USAID funding: Swiss aid groups urge foreign minister to act

USAID distributes billions of dollars of humanitarian aid around the world, but US President Donald Trump has ordered a freeze on most US foreign aid and tasked billionaire Elon Musk with scaling down the agency. Keystone-SDA

Swiss aid agencies and churches have urged Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis to take action following the freeze to funds disbursed by USAID. The relief organisation of the Swiss Protestant Reformed Church (HEKS) last week announced the dismissal of 100 employees as a result of these cuts.

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The Trump administration’s recent decision – first to freeze most funds disbursed by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) for 90 days and put most of its staff on leave and then to ask billionaire Elon Musk to scale down the agency – has caused chaos for NGOs and humanitarian projects worldwide.

“These decisions have dramatic consequences for the world’s poorest people,” wrote Caritas Switzerland, Fastenopfer, Swiss Interchurch Aid (HEKS), the Evangelical Reformed Church of Switzerland and the Swiss Conference of Bishops in an open letter sent to the Swiss foreign ministry on Thursday.

Many humanitarian aid and international cooperation programmes are in danger of being unable to continue their activities, they warn. The consequences would be disastrous for millions of women, children, the elderly, the sick and the disabled in the world’s most precarious regions.

Switzerland has a responsibility

Switzerland, guardian of the Geneva Conventions and host to the UN’s main humanitarian organizations, has a particular responsibility, the organisations say.

+ Foreign aid cuts: where does Switzerland stand?

“We cannot accept that funds should be drastically cut, that human lives should be deliberately put at risk, and that the achievements of development cooperation should be reduced to nothing (…). The humanist tradition of our country obliges us, and you, to intervene actively,” the organisations state.

They urge the Swiss foreign minister to make a “strong and determined” diplomatic commitment to maintaining humanitarian structures, particularly within the United Nations. They also demand him to take action on behalf of Switzerland to ensure that rich countries assume their responsibilities towards the poorest people, and that development cooperation is not further stripped of its substance.

Direct consequences

Following the freeze on US humanitarian aid, HEKS announced that it would have to close its humanitarian projects in Ukraine, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), financed solely by the US agency. These closures will affect more than 100 employees, who will be made redundant. More than 800,000 people will be affected, according to Joëlle Herren Laufer, head of media at the group’s French-speaking headquarters.

+ Swiss children’s charity loses $10 million USAID funding

The Lausanne-based NGO Terre des hommes has announced that $10 million in annual contributions will be cut. Projects in nine countries have been affected and around 1.5 million beneficiaries have lost “vital support”, said the children’s aid organisation.

Médecins du Monde Switzerland, which helps migrant populations in Mexico, announced in a press release on Thursday that it was doing everything possible to maintain its services without interruption. The organisation will finance its activities for a transitional period of six weeks with its own funds.

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Translated from French with DeepL/sb

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