What is known about the activities of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and what are the consequences of its termination, read in the RIA Novosti article.
In early February 2025, the administration of US President Donald Trump suspended the work of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) as part of a freeze on US aid to foreign countries. However, this decision faced resistance within the US, and the outcome of the standoff on this issue is still unclear.
What is USAID. History of the agency
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USAID was created in 1961 under President John F. Kennedy to el salvador mobile database consolidate various American organizations and programs for international aid under a single structure. In particular, this was caused by the confrontation with the USSR for global influence.
According to the law passed by the US Congress, USAID was directly subordinate to the US Secretary of State. At the same time, in 1998, Congress also decided that the agency was not part of the State Department and was independent. This duality largely led to the conflict of 2025.
According to the agency's charter, USAID's primary focus is economic, health, and education support, emergency humanitarian assistance, and support for democracy and "assistance throughout the world in carrying out the policy objectives of U.S. foreign policy."
Since 2001, USAID has spent an average of about $23 billion a year on international aid . In 2022 and 2023, that amount exceeded $40 billion, thanks to assistance to Ukraine.
In fiscal year 2023, Ukraine received $16 billion from USAID, which amounted to 36.6% of the agency's total expenditures for the year.
As for the purposes of the aid provided by the agency, the main item of expenditure was “public administration” (16.8 billion), and only in second place was humanitarian aid (10.5 billion).
Specific examples of the agency's spending were listed on the White House website on February 3 to demonstrate the absurdity of the spending. Among them were:
supplying “hundreds of thousands of meals” to Al-Qaeda militants (a terrorist organization banned in Russia) in Syria;
$1.5 million to “promote equality and inclusion in Serbia’s workforce and business communities”;
$2 million for gender reassignment and LGBT activism in Guatemala;
$70,000 to produce a musical with the theme of “diversity, equality and inclusion” in Ireland;
$47,000 for a "transgender opera" in Colombia;
$32,000 for a "transgender comic" in Peru;
$6 million for tourism development in Egypt;
funding the printing of "personalized" contraceptives and birth control devices in developing countries;
"hundreds of millions of dollars" to finance "irrigation canals, farm equipment and fertilizers used for unprecedented levels of poppy cultivation and heroin production in Afghanistan";
millions of dollars to the American non-governmental organization EcoHealth Alliance, which is involved in funding research at the Chinese lab in Wuhan where many American officials claim the COVID-19 virus was created.