,” he said.
“There are many paths that can be used before you resort to war.” Khoury told Al Jazeera.
The danger to shipping in the Red Sea was “a justifiable reason for concern”, Khoury told Al Jazeera in an interview, but added that it was a problem that could be resolved through diplomacy.
Ansar Allah (Houthi) media sources said that at least four areas had been razed by the US warplanes that targeted, in particular, a residential area north of the capital, Sanaa, killing 31 people.
The Houthis, who had been “bombed severely all over their territory” in the past, were not likely to be subdued through “a few weeks of bombing”, Khoury said.
“If you think that Hamas, living and fighting on a very small piece of land, totally surrounded by land, air and sea, and yet, 17 months of bombardment by the Israelis did not get rid of them.
‘More rugged space’
“The Houthis live in a much more rugged space, mountainous regions — it would be virtually impossible to eradicate them,” Khoury said.
“So there is no military logic to what’s happening, and there is no political logic either.”
Providing background, Patty Culhane reported from Washington that there were several factual errors in the justification President Trump had given for his order.
“It’s important to point out that the Houthi attacks have stopped since the ceasefire in Gaza [on January 19], although the Houthis were threatening to strike again,” she said.
“His other justification is saying that no US-flagged vessel has transited the Suez Canal, the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden safely in more than a year.
“And then he says another reason is because Houthis attacked a US military warship.
“That happened when Trump was not president.”
Down to 10,000 ships
She said the White House was now putting out more of a communique, “saying that before the attacks, there were 25,000 ships that transited the Red Sea annually. Now it’s down to 10,000 so, obviously, sort of shooting down the president’s concept that nobody is actually transiting the region.
“And it did list the number of attacks. The US commercial ships have been attacked 145 times since 2023 in their list.”
Meanwhile, at least nine people, including three journalists, have been killed and several others wounded in an Israeli drone attack on relief aid workers at Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza, according to Palestinian media.
The attack reportedly targeted a relief team that was accompanied by journalists and photographers. At least three local journalists were among the dead.
The Palestinian Journalists’ Protection Centre said in a statement that Israel had killed “three journalists in an airstrike on a media team documenting relief efforts in northern Gaza”, reports
“The journalists were documenting humanitarian relief efforts for those affected by Israel’s genocidal war,” the statement added, according to Anadolu.
In a statement, the Israeli military claimed it struck “two terrorists . . . operating a drone that posed a threat” to Israeli soldiers in the area of Beit Lahiya.
“Later, a number of additional terrorists collected the drone operating equipment and entered a vehicle. The [Israeli military] struck the terrorists,” it added, without providing any evidence about its claims.
‘Liberation’ poetry
In Auckland on Saturday, protesters at the Aotearoa New Zealand’s weekly “free Palestine” rallies gave a tribute to poet Mahmoud Darwish — the “liberation voice of Palestine” — by reciting peace and justice poetry and marked the sixth anniversary of the Christchurch mosque massacre when a lone white terrorist gunned down 51 people at Friday prayers.
Two of the pro-Palestine protesters hold West Papuan and Palestinian flags – symbolising indigenous liberation – at Saturday’s rally in Auckland. Image: APR
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
The urge to throw more money at defence budgets across a number of countries has become infectious. It was bound to happen with Donald Trump’s return to the White House, given his previous insistence that US allies do more to fatten their own armies rather than rely on the largesse of Washington’s power. Spend, spend, spend is the theme, and the UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has shown himself willing to join this wasteful indulgence.
On February 25, just prior to his visit to Washington, Starmer announced that spending on defence would reach 2.5% of GDP from April 2027. In the next parliament, it would rise to 3%. “In recent years,” states a UK government press release, “the world has been reshaped by global instability, including Russian aggression in Ukraine, increasing threats from malign actors, rapid technological change, and the accelerating impacts of climate change.”
Almost predictably, the term “Cold War” makes its retro appearance, with the spending increase the largest since that conflict of wilful misunderstandings and calculated paranoia. Russia figures prominently, as do “malign actors” who have burdened “the working people of Britain” with “increased energy bills, or threats to British interests and values.”
The governing Labour Party has also gone a bit gung-ho with the military-industrial establishment. In an open letter reported by the Financial Times, over 100 Labour MPs and peers thought it wise that ethical rules restricting investment by banks and investment firms in defence companies be relaxed. Financial institutions, the letter argues, should “rethink ESG [environmental, social and governance] mechanisms that often wrongly exclude all defence investment”. It was also important to address the issue of those “unnecessary barriers” defence firms face when “doing business in the UK”. Among such barriers are those irritating matters such as money laundering checks banks are obliged to conduct when considering the finance needs of defence and security firms, along with seeking assurances that they are not financing weapons banned under international law.
That these uncontroversial rules are now being seen as needless barriers to an industry that persists in shirking accountability is a sign of creeping moral flabbiness. Across Europe, the defence and arms lobbyists, those great exploiters of fictional insecurity, are feeling more confident than they have in years. They can rely on such figures as European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, who stated on March 4 that, “We are in an era of rearmament. And Europe is ready to massively boost its defence spending.”
To pursue such rearmament, Starmer has decided to take the axe to the aid budget, reducing it from its current level of 0.5% of gross national income to 0.3% in 2027. It was, as the press release goes on to mention, a “difficult choice” and part of “the evolving nature of the threat and the strategic shift required to meet it”. The Conservatives approved the measure, and the populist Reform UK would have little reason to object, seeing it had been its policy suggestion at the last election.
It was a decision that sufficiently troubled the international development minister, Anneliese Dodds, to quit the cabinet. In a letter to the prime minister, Dodds remarked that, while Starmer wished “to continue support for Gaza, Sudan and Ukraine; for vaccination; for climate; and for rules-based systems”, doing so would “be impossible … given the depth of the cut”.
Making the Office of Overseas Development Assistance absorb such a reduction would also see Britain “pull-out from numerous African, Caribbean and Western Balkan nations – at a time when Russia has been aggressively increasing its global presence.” It would be isolated from various multilateral bodies, see “a withdrawal from regional banks and a reduced commitment to the World Bank”. Influence would also be lost at such international fora as the G7 and G20.
Defence establishment figures have also regarded the decision to reduce aid with some consternation. General Lord Richards, former Chief of Defence Staff, saw the sense of an increase in military spending but not at the expense of the aid budget. “The notion that we must weaken one to strengthen the other is not just misleading but dangerous,” opined Richards in The Telegraph. “A lack of investment and development will only fuel greater instability, increase security threats and place a heavier burden on our Armed Forces.”
The aid budgets of wealthy states should never be seen as benevolent projects. Behind the charitable endeavour is a calculation that speaks more to power (euphemised as “soft”) than kindness. Aid keeps the natives of other countries clothed, fed and sufficiently sustained not to want to stray to other contenders. The sentiment was expressed all too clearly by a disappointed Dodds: a smaller UK aid budget would embolden an already daring Russia to fill the vacuum. How fascinating, then, that a daring Russia, its threatening posture inflated and exaggerated, is one of the primary reasons prompting an increase in Britain’s defence spending in the first place.
President Trump has just closed down USAID after Elon Musk branded it “a criminal organization,” adding “it’s time for it to die.” Is there any truth at all in Musk’s allegation?
One “beneficiary” of USAID is Nicaragua, a country with one of the lowest incomes per head in Latin America. Between 2014 and 2021, USAID spent US$315,009,297 on projects there. Uninformed observers might suppose that this money helped poor communities, but they would be wrong. Most of it was spent trying to undermine Nicaragua’s government, and in the process gave lucrative contracts to US consultancies and to some of Nicaragua’s richest families.
