Following the initial 90-day suspension of US humanitarian and development funding, the US Government has made a drastic decision on 27 February to cease their funding support to INTERSOS USAID-funded humanitarian projects in Burkina Faso, Chad, Nigeria and Yemen.
Such a radical and unprecedented decision has a massive impact on our humanitarian work in the four countries where millions of people, due to protracted conflicts, depend on life-saving humanitarian services. The decision is primarily hurting over 282,000 highly vulnerable people, including refugees, women and children, who were assisted under these grants. In addition, our US-funded projects in Afghanistan and Lebanon continue to be on hold due to the ongoing suspension of activities since 24 January, bringing a total of almost 500,000 people without access to lifesaving humanitarian assistance. The vast majority of them are located in areas most impoverished and affected by conflicts, that were provided with life-saving medical assistance, as well as water and sanitation, and nutrition services. For them, there is virtually no other present alternative for accessing basic health services.
Furthermore, as reported, multiple projects from other humanitarian organisations operating in the same countries have experienced the sudden closure of their projects, putting other life-saving aid, including food assistance, on stand still. The impact of such a dramatic stop of humanitarian assistance is potentially exposing millions of people to life-threatening situations.
The negative humanitarian impact, and the lives of people affected by these cuts is a massive concern to INTERSOS. “This is an incredible challenge for the humanitarian system,” commented INTERSOS’s general director, Kostantinos Moschochoritis. “Our first concern is naturally for the people we strive to assist, for whom we are urgently conducting the modification of our programmes and the use of our reserves to cover unavoidable costs. At the same time, unfortunately we are forced to revise our budget forecasts and reduce costs planned for the coming months, which will seriously impact our capacities to deliver essential assistance in the most affected countries. However, we wish to stress that we continue providing humanitarian assistance to the most vulnerable communities in all of our 23 operational contexts, with the support of our other donors, and we continue to look for other funding solutions in an effort to cover the recent funding gaps.“
We call on the US Secretary of State to reconsider its current approach to such abrupt cuts, and fully recognise the humanitarian waivers that were issued in the days following the US funding suspension, to enable life-saving assistance to continue and to prevent avoidable suffering of the vulnerable communities. We also urge other donors to step up to fill the funding gap by increasing flexible funding to respond to sudden wide humanitarian needs and gaps.