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Insiders Say Trump Foreign Aid Cuts Causing 'Violence and Chaos' in Fragile Nations
"It is devastating, but it's not surprising," said one former senior State Department official. "It's all what people in the national security community have predicted."
May 28, 2025
U.S. State Department officials in at least two countries have recently warned that the Trump administration's sudden foreign aid cutoff is fueling "violence and chaos" in some of the world's most vulnerable nations, according to a report published Wednesday.
Internal State Department communications viewed by
ProPublicarevealed that U.S. Embassy officials in the southeastern African nation of Malawi sounded the alarm on cuts to the United Nations World Food Program (WFP), which have "yielded a sharp increase in criminality, sexual violence, and instances of human trafficking" in the Dzaleka refugee camp.
Meanwhile, dramatically reduced U.S. funding to feed refugees in Kenya has sparked violent protests and other incidents, including the trampling death of a pregnant woman during a stampede for food in which police opened fire on desperately hungry people.
"In Kenya, for example, the WFP will cut its rations in June down to 28% — or less than 600 calories a day per person — a low never seen before...The WFP’s standard minimum for adults is 2,100 calories per day." Just unbelievable suffering as U.S. withdraws foreign aid.
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— Lisa Song (@lisalsong.bsky.social) May 28, 2025 at 1:15 PM
This, as President Donald Trump's administration—spearheaded by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency and its de facto leader, Elon Musk—has taken a wrecking ball approach to vital offices and programs including the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), where contracts for programs including those that fed and provided healthcare for millions of people and fought diseases like malaria and HIV/AIDS have been slashed by up to 90%.
Republicans have attempted to justify the cuts under the guise of tackling the staggering U.S. national debt, even as they push a massive tax cut that would disproportionately benefit the ultrarich and corporations while adding trillions of dollars to the deficit, according to a nonpartisan congressional committee.
Although a federal judge ruled in March that Musk's moves to shutter USAID were likely unconstitutional and ordered a halt to the effort, much damage has already been done.
"It is devastating, but it's not surprising," Eric Schwartz, a former State Department assistant secretary and National Security Council member, told ProPublica. "It's all what people in the national security community have predicted."
"I struggle for adjectives to adequately describe the horror that this administration has visited on the world," Schwartz added. "It keeps me up at night."
It is unclear if any of the cables were sent via the official dissent channel set up during the administration of then-President Richard Nixon in an effort to allow State Department personnel to voice opposition to U.S. policies and practices—especially in regard to the Vietnam War—and stop leaks to the press.
The State Department responded to the ProPublica exposé in a statement saying: "It is grossly misleading to blame unrest and violence around the world on America. No one can reasonably expect the United States to be equipped to feed every person on Earth or be responsible for providing medication for every living human."
Earlier this month, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed during a congressional hearing that "no one has died" due to USAID cuts, an assertion refuted by Congressman Brad Sherman (D-Calif.), who displayed photos and harrowing stories of people who have, in fact, died since funding for vital programs was slashed or eliminated.
"It's clear that people are dying because U.S. aid was suspended and then reduced. But it's difficult to come up with a precise death toll that can be tied directly to Trump administration policies," according to a Washington Post analysis by Glenn Kessler published on Tuesday. "The death certificates, after all, aren't marked, 'Due to lack of funding by U.S. government.'"
Last month, the international medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said that there will be "more preventable deaths and untold suffering around the world" due to the Trump administration.
"These sudden cuts by the Trump administration are a human-made disaster for the millions of people struggling to survive amid wars, disease outbreaks, and other emergencies," Avril Benoît, who heads the U.S. branch of MSF, said last month.
"We are living off the fumes of what was delivered in late 2024 or early 2025."
On the ground in Kenya, WFP country director Lauren Landis told ProPublica that her organization is cutting daily aid rations to less than 600 calories per person—far less than the standard minimum 2,100 calories per day under agency guidelines.
"We are living off the fumes of what was delivered in late 2024 or early 2025," Landis said, describing children who look like "walking skeletons" due to severe malnutrition.
Meanwhile, enough food to feed more than 1 million people in some of the world's most fragile places through most of the summer is moldering in storage as USAID funds run dry and workers are laid off.
This,
warned WFP last month, "could amount to a death sentence for millions of people facing extreme hunger and starvation."
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2023's Costliest Weather Disasters Reveal 'Double Inequality' of Climate Crisis
"There is a global postcode lottery that is stacked against the poor," Christian Aid's chief executive said on the publication of the charity's annual list of the year's costliest climate-driven disasters.
Dec 27, 2023
Christian Aid's annual list of the 20 costliest climate crisis-driven disasters of 2023, published Wednesday, reveals a "double injustice," as populations that have emitted relatively little greenhouse gas disproportionately suffer the impacts of extreme weather events ranging from floods to storms to wildfires.
While the disasters on the list impacted low-, medium-, and high-income countries, the U.K.-based charity observed that people in low-income nations have fewer resources to recover.
