Aid agencies are sounding the alarm about President Donald Trump’s mission to upend the U.S. Agency for International Development, which they say is already hampering efforts to provide assistance to Palestinians reeling from 15 months of war in Gaza.
Medical supplies, food deliveries and other vital humanitarian supplies were already being held up in other parts of the world by the administration’s 90-day freeze on all foreign aid, and humanitarian organizations are warning that the situation in Gaza could become even more dire if there is a similar delay there
The pause was being “felt all over” by humanitarian organizations working on the ground, said Jesse Marks, the senior advocate for the Middle East at Refugees International, a Washington based nonprofit.
“These are like the front-line defense when it comes to humanitarian challenges and providing humanitarian needs,” Marks told NBC News in a phone interview earlier this week. “These are the people who are managing field hospitals, who are actually distributing the aid, getting it from Point A to Point B.”
A truck loaded with humanitarian aid drives through a devastated street in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, late last month.
USAID has been a major funder of support for Palestinians in both Gaza and the occupied West Bank. In a November news release, the agency said it had invested over $600 million in economic support funding for Palestinians since 2021.
This was in addition to over $1.2 billion dedicated to humanitarian assistance for Palestinians since Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas launched multipronged attacks on Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking around 250 hostage, marking a major escalation in the conflict.
More than 47,000 people have died in the enclave since then, although researchers have estimated that the death toll is likely much higher.
USAID also announced in November that it planned to dedicate $230 million in additional funding to support economic recovery and development programs in Gaza and the West Bank.
That same month, Amy Tohill-Stull, director of USAID’s West Bank and Gaza mission, said in a statement that the U.S. commitment to the Palestinian people remained “steadfast.”
But the agency’s future is now deeply uncertain after Trump, in one of his first acts in office last month, paused development assistance from USAID for 90 days to assess compatibility with his “America First” policy.
Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, dubbed a “special government employee” by the White House, also said Monday that he and Trump were in the process of shutting it down.
Trump has since suggested that the U.S. should seek ownership of Gaza. Having made conflicting comments Tuesday on whether Palestinians would be able to stay in the enclave under such a proposal, on Thursday he suggested they could live in “far safer and more beautiful communities, with new and modern homes, in the region.”
After the State Department took control of USAID this week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Fox News the move was “not about getting rid of foreign aid,” but that reforming the United States’ international aid programming could be necessary.
The White House decision came days after an Israeli ban on the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees came into effect in a move that the world body warned will jeopardize humanitarian aid efforts in the Gaza Strip, the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
The Trump administration has also vowed to extend a suspension on UNRWA funding brought in by its predecessors after Israel accused workers with the agency of taking part in the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks.
Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to be Israel’s biggest arms provider. Washington spent at least $17.9 billion on military aid for Israel in the first year of Israeli forces’ deadly offensive in Gaza, according to a November report for Brown University’s Costs of War project.
On the ground, the pause in USAID funding was already having tangible effects, agencies warned.
A doctor monitors newborn babies at the intensive care unit of the International Medical Corps field hospital in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, on July 22, 2024.
The day after Trump signed his executive order, the International Medical Corps also warned that it could soon have to halt lifesaving medical support in the enclave if a stop-work order remains in place.
The global nonprofit, which said it had received $68 million from USAID in support of its operations since Oct. 7, 2023, has used the funding to operate two large field hospitals in central Gaza, including one in the city of Deir al-Balah and another in the nearby town of Al Zawaida.
“These facilities provide 24/7 lifesaving medical care to roughly 33,000 civilians per month, in a highly dangerous and insecure environment where healthcare infrastructure has been decimated,” the organization said in a statement late last month.
It also warned that if the stop-work order remained in place, it would be unable to continue those efforts beyond this week or so.
Asked by NBC News whether that was still the case on Wednesday, the IMC declined to comment on the record.
As of Friday, UNICEF spokesperson Tess Ingram said she had not seen major impacts of the USAID cuts on the ground in northern Gaza, but she said, “that doesn’t mean they’re not happening” there or elsewhere.
And she warned that the brief moment of relative stability afforded in Gaza under the current ceasefire underway was fragile as aid organizations on the ground look to provide vital services and supplies to families amid the pause in fighting.
Oxfam America President and CEO Abby Maxman also cautioned in a statement Saturday that “dismantling USAID would be a callous, destructive political power play that would have deadly consequences for millions of people living in dire humanitarian emergencies and extreme poverty.”
“By dismissing almost all USAID staff, the Trump administration is recklessly throwing away decades of critical experience and expertise in the global fight against poverty, hunger, disease and inequality,” she said.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
