CRS, women religious from Africa describe impact of US foreign aid cuts on lifesaving programs

WASHINGTON (OSV News) — Women religious from Africa and a representative of Catholic Relief Services, the overseas charitable arm of the Catholic Church in the U.S., grappled with the Trump administration’s cuts to foreign aid during a March 13 panel hosted by the Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life at Georgetown University.

Shortly after his second inauguration, President Donald Trump issued a wide-ranging pause on foreign aid. Within weeks, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, known to be the world’s richest billionaire, targeted the U.S. Agency for International Development, the government’s humanitarian aid agency in countries around the globe, for closure as part of his Department of Government Efficiency, an unofficial task force with the stated intent of curbing federal spending.

Rollbacks to USAID have already greatly impacted the work of Baltimore-based CRS, a longtime partner of USAID, and other faith-based entities around the globe that have partnered with the now-shuttered agency in their work abroad.

Bill O’Keefe, executive vice president for mission, mobilization and advocacy at CRS, said in remarks at the panel that “my concern is needs are going up around the world, thanks to conflict, thanks to climate-driven changes in the weather and in agriculture; hunger, which for decades has been going down, in the last five years or so, has been going back up.”

“So you have a situation where needs are going up and the responses of governments are going down,” O’Keefe said. “I think that the sum of that is just going to mean more suffering and death for innocent people and suffering and death that is frankly preventable.”

Sister Florence Muia, founder of Upendo Village, a facility in Naivasha, Kenya, designed to support people living with HIV in low-income communities, said her primary concern “is the loss of the gains we have made for the last 42 years, since the AIDS pandemic.”

Kenya has about 1.4 million people living with HIV/AIDS, Sister Florence said.

“As I pronounce the number, it sends chills in my body, because without the availability of the antiretroviral medications, which are life saving, it threatens the lives of all these people,” said Sister Florence, a member of the Sisters of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Nairobi.

The future of PEPFAR, the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, has also been called into question by the foreign aid pause, as well as allegations from some Republican lawmakers that the Biden administration improperly allowed some of its funding to be spent on abortions.

O’Keefe said, “I hope that our country wants to be remembered — and we as people want to be remembered — as a country that ended HIV through the PEPFAR program, that ends global hunger, and that attacks these serious problems that our brothers and sisters around the world share with us and find — through our own innovation and partnership with others — a way out.”

“And I believe that we can do that,” he said. “And I think it’s a moral failing that we’re stepping away from looking at the opportunity to solve these problems and instead kind of shrinking back into the shadows.”

Sister Eneless Chimbali of the Servants of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Blantyre, Malawi, is particularly concerned about funding for immunization for children. She is a senior program officer for the All Africa Conference: Sister to Sister.

“Most of the countries that are working with a health system that is not functional without support,” Sister Eneless said. “And if you want it to function, it needs to be cushioned.”

Under stop-work orders, she said, immunizations are not only not being distributed but wasted entirely, she said, adding many mothers don’t have access to private hospitals to take their children to for necessary immunizations.

“What are we talking about? Do you want all these kids to die?” she said.

O’Keefe said CRS’ work will continue despite funding cuts, “but there is no way, particularly in these large emergencies and for these huge problems like HIV, that private donors are going to be able to step in a sustainable way.”

“Only governments can mobilize the kinds of resources at the scale needed to address these situations,” he said. “And I think that’s really where the partnership is so important we have.”

Sister Florence said that “God can reach where words cannot reach, can change the hardest hearts which cannot listen to any human voice, and therefore I leave each day with the hope that we are going to sail through this storm. We are going to weather it through and we are going to survive. We are going to move on, regardless of the difficulties we may face. God is still steering the ship to the shore.”

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