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. The U.S. aid agency supports about 40% of all humanitarian operations, according to Elmhedi Ag Wakina, president of the Platform of National Organizations Active in Humanitarian Affairs in Mali.

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.

''Imagine that aid disappearing — not just for us, but for many other organizations that depended on USAID,'' he said in the group's Istanbul office, surrounded by half-unpacked boxes and worried colleagues. ''The real impact is bigger than we can measure right now.''

Support for democracy and media in Myanmar

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.

The freeze includes ''$8 million for seven projects defending human rights; $30 million for nine initiatives promoting democracy; and $1 million for two programs supporting independent media,'' it said.

Human Rights Myanmar, whose members are rights workers forced to act covertly inside the Southeast Asian nation, said that the freeze also ''suspended $22 million for humanitarian aid, $36 million for agriculture, $22 million for health and $30 million for education.''

The civil war in Myanmar has caused a severe humanitarian crisis, especially affecting more than 3 million displaced people, according to U.N. estimates.

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.