USAID has been working in Nicaragua for decades, but this article focuses on the period 2014-2021. The story is not a pleasant one. The key element is the agency’s role in the coup attempt against Nicaragua’s Sandinista government in 2018 and, later, in trying to disrupt the country’s general elections in 2021. Detailed information has been revealed by websites such as Nicaleaks, Tortilla con Sal and Behind Back Doors, but after 2021 many of the local “non-governmental” organizations USAID funded were closed (voluntarily in some cases, in others following resolutions by Nicaragua’s parliament). In the last few years, the agency’s operations, in Nicaragua at least, have become more obscure.
The last major operation that was exposed to the public gaze, via a leaked document, was called “RAIN” (“Responsive Assistance in Nicaragua”). If you ask Google’s AI assistant, Search Labs, what it is, you will be told that it provides rapid aid in response to natural disasters. But it does nothing of the sort. It started with a $2 million program in 2020-2022 to try to ensure that the Sandinistas were defeated in the 2021 elections. I described the project here and an article by Ben Norton went into further detail. The contract, active until recently, is now recorded as worth $5 million and was extended at least to April 2024.
The RAIN contract was awarded to the Navanti Group, one of many large consultancies that have benefitted from USAID’s Nicaraguan projects. Binoy Kampmark recently noted in Dissident Voice that nine out of every ten dollars spent by USAID goes to a limited number of consultancies, mostly based in Washington. Back in 2023, New Lines Magazinecommented that “USAID and its massive budget have spurred a network of firms, lobbyists, academics and logistics personnel that would cease to exist without government funding.”
One such firm is Creative Associates International, a company described by Alan MacLeod in Mintpress News as “one of the largest and most powerful non-governmental organizations operating anywhere in the world,” its regime-change work has taken place in Cuba, Venezuela and elsewhere, mostly marked by failure. In Cuba alone it received $1.8 billion of USAID money. Then from 2018-2020, Creative Associates was awarded $7.5 million-worth of projects in Nicaragua. One, dubbed TVET SAY, was to train young opposition political leaders in towns on Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast so that they could engage more effectively with business leaders opposed to the government.
Manuel Orozco, a Nicaraguan organizer of the 2018 coup attempt, later became a director of Creative Associates. Now based in Washington, when he last planned to visit Nicaragua in June 2021, he was advised by USAID to cancel his trip as he risked being arrested for his role in the coup. Shortly afterwards he was formally accused of conspiracy by the Nicaraguan prosecutor.
Another large company, Dexis, which had $144 million of new contracts with USAID in 2024, ran a $9 million “Institutional strengthening program” in Nicaragua between 2013-2018. Its purpose was to help opposition leaders mobilize and to run media campaigns. In 2023, USAID audited Dexis contracts and found over $41 million of ineligible or unsupported costs.
Dexis subcontracted the Nicaraguan work to another US firm, Chemonics, which has 6,000 employees (“teammates”) and is USAID’s biggest contractor. It received awards of well over $1 billion in both 2023 and 2024, despite heavy criticisms of its previous work, for example in Haiti. Chemonics’s founder told the New York Times in 1993 that he created the firm to “have my own CIA.”
Two US consultancies had USAID contracts to promote anti-Sandinista opinion and instill antigovernment practices. DevTech Systems, a company awarded $45 million in USAID contracts in 2024, ran a $14 million education project on the Caribbean coast with these objectives, from 2013 to 2019. Global Communities, two-thirds of whose income ($248 million in 2023) comes from the US government, ran a similar, $29 million program.
Yet another large consultancy, the International Research and Exchange Board (IREX), formed close ties with one of Nicaragua’s richest families, the Chamorros. IREX has a global staff of 760 and over 80% of its $155 million income comes from the US government. It ran “media strengthening” programs in Nicaragua worth $10,300,000. Ticavision, a Costa Rican TV channel, recently reported that USAID is investigating the misuse of $158 million allocated through IREX to Nicaraguan projects, including this one. The money went to a number of well-known Nicaraguan journalists, now based abroad, including Confidencial’s Carlos Fernando Chamorro.
The Chamorro family, owners of the newspaper La Prensa and online outlet Confidencial, were the main beneficiaries of USAID in Nicaragua. The Violeta Barrios de Chamorro Foundation is named after a former president and run by her daughter, Cristiana Chamorro. It received $7 million in USAID funds to promote opposition media platforms, including those owned by the family. From this it disbursed smaller sums – typically $40,000 each – to other media organizations such as 100% Noticias and various radio and TV channels. But the bulk of the money stayed with the Chamorros.
All the media that received money were openly anti-Sandinista. In 2018, the owner of 100% Noticias, Miguel Mora incited a violent arson attack against Sandinista-supporting Radio Ya, from which the journalists barely escaped alive. Later he told Max Blumenthal of The Grayzone that the US should have intervened militarily to remove the Nicaraguan government. Mora was later welcomed at the White House by then vice-president Mike Pence.
Another Chamorro organization, the thinktank FUNIDES, was allegedly created by USAID and received $3,699,221 to run anti-government research projects. Its head was Juan Sebastián Chamorro (cousin of Cristiana and Carlos).
Yet another Chamorro thinktank, CINCO, headed by Carlos Fernando and opposition activist Sofía Montenegro, received $3,247,632. There is considerable evidence of close liaison between the Chamorros, Montenegro and US officials. For example, Montenegro received money directly from USAID and was also photographed at the US embassy; USAID representative Deborah Ullmer met Juan Sebastián Chamorro in October 2018 to discuss why the coup attempt had failed. Juan Sebastián was then head of one of the main opposition political parties, the Civic Alliance.
In total, it is estimated that the Chamorros benefitted personally to the tune of $5,516,578 in US government money. In 2022, Cristiana Chamorro was found guilty of money laundering (her eight-year sentence was commuted to house arrest; after a few months she was given asylum in the US).
Luciano García Mejía, a wealthy member of the family of the former dictator, Anastasio Somoza, was another beneficiary of Washington’s dollars. He ran another political pressure group, Hagamos Democracia (“Let’s make democracy”). This was funded partially by USAID but principally (with $1,114,000) by the CIA. Hagamos Democracia openly called for criminal acts during the coup attempt, recruited known criminals and directly threatened President Ortega to “look to his own and his family’s safety and leave without further repercussions.”
Other affluent Nicaraguans to receive USAID money included Mónica Baltodano who, through her Fundación Popol Na was paid $207,762. Similarly, Violeta Granera’s Movement for Nicaragua was paid $803,154. Both were opposition leaders; Granera later called for US sanctions against Nicaragua.
Not only did USAID fund and actively monitor the 2018 insurrection as it developed, but once it realized that the coup had failed, it began to undermine the 2021 elections. This was another failure, but the corporate media’s current depiction of Nicaragua as a “dictatorship” or an “authoritarian regime” is due in no small part to the work of the US government’s “aid agency.”
Very little of USAID’s work over the past eleven years benefitted ordinary Nicaraguans. Instead, millions of dollars were creamed off by wealthy consultants in Washington and wealthy oligarchs in Nicaragua. Evidence of fraud comes mainly from Nicaraguan government investigations but, as noted in the examples in this article, it fits within a pattern of US-government largesse with limited accountability and plentiful evidence of bad practice.
This is only a small part of the story in which the agency spent $315 millions in training and funding Nicaraguan opposition leaders who coordinated the violence and criminality of the 2018 coup attempt. In Nicaragua at least, the evidence arguably supports Musk’s contention that USAID is “a criminal organization.”
DHAKA/COX’S BAZAR, Bangladesh – At a Rohingya refugee camp in southeastern Bangladesh, Mohammed Hasan cast doubt over whether he’d ever walk again.
