From fighting disease to protecting the Amazon rainforest, USAID has big impact across the globe

The Trump administration’s decision to close the U.S. Agency for International Development has drawn widespread criticism from congressional Democrats and raised questions and concern about the influence billionaire ally Elon Musk wields over the federal government.

The United States is by far the world’s largest source of foreign assistance, although several European countries allocate a much bigger share of their budgets to aid. USAID funds projects in some 120 countries aimed at fighting epidemics, educating children, providing clean water and supporting other areas of development.

Here is a look at USAID’s impact around the world:

Protecting the Amazon rainforest and fighting cocaine in South America

USAID has been critical in providing humanitarian assistance in Colombia, conservation efforts in the Brazilian Amazon and coca eradication in Peru. Recent USAID money has also supported emergency humanitarian aid to more than 2.8 million Venezuelans who fled economic crisis.

In 2024 alone, the agency transferred some $45 million to the U.N. World Food Program, mostly to assist Venezuelans.

In Brazil, USAID’s largest initiative is the Partnership for the Conservation of Amazon Biodiversity, which focuses on conservation and improving livelihoods for Indigenous peoples and other rainforest communities.

Over in Peru, part of USAID’s $135 million funding in 2024 was dedicated to financing cocaine-production alternatives such as coffee and cacao. The humanitarian agency has been seeking to curb production of the drug since the early 1980s.

Disease response, girls’ education and free school lunches in Africa

Last year, the U.S. gave the sub-Saharan region more than $6.5 billion in humanitarian assistance. But since Trump’s announcement, HIV patients in Africa found locked doors at clinics funded by an acclaimed U.S. program that helped rein in the global AIDS epidemic.

Known as one of the world’s most successful foreign aid program, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, has been credited with saving more than 25 million lives, largely in Africa.

“The world is baffled,” said Aaron Motsoaledi, the health minister of South Africa, the country with the most people living with HIV, after the U.S. freeze on aid.

Motsoaledi says the U.S. funds nearly 20% of the $2.3 billion needed each year to run South Africa’s HIV/AIDS program through PEPFAR, and now the biggest response to a single disease in history is under threat.

The effects of halting U.S. aid are also rippling across sub-Saharan Africa. In Ghana, the Chemonics International development group said it's pulling logistics for programs in maternal and child health, malaria response and HIV.

Education programs have been halted in Mali, a conflict-battered West African nation where USAID has become the country’s main humanitarian partner after others left following a 2021 coup.

In civil-war-torn Sudan, which is grappling with cholera, malaria and measles, the aid freeze means 600,000 people will be at risk of catching and spreading those diseases, said an official who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

Hospitals in war-ravaged Syria

Doctors of the World Turkey says it has been forced to lay off 300 staff and shutter 12 field hospitals it runs across northern Syria, a region devastated by years of war and a huge 2023 earthquake. Hakan Bilgin, the organization’s president, said it relies on USAID for 60% of its funding and has had to cut its daily consultations from 5,000 to 500.

“As a medical organization providing life-saving services, you’re basically saying, ’Close all the clinics, stop all your doctors, and you’re not providing services to women, children, and the elderly," Bilgin said.

Bilgin said the impact on northern Syria, where millions rely on outside medical aid, could be catastrophic.

“The real impact is bigger than we can measure right now," he said in the group’s Istanbul office, surrounded by half-unpacked boxes and worried colleagues.

Support for marginalized communities from the Balkans to Uganda

In Kosovo, which has received more than $1 billion from USAID since 1999, women’s groups fear the impact of losing American funding for gender and diversity-related projects in the conservative country.

“This might leave women’s groups stranded and unsupported,” said Ariana Qosaj Mustafa of the Kosovo Women’s Network.

Emina Bosnjak of the Sarajevo Open Center said USAID promotes awareness of discrimination, violence and hate speech, and marginalized groups would suffer if that stops.

“Stronger narratives that stand against human rights and stand against democracy and rule of law will actually become more visible,” she said.

A non-profit organization supporting LGBTQ people in Uganda also feels under threat. Pius Kennedy, a program officer with the Kampala-based nonprofit Africa Queer Network, said he and five other permanent employees had been ordered by USAID to stop work.

He said the funding freeze could erase years of gains made in protecting sexual minorities in Uganda, one of more than 30 African countries where homosexuality is criminalized.

“We would always look at the United States as something that we would always run to in case you are facing a number of insecurities in the country,” Kennedy said — but that may no longer be the case.

Support for media in Myanmar and mine clearance in Cambodia

The freeze of foreign assistance from USAID include $39 million for rights, democracy, and media in Myanmar, whose military seized power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in 2021, a human rights group said Thursday.

The group Human Rights Myanmar said the frozen funds “are vital for organizations challenging military rule and promoting democracy, which advance U.S. interests by upholding American values and countering China’s authoritarian influence.”

Myanmar’s military government is the most repressive in Southeast Asia, clamping down on free media, imprisoning thousands of nonviolent critics and political rivals and carrying out a brutal war against pro-democracy resistance forces, heedless of civilian casualties.

Human Rights Myanmar said the freeze also “suspended $22 million for humanitarian aid, $36 million for agriculture, $22 million for health and $30 million for education.”

The U.S. has also frozen funding for landmine removal in Cambodia. In an illustration of the geopolitics of foreign aid, China has stepped in to fill the gap. Beijing and Washington vie for influence in Southeast Asia, with China gaining ground in the past decade.

Heng Ratana, director-general of Cambodian Mines Action Center said China has released $4.4 million to support continuing demining operations in seven Cambodian provinces. Days earlier, he had said demining programs in eight other provinces that were funded by the United States had to stop.

A busy shelter left without a doctor in Mexico

In the southern Mexican city of Villahermosa, the Peace Oasis of the Holy Spirit Amparito shelter is one of several beneficiaries of U.S. humanitarian assistance to those fleeing persecution, crisis or violence.

However, under the funding freeze, the charitable organization that runs the shelter had to cut its only doctor as well as a social worker and child psychologist. The shelter has since appealed to the Mexican government for alternate funding for programs managed by the United Nations to pay for flights and bus rides to Mexico’s border with Guatemala for migrants who want to return home.

“The crisis is only going to worsen,” the shelter said in a statement. “The most affected will be the population we serve.”

Wartime help in Ukraine

U.S. funding in Ukraine has helped to pay for fuel for evacuation vehicles, salaries for aid workers, legal and psychological support, and tickets to help evacuees reach safer locations.

That includes the cost of using a concert hall in eastern Ukraine as a temporary center for civilians fleeing the relentless Russian bombardment. That shelter is now in peril because 60% of the costs — equivalent of $7,000 a month to run — were being covered by the U.S.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says his government expects $300 million to $400 million in aid to be cut. Most of that was for the energy sector that has been targeted by Russia.

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Jill Lawless in London and Associated Press writers around the world contributed to this story.