Trump administration ends some USAID contracts providing life-saving aid across Middle East

The projects were being cancelled ‘for the convenience of the US government’, according to letters sent to USAID partners

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People receive food aid provided by the World Food Programme (WFP) at the Bab al-Rahma camp near the town of Kafr Lusin, north of Idlib, Syria, on March 12. Photo: EPA-EFE

Published: 2:23am, 8 Apr 2025Updated: 9:04am, 8 Apr 2025

The Trump administration has notified the World Food Programme and other partners that it has terminated some of the last remaining life-saving humanitarian programmes across the Middle East, a US official and a UN official said on Monday.

The projects were being cancelled “for the convenience of the US government” at the direction of Jeremy Lewin, a top lieutenant at Trump adviser Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) whom the Trump administration appointed to oversee and finish dismantling the US Agency for International Development, according to letters sent to USAID partners and viewed by Associated Press.

About 60 letters cancelling contracts were sent over the past week, including for major projects with the World Food Programme, the world’s largest provider of food aid, a USAID official said. An official with the United Nations in the Middle East said the World Food Programme received termination letters for US-funded programmes in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.

Both officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to comment publicly.

Some of the last remaining US funding for major programmes in Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan and the southern African nation of Zimbabwe was also affected, including for those providing food, water, medical care and shelter for people displaced by war, the USAID official said.

The UN official said the groups that would be hit hardest include Syrian refugees in Jordan and Lebanon. Also affected are programmes supporting vulnerable Lebanese people and providing irrigation systems inside Syria, a country emerging from a brutal civil war and struggling with poverty and hunger.

In Yemen, another war-divided country that is facing one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters, the terminated aid apparently includes food that has already arrived in distribution centres, the UN official said.