From fighting disease to protecting the Amazon rainforest, USAID has big impact across the globe

The Trump administration’s decision to close the U.S. Agency for International Development has drawn widespread criticism from congressional Democrats and raised questions and concern about the influence billionaire ally Elon Musk wields over the federal government.

The United States is by far the world’s largest source of foreign assistance, although several European countries allocate a much bigger share of their budgets to aid. USAID funds projects in some 120 countries aimed at fighting epidemics, educating children, providing clean water and supporting other areas of development.

Here is a look at USAID’s impact around the world:

Protecting the Amazon rainforest and fighting cocaine in South America

USAID has been critical in providing humanitarian assistance in Colombia, conservation efforts in the Brazilian Amazon and coca eradication in Peru. Recent USAID money has also supported emergency humanitarian aid to more than 2.8 million Venezuelans who fled economic crisis.

In 2024 alone, the agency transferred some $45 million to the U.N. World Food Program, mostly to assist Venezuelans.

In Brazil, USAID’s largest initiative is the Partnership for the Conservation of Amazon Biodiversity, which focuses on conservation and improving livelihoods for Indigenous peoples and other rainforest communities.

Over in Peru, part of USAID’s $135 million funding in 2024 was dedicated to financing cocaine-production alternatives such as coffee and cacao. The humanitarian agency has been seeking to curb production of the drug since the early 1980s.

Disease response, girls’ education and free school lunches in Africa

Last year, the U.S. gave the sub-Saharan region more than $6.5 billion in humanitarian assistance. But since Trump’s announcement, HIV patients in Africa found locked doors at clinics funded by an acclaimed U.S. program that helped rein in the global AIDS epidemic.

Known as one of the world’s most successful foreign aid program, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, has been credited with saving more than 25 million lives, largely in Africa.

“The world is baffled,” said Aaron Motsoaledi, the health minister of South Africa, the country with the most people living with HIV, after the U.S. freeze on aid.

Motsoaledi says the U.S. funds nearly 20% of the $2.3 billion needed each year to run South Africa’s HIV/AIDS program through PEPFAR, and now the biggest response to a single disease in history is under threat.

The effects of halting U.S. aid are also rippling across sub-Saharan Africa. In Ghana, the Chemonics International development group said it’s pulling logistics for programs in maternal and child health, malaria response and HIV.

Education programs have been halted in Mali, a conflict-battered West African nation where USAID has become the country’s main humanitarian partner after others left following a 2021 coup.

In civil-war-torn Sudan, which is grappling with cholera, malaria and measles, the aid freeze means 600,000 people will be at risk of catching and spreading those diseases, said an official who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

Hospitals in war-ravaged Syria

Doctors of the World Turkey says it has been forced to lay off 300 staff and shutter 12 field hospitals it runs across northern Syria, a region devastated by years of war and a huge 2023 earthquake. Hakan Bilgin, the organization’s president, said it relies on USAID for 60% of its funding and has had to cut its daily consultations from 5,000 to 500.

“As a medical organization providing life-saving services, you’re basically saying, ‘Close all the clinics, stop all your doctors, and you’re not providing services to women, children, and the elderly,” Bilgin said.

Bilgin said the impact on northern Syria, where millions rely on outside medical aid, could be catastrophic.

“The real impact is bigger than we can measure right now,” he said in the group’s Istanbul office, surrounded by half-unpacked boxes and worried colleagues.

Support for marginalized communities from the Balkans to Uganda

In Kosovo, which has received more than $1 billion from USAID since 1999, women’s groups fear the impact of losing American funding for gender and diversity-related projects in the conservative country.

“This might leave women’s groups stranded and unsupported,” said Ariana Qosaj Mustafa of the Kosovo Women’s Network.

Emina Bosnjak of the Sarajevo Open Center said USAID promotes awareness of discrimination, violence and hate speech, and marginalized groups would suffer if that stops.

“Stronger narratives that stand against human rights and stand against democracy and rule of law will actually become more visible,” she said.

A non-profit organization supporting LGBTQ people in Uganda also feels under threat. Pius Kennedy, a program officer with the Kampala-based nonprofit Africa Queer Network, said he and five other permanent employees had been ordered by USAID to stop work.

He said the funding freeze could erase years of gains made in protecting sexual minorities in Uganda, one of more than 30 African countries where homosexuality is criminalized.

“We would always look at the United States as something that we would always run to in case you are facing a number of insecurities in the country,” Kennedy said — but that may no longer be the case.

Support for media in Myanmar and mine clearance in Cambodia

The freeze of foreign assistance from USAID include $39 million for rights, democracy, and media in Myanmar, whose military seized power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in 2021, a human rights group said yesterday.

The group Human Rights Myanmar said the frozen funds “are vital for organizations challenging military rule and promoting democracy, which advance U.S. interests by upholding American values and countering China’s authoritarian influence.” KIMBERLEE KRUESI, MDT/AP