Drafted 8 April , updated 21 July 2025
UN says new US cuts put millions at risk of ‘death penalty’
Le Monde with AFP
The UN agency in charge of food aid, whose budget has already been cut in 2025, denounces the cessation of US assistance to fourteen ‘famine-hit’ countries and hopes to change their minds.
The UN World Food Programme (WFP) announced on Monday 7 April that it had been informed by Washington of new cuts in emergency food aid in 14 countries, fearing the ‘death penalty for thousands of people’.
The WFP, which has already suffered a 40 per cent drop in funding for 2025, ‘is very concerned about recent notifications from the US administration that funding for emergency food aid in 14 countries has been cut,’ the UN agency wrote on its X account, without specifying which countries were affected.
“If implemented, it would represent the death penalty for millions of people facing extreme hunger and starvation,” it warned. “We are in contact with the US administration for clarification and to request continued support for these vital programmes,” the WFP said.
Below: children in Chad (Tchad): they had never eaten a piece of fruit before we offered it to them.
Multiplication of budget cuts
The new cuts do not only affect the WFP. The US administration informed the United Nations Population Fund on Friday of the end of two new programmes, the agency specialising in maternal and child health told Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Monday. One concernsAfghanistan to the tune of $24 million, the other Syria.
Announcements of international aid cuts have multiplied in recent months, particularly by the US, raising concern among NGOs and international organisations.
The global application
The administration of US President Donald Trump has cut 83%, or ‘tens of billions of dollars’, from the programmes of the US development agency USAID, which until now alone managed an annual budget of $42.8 billion, or 42% of global humanitarian aid.
The Trump administration’s food aid cuts put millions of people at risk.
The current White House tenant’s total lack of vision will have indirect consequences because Africa is crucial for Europe but also for the US.
In addition to hunger and death there will be political consequences: more instability, wars and fundamentalist Islamism, sponsored mainly by Saudi Arabia (and not only…).
In this context, aggravated by the disengagement of other donors, the World Food Programme reduced its operations in Mauritania, Mali and the Central African Republic and warned that, without reinforcements, it will run out of food supplies by September in the seven West African countries where it operates. The situation of thousands of refugees and displaced people is deteriorating. Disruptions have emerged in the supply of drugs to treat major diseases, such as malaria. The detection and treatment of HIV is undergoing serious upheaval, even though on 17 July US elected officials spared some of the funds earmarked for Pepfar, the global programme to combat AIDS created in 2003 by Republican George W. Bush. Maternal and child health policies have been derailed in many countries…”