The 40-year-old had a leg amputated after a Burmese soldier shot him during the Myanmar military’s deadly crackdown against the stateless Rohingya Muslim minority in 2017. Hasan’s other leg was paralyzed after the shooting.
Like hundreds of thousands of his fellow Rohingya, he fled that year from his home in Rakhine state to neighboring Bangladesh. There, a nongovernmental organization helped him with medical treatment, including physiotherapy.
But all that is gone now.
“Physiotherapy and other treatments at Handicap International revived my hope for being able to stand up again. But Handicap International ceased their operations, blowing my hopes,” Hasan told BenarNews this month.
More than a dozen healthcare facilities that help Rohingya refugees have suspended operations in the past few weeks, leaving thousands without essential health services and exacerbating already dire conditions at sprawling camps in Cox’s Bazar district near the Myanmar border.
Some Bangladeshi officials have attributed the closures to a decision last month by the new U.S. administration to freeze foreign aid for 90 days, pending a review of foreign assistance programs.
Bangladeshi officials say the decision by the United States – the world’s largest single aid donor, according to the United Nations – has affected various services helping the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, including health, water and sanitation, education, and livelihood.
In a filing with the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia on Feb. 18, the Trump administration said it would not release its foreign aid funds despite a federal judge’s order last week to lift its freeze, according to a copy of the court document seen by BenarNews.
Three facilities run by the global nonprofit International Rescue Committee (IRC) have completely shut down while two others could stop operations by the end of March, an official of a Bangladeshi government agency overseeing the needs of refugees told BenarNews last week.
“Apart from that, around 14 [Centre for Disability in Development, or CDD facilities] across the camps ceased their operations following the U.S. fund freeze that also laid off many healthcare staff,” Refugee, Relief and Repatriation (RRR) Commissioner Mohammed Mizanur Rahman said.
BenarNews visited five CDD facilities in Cox’s Bazar and found they had stopped their operations at present.
Rohingya refugee Gulfaraz Begum with her son, Mohammed Hasan, who lost a leg in Myanmar military’s crackdown in 2017, at a refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, Feb. 10, 2025.(Abdur Rahman/BenarNews)
A medical officer working at a government hospital also told BenarNews that the health aid group Handicap International – which used to provide medical care for refugees such as Mohammed Hasan – had stopped its operations.
Another health research group, the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (ICDDR, B), had also suspended its operations to help the refugees, said Enamul Haque, a medical officer at the government-owned Teknaf Upzila Health Complex.
“With these two centers shut down, patients are facing extreme difficulties. There is no other hospital except for the government hospital,” Enamul told BenarNews on Feb. 11.
“In reality, there is nowhere for these patients to go … [P]oor patients are suffering the most,” he said.
BenarNews tried to contact five organizations that had allegedly suspended their operations following the freeze on foreign aid implemented by the Trump administration, which took office on Jan. 20.
Among the groups, IRC and ICDDR, B did not respond to multiple requests from BenarNews. Local officials with Handicap International, CDD, and the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR declined comment.
The locked gate of a facility of the Center for Disability in Development in Ukhia, Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, Feb. 10, 2025.(Abdur Rahman/BenarNews)
More than 1 million Rohingya refugees are staying in camps in and around Cox’s Bazar – some of the largest and most densely populated refugee shelters in the world.
There are 120 healthcare centers across 34 camps that often provide medical care for at least 70,000 Rohingya refugees, Mizanur, the RRR commissioner, said.
“As the U.S. is the biggest funder [of foreign aid in Bangladesh], the fallout of the aid freeze could impact other medical facilities too in the [camps],” he said.
An official involved with healthcare services in the camps said on Feb. 11 that the existing healthcare facilities for the refugees had scaled down their services by as much as 25% since the U.S. funding was paused.
“We have observed service disruptions in the Rohingya refugee camps as well as in the host communities, including in life-saving interventions,” Syed Md Tafhim, a communications officer at the Inter Sector Coordination Group (ISCG), said in a statement.
The ISCG serves as the international central coordination body for humanitarian agencies that serve Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar.
A Rohingya refugee with a disability, who used to receive medical treatment from an aid group, in a camp in Ukhia, Cox’s Bazar, Feb. 10, 2025.(Abdur Rahman/BenarNews)
Affected services range across different sectors, such as health (including treatment for persons with disabilities), water and sanitation, education, and livelihood, the group said.
“As a result of this global pause, preliminary information suggests that several important projects benefitting Rohingya refugees and Bangladeshi host communities have had to be suspended, interrupting some essential and life-saving services,” the ISCG said.
“While some exceptions and waivers are gradually being communicated by the U.S. Government, we do not yet have a detailed understanding of how this may affect specific programmes in the Rohingya response in the short and medium term,” it also said.
According to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the pause in funding would “invariably affect” its Rohingya refugee response.
“The United States has been among our steady partners to the Rohingya response, and we remain both grateful and hopeful that funding support will soon resume to ensure refugee women and girls and those from the host community continue to receive critical assistance to uphold their health, safety, and dignity in Bangladesh,” UNFPA Bangladesh Representative Masaki Watabe said in a statement.
Anxious parent
Back in the refugee camps, a Rohingya father waits.
In their small hut made of bamboo and tarpaulin at Camp 16, Kabir Hossen lives with his son, Md Hasan, who has a paralyzed leg and struggles with a form of palsy.
Rohingya refugee Kabir Hossen is seen with his son, Md Hasan, who has a paralyzed leg and struggles with a form of palsy, at a refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, Feb. 10, 2025.(Abdur Rahman/BenarNews)
Every 10 days, they used to visit a CDD facility for his treatment and medicine. But on Feb. 1, the center’s staff turned them away, saying they already stopped providing services.
“I don’t know where to avail the treatment for my son,” Hossen, 47, told BenarNews.
“Uncertainty is gripping me.”
BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated news organization.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Mostafa Yousuf and Abdur Rahman for BenarNews.
Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown hopes to have “an opportunity to talk” with the New Zealand government to “heal some of the rift”.
Brown returned to Avarua on Sunday afternoon (Cook Islands Time) following his week-long state visit to China, where he signed a “comprehensive strategic partnership” to boost its relationship with Beijing.
Prior to signing the deal, he said that there was “no need for New Zealand to sit in the room with us” after the New Zealand Foreign Affairs Minister raised concerns about the agreement.
Responding to reporters for the first time since signing the China deal, he said: “I haven’t met the New Zealand government as yet but I’m hoping that in the coming weeks we will have an opportunity to talk with them.
“Because they will be able to share in this document that we’ve signed and for themselves see where there are areas that they have concerns with.
“But I’m confident that there will be no areas of concern. And this is something that will benefit Cook Islanders and the Cook Islands people.”
He said the agreement with Beijing would be made public “very shortly”.
“I’m sure once the New Zealand government has a look at it there will be nothing for them to be concerned about.”
Not concerned over consequences
Brown said he was not concerned by any consequences the New Zealand government may impose.
The Cook Islands leader is returning to a motion of no confidence filed against his government and protests against his leadership.
“I’m confident that my statements in Parliament, and my returning comments that I will make to our people, will overcome some of the concerns that have been raised and the speculation that has been rife, particularly throughout the New Zealand media, about the purpose of this trip to China and the contents of our action plan that we’ve signed with China.”
The New Zealand government wanted to see the agreement prior to Brown going to China, which did not happen.
A spokesperson for New Zealand’s Foreign Minister Winston Peters said Brown had a requirement to share the contents of the agreement and anything else he signed under the 2001 Joint Centenary Declaration.
‘Healing some of the rift’ Brown said the difference in opinion provides an opportunity for the two governments to get together and “heal some of the rift”.
