On the Thai-Myanmar border, sick patients are being sent home from hospital. In Laos, school meals have been interrupted. And in Cambodia, hundreds of staff at the agency responsible for clearing land mines have been furloughed.
The U.S. State Department on Friday announced a 90-day freeze on nearly all foreign aid, followed one day later by a suspension of global demining programs, according to the New York Times. The pause is intended to give the State Department time to review programs “to ensure they are efficient and consistent with U.S. foreign policy under the America First agenda,” according to the announcement notice.
In the days since, stop-work orders have been sent by the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, to local implementing partners ranging from media organizations to health clinics.
The U.S. is one of Southeast Asia’s largest providers of aid, and its withdrawal will be felt most in the region’s poorest nations: Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar.
Japan provides more to those countries, but the U.S. has gradually increased aid to Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar from $380 million in 2015 to almost $520 million in 2022, according to Grace Stanhope, a research associate at the Lowy Center who works on its Southeast Asia Aid Map.
Groups that work with Tibetans, Uyghurs and North Koreans are also feeling the pinch. These include the Tibetan government-in-exile, which is based in Dharamshala, India, and which supports the diaspora community.
On Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a waiver exempting “life-saving” humanitarian aid, including medicine, shelter and food aid.
While both the order and State Department notice make clear that programs can restart once reviews are complete, the impact in many countries has been immediate. RFA spoke with government officials and NGO staffers to better understand what an aid freeze looks like on the ground.
The Department declined to respond to specific questions over email.
Myanmar
Saturday marks the fourth anniversary of the Feb. 1, 2021, coup, in which the military overthrew the democratically elected government, imprisoning its top leadership. The spiraling civil war that has ensued has displaced 3.4 million people and expanded the refugee population in neighboring Thailand.
Within days of the stop-work order, a range of U.S.-funded healthcare services began grinding to a halt. In fiscal year 2024, which runs from Oct. 1, 2023, to Sept. 30, 2024, the United States provided $141 million in humanitarian aid to Myanmar.
“In-patients at the refugee camp hospital were discharged and told to return home because health workers have been suspended from their duties,” a health worker speaking on the condition of anonymity due to security reasons told RFA. Volunteers were trying to relocate critical patients and send pregnant women in labor to external hospitals, The Irrawaddy reported.
The worker added that approximately 20 civil relief groups providing healthcare with USAID assistance along the Thai-Myanmar border are now at risk of being suspended. A Reuters report said the International Rescue Committee, which funds the clinics, told them they would have to shut down by Friday.
Along the Thai-Myanmar border, nine refugee camps provide shelter to nearly 140,000 people.
Inside those camps, schools have already “suffered a huge impact,” said Banyar, founder of the Karenni Human Rights Group. Teacher salaries would have to be halted and a pause on the purchase of textbooks and other school supplies, he said.
Those who work on HIV/AIDS programs said they fear the funding may not resume. According to the CDC there are about 100,000 orphans in Myanmar due to AIDS, and testing and treatment programs have allowed hundreds of thousands to access antiretrovirals as well as lower the likelihood of contracting the virus in the first place.
On Tuesday, the Trump administration issued a waiver permitting distribution of HIV medications, but this does not appear to restart broader preventative programs.
In Bangladesh, where more than 1 million Rohingya who fled violence in Myanmar live in chronically underfunded refugee camps, there has been confusion over whether U.S.-funded food programs will continue. Last week, the Bangladesh government said that USAID would continue to provide food aid, but U.S. and U.N. officials appeared unsure where such information originated, according to a report from BenarNews.
The pause has also already impacted a number of exile media newsrooms, which rely on small U.S. grants to provide open information in a country where journalists are routinely imprisoned, forcing a number of them to suspend staffers.
Laos
U.S.-funded programs in Laos range from maternal health to demining operations, a critical need in a country that remains the most heavily bombed in the world, per capita, as a result of U.S. aerial attacks in the 1960s and 70s during the Vietnam War. Less than 10 percent of land in Laos has been cleared of unexploded ordnance, according to Sera Koulabdara, CEO of Legacies of War, which works on education and advocacy around removal of landmines in Southeast Asia.
“It is absolutely essential that we hold ourselves accountable for the devastation we caused,” she said. “Just this month in Laos, a 36-year-old man was killed while simply cooking, an innocent victim of an American war that continues to plague the country.”
A staffer at an agriculture NGO who spoke on the condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak to the press told RFA he was doubtful other foreign countries would be able to step in if American funding was pulled.
“After the COVID-19 pandemic, proposing for funding around the globe to support our projects is the biggest challenge — it is very difficult and the amount of the funds is also smaller now,” he said.
The country faces a severe debt crisis that has sent the cost of food and other basic goods skyrocketing. In Houaphan, which is one of the poorest provinces in the country, a school meals program has already had to scale back, according to a teacher who spoke to RFA on the condition of anonymity.
