The US Congress should be ashamed by its role in helping Donald Trump claw back billions of dollars in foreign aid funding already allocated to projects around the world, activists have said.
The House of Representatives recently narrowly voted through a request to claw back $9.4 billion (ÂŁ7bn) of funds â known as rescissions â with $8bn of that coming from foreign aid. It is the first step to making these cuts permanent.
Programmes operating in 14 African countries have told The Independent they have been denied ring-fenced funding since Trump re-entered the White House in January and issued executive orders to slash aid spending, something HIV advocacy group, the Aids Vaccine Advocacy Coalition (AVAC) has claimed was âillegalâ and âimmoralâ.
Each year, US legislators vote through a budget setting out what the government must spend on different activities. By not spending money already allocated by Congress on foreign aid projects, Trump had been acted beyond the powers of the presidency, said Prof Lawrence Gostin, a law professor at Georgetown University.
A federal judge ruled in March that Trump had overstepped in withholding funds and that his government owed aid recipients money for work done in the first few weeks of his presidency, before contracts were cancelled. That case is currently being appealed by the government.
âThe president has no power to unilaterally withhold funding already allocated by Congress,â he said. However, using a ârare vote of Congress to rescind the funds it has already allocatedâ allows Trump to withhold the promised money legally.
âAnd to its shame, the House of Representatives has done just that,â Prof Gostin said. The package of cuts must now go to the Senate for a vote before becoming law. It has been suggested that he Senate will pick up the bill next month, but may try to tweak the contents.
Thursdayâs vote was a, âpretty clear example that [lawmakers] are happy to roll over and give the president what he wants,â said Mitchell Warren, executive director of AVAC which sued the government.
âThey still acted illegally and immorally,â Mr Warren claimed. âThis process does not change thatâ.
Until it was allowed to expire at the end of March, the US Presidentâs Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar), which forms the backbone of the worldâs HIV response, set out in law that 10 per cent of its funds must be spent on orphans and vulnerable children.
But since January, projects across Sub-Saharan Africa have not seen any of the promised funds, The Independent has learned, leaving vulnerable children without vital services to prevent HIV, access nutrition and report sexual violence. Itâs one example of the cuts which look set to become permanent, through claw backs of existing funds and a new budget proposed this month.
Based on Trumpâs proposed budget for next year, the majority of specialised support for orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) aside from basic medical treatment, are likely to be permanently excluded from receiving future US funds.
These wider support services have been shown to protect children from contracting HIV and successfully link HIV-positive children to treatment.
Project Hope in Namibia, which linked children in rural communities with HIV treatment and prevention, is another programme to have its OVC funding under Pepfar withheld since January.
Early data showed children with HIV enrolled in Project Hope Namibiaâs programme were more likely to have the levels of virus in their blood brought down to undetectable levels â 96 per cent in January compared with 85 per cent the previous September. Suppressing the virus means they wonât get sick or be able to infect others.
âThey don’t understand those programmes are lifesaving,â Leila Nimatallah, vice president of US advocacy group First Focus on Children, said.
More than half of children with untreated HIV will die before their second birthday.
âIllegal and immoralâ
A State Department official said Pepfar continued to support âlifesaving HIV testing, care and treatmentâ including for orphans and vulnerable children, but that all other services are currently being reviewed.
But thatâs not how people working on the ground see things playing out. âWe will expect children to be dying who are not supposed to be dying,â said Desmond Otieno, project coordinator at HIV service the Integrated Development Facility in Kenya. The US has withheld money previously promised to IDF Kenya for services including medication counselling and psychological support since Trump took office, and the facility has already recorded deaths of children who were no longer able to access medication.
âThat is the most outrageous [thing]â Mr Otieno said.
The State Department spokesperson added that all foreign assistance programmes âshould be reduced over timeâ as they achieve their mission and move countries âtoward self-reliance”.
Project Hope in Namibia says its plan to make sure its services could be maintained by the local government by 2028 had been scuppered by the programmes abrupt ending, however. The process of transferring responsibility over including training up local staff will now be a lot harder, achieving exactly the opposite of this goal.
Ms Nimatallah said she was calling on the Senate to âreject this cruel rescissions packageâ.
âBy passing this bill, Congress is taking back funding that it had already appropriated for the prevention of suffering and death of children under five from dirty water, infectious disease, and malnutrition,â she said, as well as funds âset aside to protect Aids orphans from hunger and sex trafficking.
âThe long and short of it is that the United States has turned its back on these children that it has promised to care forâ.
This piece has been produced as part of The Independentâs Rethinking Global Aid series