“We maintain that our relationship with New Zealand remains strong and we remain open to having conversations with the New Zealand government on issues of concern.
“They’ve raised their concerns around security in the Pacific. We’ve raised our concerns around our priorities, which is economic development for our people.”
Brown has previously said New Zealand did not consult the Cook Islands on its comprehensive strategic partnership with China in 2014, which they should have done if the Cook Islands had a requirement to do so.
He hoped people would read New Zealand’s deal along with his and show him “where the differences are that causes concern”.
Meanwhile, the leader of Cook Islands United Party, Teariki Heather, said Cook Islanders were sitting nervously with a question mark waiting for the agreement to be made public.
Cook Islands United Party leader Teariki Heather stands by one of his trucks he is preparing to take on the planned protest. Image: Caleb Fotheringham/RNZ Pacific
“That’s the problem we have now, we haven’t been disclosed or told of anything about what has been signed,” he said.
“Yes we hear about the marine seabed minerals exploration, talk about infrastructure, exchange of students and all that, but we haven’t seen what’s been signed.”
However, Heather said he was not worried about what was signed but more about the damage that it could have created with New Zealand.
Heather is responsible for filing the motion of no confidence against the Prime Minister and his cabinet.
The opposition only makes up eight seats of 24 in the Cook Islands Parliament and the motion is about showing support to New Zealand, not about toppling the government.
“It’s not about the numbers for this one, but purposely to show New Zealand, this is how far we will go if the vote of no confidence is not sort of accepted by both of the majority members, at least we’ve given the support of New Zealand.”
Heather has also been the leader for a planned planned today local time (Tuesday NZ).
“Protesters will be bringing their New Zealand passports as a badge of support for Aotearoa,” he said.
“Our relationship [with New Zealand] — we want to keep that.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security has added refugee aid organization Boat People SOS to its list of terrorist groups, saying it had carried out “anti-Vietnam activities,” which the U.S.-based group denied.
“BPSOS operates under the guise of ‘refugee relief’ but in fact, it uses this activity to connect with and assist organizations and individuals in carrying out anti-Vietnam activities, including a number of individuals participating in the organization ‘Montagnards [Stand] for Justice – MSFJ’ – the organization that carried out the terrorist attack on June 11, 2023 in Dak Lak,” the ministry said on its Facebook page on Friday.
BPSOS was set up in the 1980s to help so-called boat people flee Vietnam by sea. It now helps victims of religious persecution and human trafficking in Vietnam, it says on its website.
BPSOS Chairman Nguyen Dinh Thang said the terrorist designation was meant to intimidate those who dare speak out on repression and the accusation damaged the Vietnamese government’s reputation..
“The international community knows very well who has cooperated with the Boat People SOS committee for the past several decades, including the U.S. government, more than 40 countries in the international alliance for freedom of religion or belief, and the human rights institutions of the United Nations,” he told Radio Free Asia.
On Feb. 4 and 5, BPSOS helped organize the International Religious Freedom Summit in Washington. More than 1,000 international delegates attended, including more than 40 parliamentarians. However, three religious representatives from Vietnam who were invited to the conference were stopped at the airport in Vietnam and told they couldn’t leave for security reasons.
“This will not go unnoticed by the US government. Vietnam is already on thin ice concerning its treatment of religious people. This may be all it takes to put them back as a Country of Particular Concern,” said Sam Brownback, the U.S. ambassador-at-large for religious freedom according to a news release from the Global Christian Solidarity Organization.
According to BPSOS, by putting it and MSFJ on the terrorist list, the Vietnamese Ministry of Public Security was hoping to frighten those who speak out to the international community to denounce religious repression in Vietnam.
“They expected that people in the country would not dare to contact us or provide information about violations for us to transfer to the international community,” Nguyen Dinh Thang told RFA.
On March 6, 2024, the ministry listed MSFJ and individuals associated with the minority rights group as terrorists, accusing them of organizing a June 2023 attack on two government headquarters in Dak Lak in which nine people were killed. The group denied the accusation.
Vietnam is trying to extradite MSFJ co-founder Y Quynh Bdap from Thailand to serve a 10-year sentence for terrorism in connection with the attack. He has denied the allegations and plans to lodge an appeal in Thailand.
Translated by RFA Vietnamese. Edited by Mike Firn.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Vietnamese.
The US aid program began in earnest in the early stages of the Cold War, with an intention to beat off the contenders from the Soviet bloc in the postcolonial world. President Harry S. Truman proposed, in his 1949 inaugural address, “a bold new program for making the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress available for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas.” In 1961, President John F. Kennedy signed the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, enabling him to issue the executive order that created the US Agency for International Development (USAID).
In 1962, the American scholar of international relations, Henry Morgenthau, suggested that foreign aid could fall into six categories: the sort that promoted humanitarian objects, the aid that offers subsistence goals and military aims, the sort that acted as a bribe, the attainment of prestige and economic development.
To provide aid suggests a benevolent undertaking delivered selflessly. It arises from the charitable mission, an attempt to alleviate, or at least soften the blows of hardship arising from various impairments (poverty, famine, disease). But the provision of aid is rarely benign, almost always political, and, in its realisation, often self-defeating. The very transaction acknowledges the inherent victimhood of the sufferer, the intractable nature of the condition, the seemingly insoluble nature of a social problem.
Morgenthau also conceded that humanitarian aid, despite being, on the surface, non-political in nature, could still “perform political function when it operates within political context.” And the very provision of aid suggests an accepted state of inequality between giver and recipient, with the former having the means to influence outcomes.
With such views frothing the mix, it is worth considering why the attack by President Donald J. Trump on USAID as part of his axing crusade against bureaucratic waste is not, for all its structural and constitutional limitations, without harsh merit. Over the years, insistent critics have been lurking in the bushes regarding that particular body, but they have been dismissed as isolationist and unwilling to accept messianic US internationalism. The Heritage Foundation, for instance, has been wondering if the whole idea of US foreign aid should be called off. In January 1995, the body produced a report urging the termination of USAID. “Despite billions of dollars spent on economic assistance, most of the countries receiving US development aid remained mired in poverty, repressions, and dependence.”
Such a viewpoint can hardly be dismissed as a fringe sentiment smacking of parochialism. (In the United States, imperialist sentiment is often synonymous with supposedly principled internationalism.) The less rosy side of the aid industry has been shored up by such trenchant critiques as Dambisa Moyo’s, whose Dead Aid (2009) sees the $1 trillion in development aid given to Africa over five decades as a “malignant” exercise that failed to reduce poverty or deliver sustainable growth. She caustically remarks that, “Between 1970 and 1998, when aid flows to Africa were at their peak, poverty in Africa rose from 11 percent to a staggering 66 percent.” Aid, far from being a potential solution, has become the problem.
The report card of USAID has not improved. One of the notable features of the aid racket is that much of the money never escapes the orbit of the organisational circuit, locked up with intermediaries and contractors. In other words, the money tends to move around and stay in Washington, never departing for more useful climes. A report by USAID from June 2023 noted that nine out of every ten dollars spent by the organisation in the 2022 fiscal year went to international contracting partners, most of whom are situated in Washington, DC. USAID funding is also very particular about its recipient groups, with 60% of all its funding going to a mere 25 groups in 2017 alone.
In January this year, the USAID Office of Inspector General authored a memorandum noting accountability and transparency issues within USAID-funded programs. USAID, Inspector General Paul K. Martin insisted, “must enforce the requirement that UN agencies promptly report allegations of fraud or sexual exploitation and abuse directly to OIG.” While the sentiment of the document echoes a long US tradition of suspicion towards UN agencies, valid points of consideration are made regarding mismanagement of humanitarian assistance. The OIG also took issue with USAID’s lack of any “comprehensive internal database of subawardees.”
