Equipment and supplies from Fairfax, Virginia, and USAID are loaded onto a transport plane at Dover Air Force Base, Delaware, US, in February 2023.;
Credit: US Air Force/Handout via REUTERS
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Hundreds of internal contractors working for the US Agency for International Development are being put on unpaid leave and some are being terminated after US President Donald Trump imposed a sweeping freeze on US foreign aid worldwide.
The furloughs come even as US Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued overnight an additional waiver for "life-saving humanitarian assistance" while Washington undertakes the 90-day review Trump initiated just hours after he came into office on 20 January.
Despite the waiver, health and humanitarian groups around the world on Wednesday were still uncertain if and how they could resume work and whether their programmes were covered by the exception.
The administration says it is conducting the review to ensure the tens of billions of dollars worth of US foreign assistance worldwide is aligned with Trump's "America First" foreign policy and not a waste of taxpayer money.
The United States is by far the largest donor of aid globally. In fiscal year 2023, it disbursed $72 billion of assistance worldwide on everything from women's health in conflict zones to access to clean water, HIV/AIDS treatments, energy security and anti-corruption work.
The State Department said on Wednesday that the pause in assistance stopped the provision of "condoms and other contraceptive services in Gaza", clean energy programs for women in Fiji and family planning throughout Latin America, among other programmes.
It did not explain under which aid programmes exactly the funding was provided but said that so far over $1 billion in spending "not aligned with an America First agenda has been prevented."
The furlough of hundreds of institutional support contractors, who work in the US including at USAID's offices, comes after the administration put on leave about 60 career officials at USAID on Monday in a move that current and former officials said appeared designed to silence any dissent and raised concern about a lack of non-partisan leadership at the agency.
A USAID official, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter, said "stop-work" orders issued on Monday for institutional support contracts resulted in 600 people being sent home and furloughed in the agency's Global Health bureau.
The Public Health Institute (PHI), an institutional support contractor for USAID's Global Health bureau, sent an email to employees of its Global Health Training, Advisory and Support Contract programme late on Tuesday saying their employment has been terminated as a result of a stop-work order.
USAID and the State Department did not respond to requests for comment. PHI did not respond to a request on how many employees were affected.
A second USAID official said contractors came into the office to try to push their work forward as much as possible and get their files to people who could continue it once it became clear they would receive stop-work orders. "People aren't being defiant of the orders. They're ... just insisting on finding ways to continue to pursue the mission of this agency overall," the official said.
The official said resuming the delivery of aid after the 90-day review will be made "very hard" without them.
LIFE-SAVING ASSISTANCE
Following Trump's executive order last week, the State Department issued worldwide stop-work directives, effectively freezing all foreign aid with the exception of emergency food assistance.
Rubio, Trump's top diplomat, defined life-saving humanitarian assistance as core life-saving medicine, medical services, food, shelter, and subsistence assistance, supplies and reasonable administrative costs to deliver such assistance.
He said the waiver will not apply to activities "that involve abortions, family planning conferences, administrative costs ... gender or DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) ideology programmes, transgender surgeries, or other non-life saving assistance," according to a State Department memo sent to implementing partners and non-governmental organisations.
The lack of detail in Trump's executive order and the ensuing waivers has created confusion among global humanitarian groups which are scrambling to work out whether to take the financial risk of continuing assistance.
The State Department said in its statement on Wednesday that critical national security waivers had also been granted, including to ensure the protection of US personnel overseas and enforce non-proliferation obligations, adding that exceptions have been reviewed and approved when needed within hours.