"When it comes to the climate crisis, there is a global postcode lottery that is stacked against the poor," Christian Aid chief executive Patrick Watt said in a statement. "In poorer countries, people are often less prepared for climate-related disasters and have fewer resources with which to bounce back. The upshot is that more people die, and recovery is slower and more unequal."
The disasters on the list reflect an accelerating climate emergency, as 2023 is set to be the hottest year both on the official record and in 125,000 years of human history.
"The effects of climate change are increasingly obvious, not least in the increasing frequency and severity of climate related disasters," Watt wrote in the report foreword. "Floods, storms, heatwaves, and droughts are all becoming more intense, and climate attribution science is becoming clearer that climate change is causing these more intense disasters."
The report focuses on disasters whose increased frequency or intensity have been linked to the burning of fossil fuels, excluding events like earthquakes. It draws primarily on the EM-DAT database of international disasters, supplementing with data from individual countries, insurers, and the United Nations. It then determines their per capita cost by dividing total damages by the impacted population.
"The worst negative impact of Cyclone Freddy that I shall never forget in my entire life is the destruction of the only house that we struggled to construct."
"This method offers a more individualized perspective of the disaster's impact, highlighting the financial strain on the average citizen rather than just the aggregate economic toll," the report authors explained.
The costliest climate disaster of 2023 was the wildfire that devastated Maui from August 8 to 11. The report found that the fires had a per capita cost of $4,161 for the people of Hawaii. While Hawaii is part of the U.S., a wealthy country, other commenters have noted that the fire reflected the legacy of the colonialism inflicted on Indigenous Hawaiians and land-use changes that favored first agricultural plantations and then tourism over maintaining a healthy ecosystem. Locals and climate justice advocates voiced concerns that the affected area would be rebuilt in the interests of wealthy developers rather than surviving residents.
Other headline-making disasters on the list included the flooding that inundated Libya in September and Cyclone Freddy in Malawi, which was the second deadliest cyclone in Africa since 2000.
Christian Aid's full list of the 20 costliest disasters of 2023 and their per capital price tag is as follows:
- Hawaii, U.S., wildfire: $4,161 per person
- Guam, storm: $1,455 per person
- Vanuatu, storm: $947 per person
- New Zealand, storm: $468 per person
- New Zealand, flood: $371 per person
- Italy, flood: $164 per person
- Libya, flood: $105 per person
- Peru, flood: $66 per person
- Spain, drought: $50 per person
- Myanmar, storm: $41 per person
- Chile, flood: $39 per person
- Haiti, flood: $36 per person
- Mexico, storm: $35 per person
- Chile, wildfire: $30 per person
- U.S., storm: $25 per person
- China, flood: $23 per person
- Peru, storm: $20 per person
- Malawi, storm: $17 per person
- U.S., storm: $16 per person
- Peru, flood: $9 per person
The report authors pointed out that per capita costs tend to be higher in wealthier countries that have higher costs of living and more insurance data to inform figures. This does not always reflect the relative impact of a disaster on a population. For example, a full recovery from Storm Freddy in Malawi is estimated to cost $680 million.
"Given the scale of the disaster, and the huge number of people affected, this may seem like a relatively low amount," the report authors noted, "but since the total of economy of Malawi is $13 billion, it represents 5%, a much higher proportion than in most other disasters on our list."
The per-person cost of that full recovery comes out to $33, which seems small by U.S. standards but amounts to more than 5% of the average annual income of $500 in Malawi.
"The worst negative impact of Cyclone Freddy that I shall never forget in my entire life is the destruction of the only house that we struggled to construct," 69-year-old widow and storm survivor Mofolo Chikaonda told Christian Aid.
Watt wrote in the foreword that "the fact that poorer countries and communities contribute little to global heating makes climate-related disasters a double inequality. This is an injustice that a growing number of poorer countries and civil society campaigners have rightly challenged."
The charity made several recommendations for the international community to prepare for and address climate disasters in a just manner.
"Governments urgently need to take further action at home and internationally to cut emissions and adapt to the effects of climate change," Watt said. "And where the impacts go beyond what people can adapt to, the loss and damage fund must be resourced to compensate the poorest countries for the effects of a crisis that isn't of their making."
A loss and damage fund to help poorer nations pay for the inevitable impacts of the climate crisis was agreed to at the 27th annual U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP27) in 2022 and had its details finalized at this year's COP28 in Dubai.
"Loss and damage costs are in the hundreds of billions of dollars annually in developing countries alone," Nushrat Chowdhury, Christian Aid's climate justice policy adviser in Bangladesh, said in a statement. "Wealthy nations must commit the new and additional money required to ensure the loss and damage fund agreed at COP28 can be quickly get help to those that need it most."