Despite these scars and impediments, USAID continues being celebrated by its admirers as a projection of “soft power” par excellence, indispensable in promoting the good name of Washington in the benighted crisis spots of the globe. A cuddly justification is offered by the Council on Foreign Relations, which describes USAID as “a pillar of US soft power and a source of foreign assistance for struggling countries, playing a leading role in coordinating the response to international emergencies such as the global food security crisis.”
Stewart Patrick of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace discounts the politically slanted nature of US aid policies, not to mention its faulty distribution mechanism, by universalising the achievements of a body he cherishes. USAID “has contributed to humanity’s extraordinary progress in poverty reduction, increased life expectancy, better health, improved literacy, and so much more.”
A less disingenuous example can be found in the Financial Times, which encourages “fighting poverty and disease and enabling economic development” as doing so will improve safety, advance prosperity, curb instability and the appeal of autocracy. But at the end of the day, aid is a good idea because, reasons the editorial, it offers expanded markets for US exports. The sick and the impoverished don’t tend to make good consumers. To cancel, however “life-saving projects” at short notice was “a good way to provoke an anti-American backlash” while giving an encouraging wink to the Chinese. US Aid: far from benign, and distinctly political.
“Take your money with you,” said Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro, when told about Trump’s plans to cut aid to Latin America, “it’s poison.”
USAID (US Agency for International Development) spends around $2 billion annually in Latin America, which is only 5% of its global budget. The temporarily closed-down agency’s future looks bleak, while reactions to its money being cut have been wide-ranging. Only a few were as strong as Petro’s and many condemned the move. For example, WOLA (the Washington Office on Latin America), a leading “liberal” think tank which routinely runs cover for Washington’s regime-change efforts, called it Trump’s “America Last” policy.
While USAID does some good – such as removing landmines in Vietnam (themselves a product of US wrongdoing) – as an agency of the world’s hegemon, its fundamental role is aligned with projecting US world dominance.
Not unexpectedly, the corporate media have largely come to the rescue of USAID. They try to give the impression that they are mainly concerned that some countries would be badly effected by its loss. In fact, the follow-the-flag media understand that USAID is part of the imperial toolkit.
Both the Los Angles Times and Bloomberg suggested that USAID’s shutdown would “open the door” to China. The Associated Pressdescribed the withdrawal of aid as a “huge setback” for the region; the BBCechoed these sentiments. The NYT and other mainstream media point to the irony that many of its programs help stem outward migration from Latin America, an issue which is otherwise at the top of Trump’s agenda.
Weaponization of humanitarian aid
The corporate media, not surprisingly, give a one-sided picture. It’s true, of course, that an aspect of USAID’s work is humanitarian. But, as Jeffrey Sachs explained, “true, and urgent, humanitarian aid” was only one element in a larger “soft power” strategy. From its inception, USAID’s mission was more than humanitarian.
A year after President John Kennedy created USAID in 1961, he told its directors that “as we do not want to send American troops to a great many areas where freedom may be under attack, we send you.”
The organization is “an instrument of [US] foreign policy …a completely politicized institution,” According to Sachs. It has mainly benefitted US allies as with the program to limit hurricane damage in Central America, cited by the NYT which omits Nicaragua, hit by two devasting storms in 2020. Needless to say, Nicaragua is not a US ally.
Although USAID provides about 42% of all humanitarian aid globally, the Quixote Center reports that most of the funds are spent on delivering US-produced food supplies or on paying US contractors, rather than helping local markets and encouraging local providers. The Quixote Center argues that “a review of USAID is needed,” though not the type of review which Trump or Elon Musk probably have in mind.
Indeed, the dumping of subsidized US food products undermines the recipient country’s own agriculturalists. While hunger may be assuaged in the short-term, the long-term effect is to create dependency, which is the implicit purpose of such aid in the first place. In short, the US globally does not promote independence but seeks to enmesh countries in perpetual relations of dependence.
Regime change
The third and most controversial element, identified by Sachs, is that USAID has become a “deep state institution,” which explicitly promotes regime change. He notes that it encourages so-called “color revolutions” or coups, aimed at replacing governments that fail to serve US interests.
The State Department is sometimes quite open about this. When a would-be ambassador to Nicaragua was questioned by the US Senate in July 2022, he made clear that he would work with USAID-supported groups both within and outside the country who are opposed to Nicaragua’s government. It is hardly surprising that Nicaragua refused to accept his appointment. The progressive government has since closed down groups receiving regime-change funding.
The history of US regime-change efforts in Latin America is a long one, much of it attributable to covert operations by the CIA. But since 1990, USAID and associated bodies like the National Endowment for Democracy have come to play a huge role. For example, they have spent at least $300 million since 1990 in trying to undermine the Cuban Revolution.
Regime-change efforts in Cuba involved a vast organization known as Creative Associates International (CREA), later shown by Alan MacLeod to be directing similar USAID programs across Latin America. Currently, CREA is working in Honduras whose progressive government is under considerable pressure from the US government. Yet CREA is only one of 25 contractors which, in 2024, earned sums ranging from $32 million to a whopping $1.56 billion.
Culture wars
USAID’s regime-change work often foster ostensibly non-political cultural, artistic, gender-based or educational NGOs whose real agenda is to inculcate anti-government or pro-US attitudes. Examples proliferate.
In Cuba, USAID infiltrated the hip-hop scene, attempted to create a local version of Twitter, and recruited youngsters from Costa Rica, Peru and Venezuela to go to Cuba to run a particularly inept project that risked putting them in jail.
In Venezuela, USAID began work after the unsuccessful US-backed coup attempt against President Hugo Chávez in 2002. By 2007, it was supporting 360 groups, some of them overtly training potential “democratic leaders.” The Venezuelan rock band Rawayana, recent winners of a Grammy, are funded by USAID to convey pro-opposition messages in their public appearances.
In Nicaragua, after the Sandinista government returned to power in 2007, USAID set up training programs, reaching up to 5,000 young people. Many of those who were trained then joined in a coup attempt in 2018.
Astroturf human rights and media organizations
Another tactic is to undermine political leaders seen as US enemies. In 2004, USAID funded 379 Bolivian organizations with the aim of “reinforcing regional governments” and weakening the progressive national government.
It did similar work in Venezuela, including in 2007 holding a conference with 50 local mayors to discuss “decentralisation” and creating “popular networks” to oppose President Chávez and, later, President Nicolás Maduro. USAID even expended $116 million supporting the self-declared “interim presidency” of Juan Guaidó.
In a similar vein, Nicaragua was the subject of a USAID program intended to attack the credibility of its 2021 election. Likewise, after the election of Xiomara Castro in Honduras, USAID set up a democratic governance program to “hold the government to account.”
Creating or sustaining compliant “human rights” organizations is also a key part of USAID’s work. Of the $400 million it spends in Colombia each year, half goes to such bodies. In Venezuela, where USAID spends $200 million annually, part goes to opposition-focused “human rights” groups such as Provea. USAID funded all three of the opposition-focused “human rights” groups in Nicaragua, before they were closed down, and now probably supports them in exile, in Costa Rica.
Finally, USAID creates or sustains opposition media which, as Sachs put it, “spring up on demand” when a government is targeted to be overthrown. Reporters without Frontiers (RSF, by its French initials) reported: “Trump’s foreign aid freeze throws journalism around the world into chaos.” It revealed that USAID was funding over 6,200 journalists across 707 media outlets. In the run-up to the 2018 coup attempt in Nicaragua, USAID was supporting all the key opposition media outlets.
