The Trump administration’s decision to close the U.S. Agency for International Development has drawn widespread criticism from congressional Democrats and raised questions about the influence billionaire ally Elon Musk wields over the federal government.
The United States is the world’s largest source of foreign assistance by far, although several European countries allocate a much bigger share of their budgets. While aid to Africa dwarfs the roughly $2 billion that Latin America receives annually, the Western Hemisphere has long been a spending priority of both Democratic and Republican administrations.
Here is a look at USAID’s impact around the world:
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.
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.
Meanwhile, without U.S. aid, other groups can’t give volunteers allowances for food and public transport as they do outreach to keep girls in school and out of early marriages.
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.
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 Thursday.
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.”
Myanmar’s military government is the most repressive in Southeast Asia, clamping down on free media, imprisoning thousands of nonviolent critics and political rivals and carrying out a brutal war against pro-democracy resistance forces, heedless of civilian casualties.
The freeze includes ”$8 million for seven projects defending human rights; $30 million for nine initiatives promoting democracy; and $1 million for two programs supporting independent media,” it said.
Human Rights Myanmar, whose members are rights workers forced to act covertly inside the Southeast Asian nation, said that the freeze also “suspended $22 million for humanitarian aid, $36 million for agriculture, $22 million for health and $30 million for education.”
The civil war in Myanmar has caused a severe humanitarian crisis, especially affecting more than 3 million displaced people, according to U.N. estimates.
In the southern Mexican city of Villahermosa, the Peace Oasis of the Holy Spirit Amparito shelter is one of several beneficiaries of U.S. humanitarian assistance to those fleeing persecution, crisis or violence.
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