From
drought-hit farmers and hungry children to battered women, tens of
thousands of people in Central America have been hard hit by U.S.
government aid cuts, according to major charities.
Hundreds
of millions of dollars in aid to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras
- known as the Northern Triangle - was slashed and frozen by U.S.
President Donald Trump's administration in June.
The
U.S. State Department is moving forward with Trump's plan to cut aid
to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, providing only limited
funding focused on security and justice, a State Department official
said to the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "We expect the
governments of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras to keep their
commitments to stem illegal immigration to the United States,"
the State Department said.
About
$400 million in foreign assistance approved last year for the
Northern Triangle has been sent elsewhere, including the political
and economic crisis in Venezuela, anti-narcotic efforts in Colombia
and development in Africa and Latin America, the official said.
Another
$171 million in funds are being held back until the U.S. government
is satisfied the three countries are reducing the migrant flow, the
official said.
Charities
say the cuts will do little to stem the flow of migrants north and
likely exacerbate the problem. The cuts leave less money to tackle
the root causes of why people are pushed to leave, including high
murder and crime rates, hunger and a lack of jobs.
Charities
working in the Northern Triangle are scrambling to deal with slashes
in aid, which have mainly affected projects already approved.
Charities
that receive funding, mainly through the U.S. Agency for
International Development (USAID), say they have had to stop, scale
back or postpone humanitarian and development projects.
At
the charity Mercy Corps, regional director Provash Budden said
several programs in Guatemala have been affected by the cuts,
including a $40 million urban violence prevention program and LGBT+
and substance abuse counseling. "Cutting
U.S. aid to Central America is short-sighted and counterproductive
and by ending foreign assistance that's intended to address
insecurity, corruption, poor governance, and economic devastation,
the administration is under cutting its own goals of reducing
migration," Budden said.
"We
have had to cancel openings of women's shelters that help 2,850
survivors," Budden said. "We've had to cancel vocational
schools for at-risk youth."
Programs
helping subsistence farmers feed their families and tackle
malnutrition have shut down because of the cuts, said Mary McInerney,
country director in Guatemala for charity Save the Children.
In
Guatemala about half of children under age 5 suffer from chronic
malnutrition, one of the world's highest rates, she said.
An
emergency food program funded by USAID that provided cash to 6,000
families, including 22,000 children, in Guatemala's poor highlands
closed down last month, she said.
"It's
quite dramatic because you have families and definitely the children
are most vulnerable, the poorest of the poor, who relied on that cash
transfer, $56 to $58 a month, in order to put food on the table,"
McInerney said.
"It's
counterproductive in our opinion because there is going to more
tendency for adults in the family to migrate internally or externally
to put food on the table."
Also
hard hit by the cuts are farming communities in the Northern
Triangle, struggling to cope with poor harvests due to five years of
drought.
Charity
Catholic Relief Services said several of its water and nutrition
projects in Guatemala helping farmers improve crop yields, involving
nearly 30,000 people, have closed due to the cuts.
"You're
basically cutting off the life line for people, which leaves them no
alternative but to migrate north," said Rick Jones, senior
advisor for Catholic Relief Services.
http://news.trust.org/item/20191003215513-enakd/
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