RSF, while purporting to support “independent journalism,” itself is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, and the European Union – hardly neutral parties.
Few regrets
This is why there may be few regrets about the demise of USAID in Latin America among governments beleaguered by the US. Indeed, opposition groups in Venezuela and Nicaragua admit they are in “crisis” following the cuts to their funding.
Even Trump’s ally President Nayib Bukele is skeptical about USAID: “While marketed as support for development, democracy, and human rights, the majority of these funds are funneled into opposition groups, NGOs with political agendas, and destabilizing movements.”
The evidence that USAID has weaponized so-called humanitarian aid is incontestable. Yet, according to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, it is the Latin American countries that Washington has targeted for regime change – Nicaragua, Cuba, and Venezuela – who are “enemies of humanity.” In response, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yvan Gil retorted that the “only enemies of humanity are those who, with their war machinery and abuse, have spent decades sowing chaos and misery in half the world.”
Regrettably, USAID has been a contributor to this abuse, rather than opposing it. While temporarily shuttered at USAID, the empire’s regime-change mission will with near certainty continue, though in other and perhaps less overt forms.
Many people who never liked Donald Trump are predictably outraged by many of his actual and potential foreign policy changes. These include new tariffs on goods from countries with which the US had, until the current administration, enjoyed free trade or Most Favored Nation status, including Mexico, Canada, and the European Union. In addition, he announced imposition or intended imposition of increased sanctions against Iran, Russia and potentially other nations. He also ordered the suspension of all foreign aid except to Israel and Egypt. (The order is currently blocked in federal court.) But his most outrageous proposals are undoubtedly to annex Canada and Greenland, “take back” the Panama Canal, and acquire and develop the Gaza Strip after removing its current Palestinian population.
All of this and more has understandably been used to justify the worst fears of those who predicted disaster. Panic and hysteria are not an uncommon response in some quarters of the press and social media. This is by no means entirely unjustified, but such reactions fail to appreciate what Trump himself perceives as the method behind his madness. He loves panic and hysteria, which he considers useful, if not essential, to his “art of the deal.”
Donald Trump is by nature a businessman, more specifically a salesperson. He makes deals by persuasion, coercion, temptation, reward, and the entire panoply of inducements to achieve an outcome that may or may not be what he or the other participants in the negotiation initially intended. If he makes an outrageous proposal, he expects a counterproposal, and if his outrageous proposal helps to shape the counterproposal, so much the better. If he issues a directive that results in disaster, he expects pushback and revision. That – for better or worse – is how he operates. He doesn’t feel that he needs a lot of analysis or expertise. He depends on others to push and pull the negotiation into the solution of the problem, which can be less or more, better or worse, than either of the negotiators initially intended. His role is to move things along and break the deadlocks. The result may not always be the perfect solution, but it’s often a solution of some kind.
One of the first successes of the Trump administration has been the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. One can only imagine the threats and promises that were made for Trump to achieve this just prior to his inauguration. Did he promise Bibi that he could resume full or even intensified genocide after a short pause, which would allow Itamar Ben Gvir to reverse his resignation from the governing coalition and permit Netanyahu’s to further his own ambitions)? Perhaps. But now Trump’s aim seems to be to prolong the ceasefire by assuring that the US will transfer the Palestinians to other countries (mainly Egypt and Jordan). Never mind that Egypt and Jordan have refused to accept the Palestinians, who have themselves refused to go, and that most or all US allies also oppose the plan. The objective is to promise whatever is necessary to prolong the ceasefire, and to keep coming up with ways to do that, no matter how unrealistic. In this case, the promise is to rid Israel of the Palestinians without even having to use the Israeli military or resources. What more could they want? This buys Israel’s cooperation, and the problems and contradictions get kicked down the road. Donald Trump wants to be seen as someone who can do the impossible, even if his methods are highly, highly unorthodox and coercive, such as a proposal to cut off foreign aid to Egypt and Jordan if they don’t accept.
Thus far, there is no doubt that the ceasefire is a success, if only a qualified one, with many violations (mostly by Israel, which is less than enthusiastic about it). However, the same cannot necessarily be said about Trump’s suspension of the operations and funding of the US Agency for International Development. The humanitarian aid and technological development provided by USAID is a real benefit to the societies that receive it, and it is plausible that people will die without it, especially the medical supplies, equipment and services that preserve life and health in underserved areas. On the other hand, that aid comes with strings attached. USAID, as well as many NGOs that are at least partly funded privately, are frequently a cover for CIA spying, black ops and regime change operations. The overthrow of Ukraine’s elected government in 2014 was largely funded and enabled by USAID funds directed by Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland. The suspension of the USAID program is therefore not entirely unwelcome.
In any case, we can expect such strange and risky moves to be part of the next four years. In Trump’s last administration, he came in largely unprepared. This time, he appears, for better or worse, to be taking charge. It is likely to be a learning experience for all concerned, and the results are likely to be less predictable for us all, as well.
The future of USAID, the U.S. Agency for International Development, is uncertain after Elon Musk said President Trump had agreed to shut it down. The Tesla billionaire and presidential adviser has inserted himself into the inner workings of the federal government, gaining access to sensitive computer systems and making sweeping changes for which he has no clear authority. Over the weekend, the USAID website and social media channels were taken offline, and two top security officials at the aid agency were placed on administrative leave after attempting to block members of Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, from accessing USAID’s classified systems, including personnel files. Musk claimed in a series of posts on his website X that USAID is a “viper’s nest of radical-left Marxists who hate America,” and staff were instructed to stay away from the agency’s Washington headquarters on Monday. “What we are seeing … are attacks against it as a corrupt and illegal organization by people who know nothing about it. They are manufacturing these things out of whole cloth,” says former senior USAID staffer Jeremy Konyndyk, now president of Refugees International. “It’s really important to understand that a lot of what USAID does saves lives every single day.”
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
MAE SOT, Thailand – Groups helping victims of Myanmar’s turmoil are struggling to provide assistance after the U.S. put a 90-day freeze on nearly all foreign aid, one organization said on Thursday, as the U.N. warned of looming hunger five years after the military ousted an elected government.
More than 3.5 million people have been displaced in Myanmar due to war between a junta that seized power in 2021, which is backed by China and sanctioned by Western governments, and a loose alliance of pro-democracy and ethnic minority groups battling to end military rule.
In the 2024 fiscal year, which ended on Sept. 30, the U.S. provided $141 million in humanitarian aid to Myanmar, much of which is channeled through groups working on the Thai-Myanmar border.
The U.S. State Department on Friday announced the freeze on nearly all aid in order to give the State Department time to review programs “to ensure they are efficient and consistent with U.S. foreign policy under the America First agenda.”
In the days since, stop-work orders have been sent by the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, to implementing partners ranging from media organizations to clinics.
One aid worker, who declined to be identified, said about 20 relief groups providing healthcare with USAID assistance along the Thai-Myanmar border were at risk of being suspended.
Nai Aue Mon, program director of the Human Rights Foundation of Monland group,which documents human rights violations, said communication and travel costs, salaries and stipends would be hit.
“To be honest, it’s widespread, it’s huge,” Nai Aue Mon said of the impact of the aid freeze on humanitarian groups in areas under the administration of the anti-junta Karen National Union in Kayin state and to the south in Mon state, affecting thousands of people.
“It significantly impacts those groups … nearly every organization is more or less impacted by this executive order.”
Groups might have some funds in reserve and were scrambling for other sources of donations but the outlook was grim, he said.
“As far as I know, my organization, we still have some resources but we don’t know after that,” Nai Aue Mon said. “We’re definitely struggling a lot.”