Christian Aid said that countries should agree on a New Collective Quantified Goal to fully fund climate mitigation, adaptation, and loss and damage; make sure poorer nations can quickly access the new loss and damage fund as it becomes operational in 2024; make vulnerable communities more resilient by investing in solutions like agroecology; increase funding for early warning and response systems; measure the impacts of disasters and share their findings; and establish social services at home to assist disaster victims while providing poorer nations with the debt relief, funding, and tax-rule reform they need so they can afford to help their own populations.
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Global South Reeling From High Cost of Basic Goods Amid Russian Invasion of Ukraine: Survey
"The most vulnerable people around the world are bearing the brunt of skyrocketing food, fuel, and fertilizer prices, with women and girls the hardest hit."
Jun 26, 2023
A report published Monday by the international anti-poverty group ActionAid revealed that the cost of food, fuel, and fertilizer continues to increase in some of the world's most vulnerable communities due to Russia's ongoing 16-month invasion of Ukraine.
The survey of more than 1,000 community leaders and members from 14 countries in Africa and Asia plus Haiti conducted by the Johannesburg-based NGO found that some families are spending up to 10 times what they paid for necessities nearly 16 months ago.
This, despite the latest United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization Food Price Index—which tracks monthly changes in the price of a basket of food items in various countries—indicating a nearly 12% decline in global prices since February 2022, the month Russian forces invaded neighboring Ukraine.
Community leaders in almost all of the surveyed countries also reported an increase in child marriages, a sign of growing desperation among the world's poor.
"This pioneering research shows that since the onset of the war in Ukraine, the most vulnerable people around the world are bearing the brunt of skyrocketing food, fuel, and fertilizer prices, with women and girls the hardest hit," ActionAid global policy analyst Alberta Guerra said in a statement. "They are disproportionally affected by multiple crises that impact their food intake, education, their right to live free from child marriage, and their mental health and well-being."
Joy Mabenge, ActionAid's country director for Zimbabwe—a particularly hard-hit country where reported gasoline prices skyrocketed by more than 900%, the cost of pasta soared by as much as 750%, fertilizer was 700% dearer, and feminine hygiene pads increased sixfold in price—said that "food and fuel prices in Zimbabwe have been increasing on a near-daily basis, hitting the country's many families who live below the poverty line the hardest."
"They are literally living one day at a time, not knowing where their next meal will come from."
"In certain areas, some households cannot even afford one meal a day because the food prices have spun completely out of control, leaving many battling to keep their heads above water," Mabenge added. "They are literally living one day at a time, not knowing where their next meal will come from."
Some of the survey's findings include:
- Communities are on average now spending twice as much (101% more) on a loaf of bread (rising by up to 614% in the Binga district of Zimbabwe) and 119% more on pasta;
- Average prices for fertilizers rose by 118%;
- The cost of period pads soared by 83% on average;
- The average cost of petrol increased by 80%;
- Sugar was up by an average of 59% (rising by more than 800% in Zimbabwe's Binga district);
- Cooking oil was up by an average of 57% (rising by 224% in Somaliland's Wajale district); and
- Cooking gas was up by an average of 47% (rising by 216% in the Kwara area of Nigeria).
"Almost a year-and-a-half since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine in February 2022, the impact of the conflict is continuing to intensify in the world's most vulnerable hunger hot spots," ActionAid stated. "The price hikes are particularly alarming over a period when incomes have fallen nearly a quarter across the communities surveyed, or by 133% in one area of Ethiopia."
"Almost a year-and-a-half since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine in February 2022, the impact of the conflict is continuing to intensify in the world's most vulnerable hunger hotspots."
"Children's education prospects are also being threatened," the group added. "Community leaders... surveyed said that the increased cost of living had led to higher school dropout rates for boys as parents struggle to afford school fees or are forced to rely on child labor to support their livelihoods, while leaders in eight... countries said the same had happened for girls."
Roster Nkhonjera, a 40-year-old mother of five from Rumphi district in Malawi, said she had to take her children out of school due to untenable living costs.
"I have failed to pay school fees for my two children due to price hikes," she told ActionAid. "What I earn from my small business barely covers one meal a day for my children."
ActionAid said the news isn't all doom and gloom.
"The survey also revealed that many communities have shown resilience in tackling the impacts of the crisis, identifying and practicing sustainable coping mechanisms," the group said. "Community members in 12 of the 14 countries surveyed said that using agroecology was helping them to make savings on crop production. Agroecology means adopting farming practices that work with nature, such as using local manure to build soil fertility and reduce reliance on chemical fertilizers."
Guerra asserted that "social protection measures need to be urgently introduced, including free education services and free school meals, to assist the families who are most at risk."
"In the longer term, governments dependent on food imports must also invest in national and regional food reserves to act as buffers and reduce countries' vulnerability to food shortages and price rises," she continued.
"The catastrophic impacts we are seeing make it clear why a just transition to renewable energy and agroecological farming practices is needed now more than ever, both to protect communities from shocks but also to offer resilience against the climate crisis," added Guerra. "There is no time to waste."
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