With the whirlwind of change Donald Trump has wrought since coming to office two months ago – whether on tariffs, Israel-Gaza, immigration, and now Russia and Ukraine – you’d be forgiven for forgetting one of the biggest orders he’s made yet.
On the very day he took office, the US President took steps to dismantle the US Agency for International Development – and to put almost all international aid spending on pause for a 90 day review.
Chris Newton, Senior Analyst at Crisis Group International, explains why Trump’s dismantling of foreign aid has crippled critical ‘famine early warning’ systems and could lead to large-scale disasters with deaths numbering in the ‘hundreds of thousands’.
He says aid organisations are now blind to the extent of extreme food shortages in war-torn Sudan, where the most recent data collected suggests famine is ‘rapidly expanding’ in parts of the country.
And recent history shows that starvation can also be used as a weapon of war, as well as a catalyst for conflict and political turmoil.
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