Some 100,000 ethnic Karen people from eastern Myanmar war zones have lived in camps on the Thai side for decades and people fleeing more recent repression in Myanmar’s towns and cities have also sought shelter on the border.
Refugee camp hospitals were having to discharge patients because health workers had been suspended from duties, a health worker speaking on the condition of anonymity for security reasons told RFA.
Thailand will help fill the gap in funding for the camps on its soil, at least for the time being, a government minister said, according to The Bangkok Post.
“We cannot abandon or chase them away since they have lived here in the camps for a long time,” Thai Public Health Minister Somsak Thepsutin told the newspaper.
“We cannot just talk about refugees who have been affected … All kinds of healthcare and assistance must be provided to other groups of people who live in this country.”
The freeze in U.S. aid comes as Myanmar is spiraling into a humanitarian crisis, aid groups say.
“A staggering 15 million people are expected to face hunger in 2025, up from 13.3 million last year,” the World Food Programme said in a report on Wednesday.
Almost 20 million people, or nearly one in three people in Myanmar, will need humanitarian assistance in 2025, the U.N. food agency said.
“Growing conflict across the country, access restrictions, a crumbling economy and successive weather-related crises are driving record levels of hunger,” said the WFP Country Director Michael Dunford.
“The world cannot afford to overlook Myanmar’s escalating crisis. Without immediate and increased international support, hundreds of thousands more will be pushed to the brink.”
Edited by RFA Staff.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Kiana Duncan for RFA.
On the Thai-Myanmar border, sick patients are being sent home from hospital. In Laos, school meals have been interrupted. And in Cambodia, hundreds of staff at the agency responsible for clearing land mines have been furloughed.
The U.S. State Department on Friday announced a 90-day freeze on nearly all foreign aid, followed one day later by a suspension of global demining programs, according to the New York Times. The pause is intended to give the State Department time to review programs “to ensure they are efficient and consistent with U.S. foreign policy under the America First agenda,” according to the announcement notice.
In the days since, stop-work orders have been sent by the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, to local implementing partners ranging from media organizations to health clinics.
The U.S. is one of Southeast Asia’s largest providers of aid, and its withdrawal will be felt most in the region’s poorest nations: Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar. Japan provides more to those countries, but the U.S. has gradually increased aid to Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar from $380 million in 2015 to almost $520 million in 2022, according to Grace Stanhope, a research associate at the Lowy Center who works on its Southeast Asia Aid Map.
Relief supplies from USAID are loaded into a plane at the Yangon International airport on May 12, 2008.(Sgt. Andres Alcaraz/U.S. Marine Corps via AFP)
Groups that work with Tibetans, Uyghurs and North Koreans are also feeling the pinch. These include the Tibetan government-in-exile, which is based in Dharamshala, India, and which supports the diaspora community.
On Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a waiver exempting “life-saving” humanitarian aid, including medicine, shelter and food aid.
While both the order and State Department notice make clear that programs can restart once reviews are complete, the impact in many countries has been immediate. RFA spoke with government officials and NGO staffers to better understand what an aid freeze looks like on the ground.
The Department declined to respond to specific questions over email.
Myanmar:
Saturday marks the fourth anniversary of the Feb. 1, 2021 coup, in which the military overthrew the democratically elected government, imprisoning its top leadership. The spiraling civil war that has ensued has displaced 3.4 million people and expanded the refugee population in neighboring Thailand.
Within the days of the stop-work order, a range of U.S.-funded healthcare services began grinding to a halt. In fiscal year 2024, which runs from Oct. 1, 2023 to Sept. 30, 2024, the U.S. provided $141 million in humanitarian aid to Myanmar.
“In-patients at the refugee camp hospital were discharged and told to return home because health workers have been suspended from their duties,” a health worker speaking on the condition of anonymity due to security reasons told RFA. Volunteers were trying to relocate critical patients and send pregnant women in labor to external hospitals, The Irrawaddy reported.
The worker added that approximately 20 civil relief groups providing healthcare with USAID assistance along the Thai-Myanmar border are now at risk of being suspended. A Reuters report said the International Rescue Committee, which funds the clinics, told them they would have to shut down by Friday.
People fleeing fighting between the Myanmar military and opposition forces shelter on the Thai side of the Moei river, in Mae Sot district on April 7, 2023.(AFP)
Along the Thai-Myanmar border, nine refugee camps provide shelter to nearly 140,000 people.
Inside those camps, schools have already “suffered a huge impact,” said Banyar, founder of the Karenni Human Rights Group. Teacher salaries would have to be halted and a pause on the purchase of textbooks and other school supplies, he said.
Those who work on HIV/AIDS programs said they fear the funding may not resume. According to the CDC there are about 100,000 orphans in Myanmar due to AIDS, and testing and treatment programs have allowed hundreds of thousands to access antiretrovirals as well as lower the likelihood of contracting the virus in the first place.
On Tuesday, the Trump administration issued a waiver permitting distribution of HIV medications, but this does not appear to restart broader preventative programs.
In Bangladesh, where more than 1 million Rohingya who fled violence in Myanmar live in chronically underfunded refugee camps, there has been confusion over whether U.S.-funded food programs will continue. Last week, the Bangladesh government said that USAID would continue to provide food aid, but U.S. and U.N. officials appeared unsure where such information originated, according to a report from BenarNews.
The pause has also already impacted a number of exile media newsrooms, which rely on small U.S. grants to provide open information in a country where journalists are routinely imprisoned, forcing a number of them to suspend staffers.
A Rohingya refugee carrying a USAID bag reaches out to a woman as they arrive in Teknaf, Bangladesh on Sept. 9, 2017, after fleeing violence in neighboring Myanmar.(Emrul Kamal/AFP)
Laos
U.S.-funded programs in Laos range from maternal health to demining operations, a critical need in a country that remains the most heavily bombed in the world, per capita, as a result of U.S. aerial attacks in the 1960s and 70s during the Vietnam War. Less than 10 percent of land in Laos has been cleared of unexploded ordnance, according to Sera Koulabdara, CEO of Legacies of War, which works on education and advocacy around removal of landmines in Southeast Asia.
“It is absolutely essential that we hold ourselves accountable for the devastation we caused,” she said. “Just this month in Laos, a 36-year-old man was killed while simply cooking, an innocent victim of an American war that continues to plague the country.”
Chinese tourists take a photo with a China Aid plaque at the Patuxay Victory Monument on April 8, 2024, in Vientiane, Laos.(Lauren DeCicca/Getty Images)
A staffer at an agriculture NGO who spoke on the condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak to the press told RFA he was doubtful other foreign countries would be able to step in if U.S. funding was pulled.
“After the COVID-19 pandemic, proposing for funding around the globe to support our projects is the biggest challenge — it is very difficult and the amount of the funds is also smaller now,” he said.
The country faces a severe debt crisis that has sent the cost of food and other basic goods skyrocketing. In Houaphan, which is one of the poorest provinces in the country, a school meals program has already had to scale back, according to a teacher who spoke to RFA on the condition of anonymity.
Cambodia
Like Laos, Cambodia still struggles with the legacies of decades of conflictas unexploded ordnance continues to maim and kill. The U.S. halt on funding demining programs is likely to set the government back in its goal to be mine-free by the end of the year.
Staffers with the Cambodia Mine Action Center clear a minefield in Preytotoeung village, Battambang province, Cambodia, Jan. 19, 2023.(Heng Sinith/AP)
Heng Ratana, head of the government’s Cambodian Mine Action Center, said the agency receives about $2 million a year from the U.S. government.
As a result of the funding freeze, the center plans to furlough 210 members of its approximately 1,700 workforce nationwide, he told RFA.
