US restores urgent food aid, except in Afghanistan and Yemen, two of the world’s poorest countries

CAIRO (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has reversed new cutoffs in emergency food aid to several nations but maintained them in Afghanistan and Yemen, two of the world’s poorest and most war-ravaged countries, according to the State Department and officials who spoke to The Associated Press.

It marks the latest round of abrupt cancellations of foreign aid contracts run through the U.S. Agency for International Development and equally sudden reversals. The whipsawing moves come as the Republican administration and Trump adviser Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency dismantle USAID and dramatically reduce foreign assistance, asserting that the spending is wasteful and advances liberal causes.

The United States over the weekend sent notices terminating funding for U.N. World Food Program emergency programs in more than a dozen countries. Aid officials warned that the cuts could threaten the lives of millions of refugees and other vulnerable people, stressing the risks of further destabilizing regions ridden by conflicts.

The State Department confirmed Wednesday that it had reversed those cuts in Somalia, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Ecuador. It said it would keep the cancellations for Afghanistan and Yemen but left the fate of food aid in six other unidentified nations unclear.

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Even in Syria, Somalia and other crisis areas where it had reinstated support for lifesaving food programs, the U.S. would work with the U.N. to modify its funding “to better align with Administration priorities,” the State Department said by email. It gave no details.

Two USAID officials said Jeremy Lewin, the DOGE associate overseeing the dismantling of the aid agency, ordered the reversal of some of his contract terminations Tuesday, after the AP reported them. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media.

Trump administration reverses some cuts

The USAID officials said Lewin sent a note internally expressing regret for the sudden contract terminations and reversals. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and others had pledged that the kind of lifesaving aid targeted would be spared.

A United Nations official said the decision to restore funding came after intense behind-the-scenes lobbying of members of Congress by senior U.N. officials.

The State Department on Wednesday defended some of the new funding cuts, including for Yemen and Afghanistan, saying they were based on “credible and longstanding concerns that funding was benefitting terrorist groups including the Houthis and the Taliban.”

At a briefing this week, department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce cited a U.S. government watchdog’s 2024 finding that department contractors reported paying at least $10.9 million to Afghanistan’s Taliban government in taxes, utility payments and fees.

“Other programs with WFP that were terminated were contrary to an America First agenda and didn’t make America stronger, safer, or more prosperous,” the department said Wednesday.

Remaining cuts could still be disastrous

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, urged the administration to restore funding for other critical programs as well.

“Despite continued assurances that life-saving programs would be protected during the Trump Administration’s ‘review’ of foreign assistance, DOGE again spent the weekend cutting World Food Program assistance to feed people in crisis,” the New Hampshire senator said.

It will “weaken America’s standing around the world,” she added.

Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the Humanitarian Research Lab at the Yale School of Public Health, called the cuts “a potential extinction-level event” for two generations of progress in limiting the suffering of those caught in crises.

The U.S. had been the largest funder of the WFP, providing $4.5 billion of the $9.8 billion in donations to the world’s largest food aid provider last year. Previous administrations had viewed such aid as serving U.S. national security by alleviating conflict, poverty and extremism and curbing migration.

Afghanistan is scarred by decades of war

More than half of Afghanistan’s population — some 23 million people — need humanitarian assistance. It’s a crisis caused by decades of conflict — including the 20-year U.S. war with the Taliban — as well as entrenched poverty and climate shocks.

Last year, the United States provided 43% of all international humanitarian funding to Afghanistan.

The cuts affect about $560 million in humanitarian aid, including for emergency food assistance, treatment of malnourished babies, medical care, safe drinking water and mental health treatment for survivors of sexual and physical violence, according to an assessment by current and former USAID officials and partner organizations. The figure has not been confirmed by the U.S. government.

A separate WFP assessment obtained by the AP showed that food assistance to 2 million people in Afghanistan would be terminated later this year. More than 650,000 malnourished children, mothers and pregnant women would would lose nutritional support.

The United Nations Population Fund said the U.S. had cut $100 million in support for maternal health services for millions of women, as well as gender-based violence services.

The International Rescue Committee, whose programs include nutritional assistance for tens of thousands of children under 5 and counseling services, said the cuts would affect nearly 1 million people.

“Kids who have seen great violence, who benefit from social work and psychosocial care that we provide, will be cut off,” said Bob Kitchen, IRC’s head of global emergencies.

Some in Yemen have been at risk of famine

The poorest Arab country was plunged into war in 2014 when Iranian-backed Houthi rebels seized much of the North, including the capital, Sanaa. The U.S. supported a Saudi-led coalition that intervened the following year on behalf of the government. The conflict has been at a stalemate in recent years.

The war has led to widespread hunger, and experts warned as recently as 2024 that parts of Yemen were at risk of famine.

The U.S. cuts would end lifesaving food assistance to 2.4 million people and halt nutritional care for 100,000 children, WFP said.

The U.S. is carrying out a campaign of airstrikes against the Houthis in retaliation for their attacks on international shipping linked to the war in the Gaza Strip.

The WFP had already suspended its programs in Houthi-ruled northern Yemen, where the rebels have detained dozens of U.N. staffers and people associated with aid groups, civil society and the now-shuttered U.S. Embassy.

The latest cuts would affect southern Yemen, where the internationally recognized government opposed to the Houthis is based. The WFP warned that halting aid there “carries significant political and security implications and risks deepening the economic crisis and exacerbating instability.”

Last year, the WFP assisted 8.6 million people in Yemen, more than a quarter of its population, including more than 330,000 internally displaced people and 1.2 million with disabilities. Half were women and children.

More firings at USAID

Also Wednesday, the Trump administration and DOGE notified thousands of local staffers employed by USAID missions overseas that they would lose their jobs by Aug. 15. The group had been one of the last spared from layoffs.

The administration says it will move about 1,000 surviving humanitarian and development programs under the State Department, after ending 5,000 others. The email notices, which were sent Wednesday and reviewed by the AP, invited the newly laid-off workers abroad to apply for State Department jobs.

All but a few hundred of thousands of other USAID staffers have already been fired or been given severance notices effective this summer.

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Butt reported from Islamabad, Knickmeyer from Washington. Associated Press writers Matthew Lee in Washington, Sam Mednick in Tel Aviv, Israel, and Sarah El Deeb in Beirut contributed to this report.