As the world's humanitarian organizations are triaging their shrinking amount of funding , the head of the International Rescue Committee stresses that the choice is stark: Keeping millions alive in the most vulnerable countries will require pulling some assistance for programs in better-off countries that target everything from climate change to refugee resettlement.
Life-saving food, water and health programs already are shutting down in countries including Sudan, where the closing of 80 of communal kitchens has ended the only access to food for millions . That comes after the Trump administration dissolved the lead U.S. aid agency and terminated thousands of foreign assistance programs .
"There are lives on the line," David Miliband, president of the IRC, told The Associated Press in an interview this week in Washington, where he also was speaking to lawmakers and Trump administration officials.
"Our point is there's no way you can keep the aid system as it was," said Miliband, a former U.K. foreign secretary. As it was, he notes, only 14 of total aid was going to humanitarian efforts , while middle-income countries got more funding than low-income ones.
The triage underway shows the impact of the Trump administration decision to pull the U.S. back from being the world's single largest aid donor . The United States previously provided about a third of the more than 200 billion in foreign assistance given annually by governments worldwide. The White House last week proposed a budget for next year with an 84 cut to such funding.