Hundreds of 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 January 20.
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.
'America First agenda'
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 programmes for women in Fiji and family planning throughout Latin America, among other programmes, saying that so far over $1 billion in spending "not aligned with an America First agenda has been prevented."
The furlough of hundreds of contractors 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.
Worldwide stop-work directive
Public Health Institute, an institutional support contractor for USAID's Global Health bureau, sent an email to its employees late on Tuesday saying their employment has been terminated as a result of a stop-work order.
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 organizations.
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.
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