What's the future for foreign aid?

A number of development programmes and relief assistance efforts around the world have come to a halt this week after President Trump froze all foreign assistance provided by the United States, calling into question the future of foreign aid around the globe.

Even "the most fervent advocates" of US aid can see that not all programmes work well, Rachel Bonnifield, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, told Al Jazeera. But the sudden halt in funding has put people in a "very compromised position where they might die".

What did the commentators say?

For aid agencies, the last two weeks "have been marked by fear, chaos and confusion", said Devex. "I've got people crying. I have people saying: 'but we really need to send these medicines. Are you telling me I can't do that?'” said the leader of one humanitarian organisation.

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The order to stop aid work, issued by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, contained an exception for emergency food aid, along with a further waiver for programmes that provide other "life-saving" assistance. "We don't want to see people die and the like," Rubio told SiriusXM. He said there would be a programme-by-programme review of which projects make "America safer, stronger or more prosperous". But leaders of aid agencies told The New York Times that "some programs will be hard to restart after a temporary shutdown, and many could disappear".

There are obvious geopolitical ramifications too. In Pakistan, the loss of US funding may push the country to seek alternative funding sources, possibly from China or the Gulf nations, said The Times of India. In Lebanon, Hezbollah is already "making moves to fill the gaps, taking advantage of the power vacuum that the US has just created", said Devex.

What next?

However unwelcome the cuts are, for some they serve as a reminder that health and welfare systems in a number of countries are overly dependent on foreign aid.

"I think these pauses may end up changing the relationship other countries have with US assistance," Bonnifield told Al Jazeera. "Our governments now know that help is coming from nowhere," Ayoade Alakija, a global health specialist from Nigeria, told the Financial Times. "They need to start funding things themselves and investing in their own health and education."