Cambodia
Like Laos, Cambodia still struggles with the legacies of decades of conflict as unexploded ordnance continues to maim and kill. The U.S. halt on funding demining programs is likely to set the government back in its goal to be mine-free by the end of the year.
Heng Ratana, head of the government’s Cambodian Mine Action Center, said the agency receives about $2 million a year from the U.S. government.
As a result of the funding freeze, the center plans to furlough 210 members of its approximately 1,700 workforce nationwide, he told RFA.
“It is a complete shutdown. It is like a forced shutdown,” Heng Ratana said. “We request continued support for the operation because the U.S. funding [agreement] clearly states that it is to clear unexploded ordnance.”
Brian Eyler, the director of the Southeast Asia Program and the Energy, Water and Sustainability Program at the Stimson Center said the funding pause had impacted his own programs, which focus on the Mekong River as well as broader security issues.
He noted that a report launch planned for this week on how the U.S. could counter cybercrime in Southeast Asia had been halted, though he hoped the freeze would soon be lifted.
Nop Vy, executive director of the Cambodian Journalists’ Association, or CamboJa, said 20 to 30 percent of their funding came from USAID, which the group used to run journalist training programs and help fund the independent media outlet, CamboJA News. In recent years, a number of independent media outlets have shut down or been forced by the government to close, leaving a vacuum in access to open information.
Heng Kimhong, executive director of the Cambodian Youth Network, said that the suspension of U.S. government assistance would reduce some of its activities related to youth empowerment and the ability to protect natural resources. A USAID fact sheet issued last year noted that deforestation contributed heavily to climate change in Cambodia, which is considered particularly prone to natural disaster.
Still, Heng Kimhong said he was “optimistic” funding would be restored as the U.S. is “not a country that only thinks about itself,” he said. “The United States is a country that protects and ensures the promotion of maintaining world order, building democracy, as well as building better respect for human rights.”
Tibet
Tibet’s government-in-exile, the Central Tibetan Administration, or CTA, represents the Tibetan diaspora and administers schools, health centers and government services for Tibetan exiles in India and Nepal.
Several sources speaking on the condition of anonymity told RFA that the suspension affects programs run by the CTA, the Tibetan Parliament and a range of Tibet-related non-governmental organizations, raising concerns over the continuity of key welfare programs supporting Tibetans outside of China.
An upcoming preparatory meeting for the Parliament-in-Exile was postponed as a result of the funding pause, sources told RFA.
“The directive applies uniformly to all foreign aid recipients. Since Tibetan aid has been secured through congressional support and approval, efforts are underway to work with the State Department and relevant agencies to expedite the review and approval process for continued assistance,” Namgyal Choedup, the representative of the Office of Tibet in Washington, told RFA.
Various Tibetan NGOs and activist groups based in India expressed their concerns about the impact of the freeze in foreign assistance programs and said they hoped it would be soon lifted.
Gonpo Dhondup, president of the Tibetan Youth Congress, emphasized the importance of U.S. aid for the Tibetan freedom movement and community stability. Tsering Dolma, president of the Tibetan Women’s Association, said assistance has been crucial for maintaining the exile Tibetan community.
“Despite the 90-day suspension, I hope an alternative arrangement can be made to ensure continued U.S. support,” Tashi, a Tibetan resident in Dharamsala, told RFA.
North Korea
While the U.S. has long banned providing aid to the North Korean government, it has been a supporter of North Korean human rights organizations. Such programs help with global advocacy efforts on behalf of those living inside the closed nation, and also support refugees abroad.
A representative from a North Korean human rights organization, who requested anonymity to speak freely, said the group received the stop-work order from their U.S. funders Saturday and requested an exemption waiver.
“We will not be able to pay staff salaries, making furloughs or contract terminations inevitable. Backpay is also impossible because providing backpay would imply that employees worked during that period.”
Ji Chul-ho, a North Korean escapee who is the director of external relations at the South Korea-based rights organization NAUH, told RFA he worried about the longer term impacts of such a pause.
“While this is said to be a temporary suspension of grant expenditures, I worry that it will lead to a reduction in North Korean human rights activities and make it harder for various organizations to raise their voices collectively,” he said.
Sean Kang, co-founder of the Ohio-based North Korea Human Rights Watch, told RFA a funding pause was hugely disruptive.
“U.S. government projects related to North Korea require meticulous planning and scheduling, maintaining security, and being carried out cautiously over the medium to long term,” he said. “A three-month [pause] in such projects can cause significant disruptions, and if funding is ultimately canceled, all the efforts made so far could be wasted, leading to an even greater loss.”
Reporting by RFA Burmese, RFA Khmer, RFA Korean, RFA Lao, and RFA Tibetan.