The US Congress should be ashamed by its role in helping Donald Trump claw back billions of dollars in foreign aid funding already allocated to projects around the world, activists have said.
The House of Representatives recently narrowly voted through a request to claw back $9.4 billion (£7bn) of funds – known as rescissions – with $8bn of that coming from foreign aid. It is the first step to making these cuts permanent.
Programmes operating in 14 African countries have told The Independent they have been denied ring-fenced funding since Trump re-entered the White House in January and issued executive orders to slash aid spending, something HIV advocacy group, the Aids Vaccine Advocacy Coalition (AVAC) has claimed was “illegal” and “immoral”.
Each year, US legislators vote through a budget setting out what the government must spend on different activities. By not spending money already allocated by Congress on foreign aid projects, Trump acted beyond the powers of the presidency, said Prof Lawrence Gostin, a law professor at Georgetown University.
A federal judge ruled in March that Trump had overstepped in withholding funds and that his government owed aid recipients money for work done in the first few weeks of his presidency, before contracts were cancelled. That case is currently being appealed by the government.
“The president has no power to unilaterally withhold funding already allocated by Congress,” he said. However, using a “rare vote of Congress to rescind the funds it has already allocated” allows Trump to withhold the promised money legally.
“And to its shame, the House of Representatives has done just that,” Prof Gostin said. The package of cuts must now go to the Senate for a vote before becoming law. It has been suggested that the Senate will pick up the bill next month, but may try to tweak the contents.
Thursday’s vote was a, “pretty clear example that [lawmakers] are happy to roll over and give the president what he wants,” said Mitchell Warren, executive director of AVAC which sued the government.
“They still acted illegally and immorally,” Mr Warren claimed. “This process does not change that”.
Until it was allowed to expire at the end of March, the US President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar), which forms the backbone of the world’s HIV response, set out in law that 10 per cent of its funds must be spent on orphans and vulnerable children.
But since January, projects across Sub-Saharan Africa have not seen any of the promised funds, The Independent has learned, leaving vulnerable children without vital services to prevent HIV, access nutrition and report sexual violence. It’s one example of the cuts which look set to become permanent, through claw backs of existing funds and a new budget proposed this month.
Based on Trump’s proposed budget for next year, the majority of specialised support for orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) aside from basic medical treatment, are likely to be permanently excluded from receiving future US funds.
These wider support services have been shown to protect children from contracting HIV and successfully link HIV-positive children to treatment.
Project Hope in Namibia, which linked children in rural communities with HIV treatment and prevention, is another programme to have its OVC funding under Pepfar withheld since January.
Early data showed children with HIV enrolled in Project Hope Namibia’s programme were more likely to have the levels of virus in their blood brought down to undetectable levels – 96 per cent in January compared with 85 per cent the previous September. Suppressing the virus means they won’t get sick or be able to infect others.
“They don't understand those programmes are lifesaving,” Leila Nimatallah, vice president of US advocacy group First Focus on Children, said.
More than half of children with untreated HIV will die before their second birthday.
‘Illegal and immoral’
A State Department official said Pepfar continued to support “lifesaving HIV testing, care and treatment” including for orphans and vulnerable children, but that all other services are currently being reviewed.
But that’s not how people working on the ground see things playing out. “We will expect children to be dying who are not supposed to be dying,” said Desmond Otieno, project coordinator at HIV service the Integrated Development Facility in Kenya. The US has withheld money previously promised to IDF Kenya for services including medication counselling and psychological support since Trump took office, and the facility has already recorded deaths of children who were no longer able to access medication.
“That is the most outrageous [thing]” Mr Otieno said.
The State Department spokesperson added that all foreign assistance programmes “should be reduced over time” as they achieve their mission and move countries “toward self-reliance".
Project Hope in Namibia says its plan to make sure its services could be maintained by the local government by 2028 had been scuppered by the programmes abrupt ending, however. The process of transferring responsibility over including training up local staff will now be a lot harder, achieving exactly the opposite of this goal.
Ms Nimatallah said she was calling on the Senate to “reject this cruel rescissions package”.
“By passing this bill, Congress is taking back funding that it had already appropriated for the prevention of suffering and death of children under five from dirty water, infectious disease, and malnutrition,” she said, as well as funds “set aside to protect Aids orphans from hunger and sex trafficking.
“The long and short of it is that the United States has turned its back on these children that it has promised to care for”.
This piece has been produced as part of The Independent’s Rethinking Global Aid series
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