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Hello. I am Laure Delacloche. I’m a journalist who lives in Beirut, Lebanon, and I recently wrote a piece for ONE magazine about the impact of the United States cuts in foreign assistance for Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon. The executive order published in Washington on January 21 truly sent a shockwave across the region.
In Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq, the immediate impact was a series of stop-work orders sent via email and WhatsApp messages, resulting in vulnerable people being cut off from the support they usually receive. Thousands of angry and panicked messages were posted on LinkedIn. Some programs closed overnight, and many professionals lost their jobs with immediate effect.
I arrived in Lebanon in 2021, an all-time high for the sector of aid and development in the country. The port blast in 2020 directed a lot of funding toward Lebanon. Then the war in Ukraine diverted some funding from the country, leading to people losing their jobs in the aid and development sector, or having to take on more responsibilities for less money.
This sector is intrinsically unstable. Over the years, I have visited dozens of N.G.O.s and talked with hundreds of rights holders. I visited elderly people in Lebanon who would have to live without electricity if an organization were not footing the bill and whose fridge would be empty without humanitarian groups providing meal deliveries.
The sector of aid and development is often criticized for imposing foreign priorities, for its double standards when it comes to benefits granted to foreign and local staff, also implementing short-term projects that do not address deep-seated issues. The sudden cuts in funding have once again triggered healthy conversations about aid dependency and the localization of aid.
It has also brought sudden clarity over the exposure of the aid industry to U.S. funding. This sector is indeed opaque and works in silos. In the case of Lebanon, where international organizations are in charge of providing basic social services because of the state’s failure, no citizen has ever voted for the network of primary health care centers to be reformed and financed by foreign countries.
Yes, the system is riddled with structural problems and ethical issues. But as a journalist, I worry about the consequences of such a drastic decrease in resources to feed vulnerable people and pay their hospital bills. The layoffs across organizations also mean that vulnerable groups will have less people to confide in and share the hardships linked to poverty and limited opportunities, which will greatly impact their mental health.
For organizations like CNEWA-Pontifical Mission, whose capacity to fund its partners thankfully remains unchanged, this means operating in an ecosystem under even more pressure, and the prioritization of needs will certainly become thornier.
Read more about the impact of the US AID cuts in “Holding Their Own,” in the June issue of ONE magazine.