“It is a complete shutdown. It is like a forced shutdown,” Heng Ratana said. “We request continued support for the operation because the U.S. funding [agreement] clearly states that it is to clear unexploded ordnance.”
Brian Eyler, the director of the Southeast Asia Program and the Energy, Water and Sustainability Program at the Stimson Center said the funding pause had impacted his own programs, which focus on the Mekong River as well as broader security issues.
He noted that a report launch planned for this week on how the U.S. could counter cybercrime in Southeast Asia had been halted, though he hoped the freeze would soon be lifted.
Nop Vy, executive director of the Cambodian Journalists’ Association, or CamboJa, said 20 to 30 percent of their funding came from USAID, which the group used to run journalist training programs and help fund the independent media outlet, CamboJA News. In recent years, a number of independent media outlets have shut down or been forced by the government to close, leaving a vacuum in access to open information.
Chok Sopheap, then-executive director of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights, delivers a speech to mark International Women’s Day, March 8, 2023, in Phnom Penh.(Heng Sinith/AP)
Heng Kimhong, executive director of the Cambodian Youth Network, said that the suspension of U.S. government assistance would reduce some of its activities related to youth empowerment and the ability to protect natural resources. A USAID fact sheet issued last year noted that deforestation contributed heavily to climate change in Cambodia, which is considered particularly prone to natural disaster.
Still, Heng Kimhong said he was “optimistic” funding would be restored as the U.S. is “not a country that only thinks about itself,” he said. “The United States is a country that protects and ensures the promotion of maintaining world order, building democracy, as well as building better respect for human rights.”
Tibet
Tibet’s government-in-exile, the Central Tibetan Administration, or CTA, represents the Tibetan diaspora and administers schools, health centers and government services for Tibetan exiles in India and Nepal.
Several sources speaking on the condition of anonymity told RFA that the suspension affects programs run by the CTA, the Tibetan Parliament and a range of Tibet-related non-governmental organizations, raising concerns over the continuity of key welfare programs supporting Tibetans outside of China.
An upcoming preparatory meeting for the Parliament-in-Exile was postponed as a result of the funding pause, sources told RFA.
“The directive applies uniformly to all foreign aid recipients. Since Tibetan aid has been secured through congressional support and approval, efforts are underway to work with the State Department and relevant agencies to expedite the review and approval process for continued assistance,” Namgyal Choedup, the representative of the Office of Tibet in Washington, told RFA.
A person holds an “Aid Tibet” sticker before a press conference to highlight the plight of Tibetans, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on March 28, 2023.(Stefani Reynolds/AFP)
Various Tibetan NGOs and activist groups based in India expressed their concerns about the impact of the freeze in foreign assistance programs and said they hoped it would be soon lifted.
Gonpo Dhondup, president of the Tibetan Youth Congress, emphasized the importance of U.S. aid for the Tibetan freedom movement and community stability. Tsering Dolma, president of the Tibetan Women’s Association, said assistance has been crucial for maintaining the exile Tibetan community.
“Despite the 90-day suspension, I hope an alternative arrangement can be made to ensure continued U.S. support,” Tashi, a Tibetan resident in Dharamsala, told RFA.
North Korea
While the U.S. has long banned providing aid to the North Korean government, it has been a supporter of North Korean human rights organizations. Such programs help with global advocacy efforts on behalf of those living inside the closed nation, and also support refugees abroad.
A representative from a North Korean human rights organization, who requested anonymity to speak freely, said the group received the stop-work order from their U.S. funders Saturday and requested an exemption waiver.
“We will not be able to pay staff salaries, making furloughs or contract terminations inevitable. Backpay is also impossible because providing backpay would imply that employees worked during that period.”
Ji Chul-ho, a North Korean escapee who is the director of external relations at the South Korea-based rights organization NAUH, told RFA he worried about the longer term impacts of such a pause.
“While this is said to be a temporary suspension of grant expenditures, I worry that it will lead to a reduction in North Korean human rights activities and make it harder for various organizations to raise their voices collectively,” he said.
Sean Kang, co-founder of the Ohio-based North Korea Human Rights Watch, told RFA a funding pause was hugely disruptive.
“U.S. government projects related to North Korea require meticulous planning and scheduling, maintaining security, and being carried out cautiously over the medium to long term,” he said. “A three-month [pause] in such projects can cause significant disruptions, and if funding is ultimately canceled, all the efforts made so far could be wasted, leading to an even greater loss.”
Reporting by RFA Burmese, RFA Khmer, RFA Korean, RFA Lao, and RFA Tibetan.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA.
A provision to increase the aid entering Gaza under the ceasefire is welcome but insufficient, and shows Israel could have allowed more food, medicine and other supplies into the strip during the war, humanitarian and legal experts have said.
The deal agreed this week allows for 600 trucks a day of aid to enter Gaza, where nine out of 10 Palestinians are going hungry and experts warn that famine is imminent in areas. Israel faces accusations it is using starvation as a weapon of war.
Māori politicians across the political spectrum in Aotearoa New Zealand have called for immediate aid to enter Gaza following a temporary ceasefire agreement between Hamas and Israel.
The ceasefire, agreed yesterday, comes into effect on Sunday, January 19.
Foreign Minister Winston Peters said New Zealand welcomed the deal and called for humanitarian aid for the strip.
Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer … “This ceasefire must be accompanied by a global effort to rebuild Gaza.” Image: Te Pāti Māori
“There now needs to be a massive, rapid, unimpeded flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza.“
Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer echoed similar sentiments on behalf of her party, saying, “the destruction of vital infrastructure — homes, schools, hospitals — has decimated communities”.
“This ceasefire must be accompanied by a global effort to rebuild Gaza,” she said.
Teanau Tuiono, Green Party spokesperson for Foreign Affairs, specifically called on Aotearoa to increase its aid to Palestine.
‘Brutal, illegal Israeli occupation’
“[We must] support the reconstruction of Gaza as determined by Palestinians. We owe it to Palestinians who for many years have lived under brutal and illegal occupation by Israeli forces, and are now entrenched in a humanitarian crisis of horrific proportions,” he said.
“The genocide in Gaza, and the complicity of many governments in Israel’s campaign of merciless violence against the Palestinian people on their own land, has exposed serious flaws in the international community’s ability to uphold international law.
“This means our country and others have work to do to rebuild trust in the international system that is meant to uphold human rights and prioritise peace,” said the Green MP.
With tens of thousands of Palestinians killed in the 15 month war, negotiators reached a ceasefire deal yesterday in Gaza for six-weeks, after Hamas agreed to release hostages from the 7 October 2023 attacks in exchange for Palestinian prisoners — many held without charge — held in Israel.
“The terms of the deal must now be implemented fully. Protection of civilians and the release of hostages must be at the forefront of effort.
“To achieve a durable and lasting peace, we call on the parties to take meaningful steps towards a two-state solution. Political will is the key to ensuring history does not repeat itself,” Peters said in a statement.
Tuiono called it a victory for Palestinians and those within the solidarity movement.
“However, it must be followed by efforts to establish justice and self-determination for Palestinians, and bring an end to Israeli apartheid and the illegal occupation of Palestine.
“We must divest public funds from illegal settlements, recognise the State of Palestine, and join South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, just as we joined Ukraine’s case against Russia.”
Ngawera-Packer added that the ceasefire deal did not equal a free Palestine anytime soon.
“We must not forget the larger reality of the ongoing conflict, which is rooted in decades of displacement, violence, and oppression.
“Although the annihilation may be over for now, the apartheid continues. We will continue to call out our government who have done nothing to end the violence, and to end the apartheid.
“We must also be vigilant over these next three days to ensure that Israel will not exploit this window to create more carnage,” Ngarewa-Packer said.
