Boko Haram militias
Rotimi Morgan/
The United States, on Saturday, announced more than $630 million in aid for Nigeria and three other countries, where conflict has helped to cause what the United Nations calls the world’s largest humanitarian crisis in more than 70 years, AP reports.
The aid is to assist the government in the resettlement of people displaced by the Boko Haram insurgency.
The other benefiting countries are, Yemen, Somalia and South Sudan.
Tens of millions of people in Yemen, Somalia and South Sudan face hunger amid conflict. Yemen has the world’s largest cholera outbreak, while half of drought-hit Somalia’s 12 million people need aid. South Sudan’s civil war has also contributed to severe hunger.
David Beasley, the new American director of the U.N.’s World Food Programme (WFP) described the gesture as a “truly a life-saving gift”.
While the United States is the world’s largest humanitarian donor, Trump’s proposed deep cuts to foreign aid — more than 30 percent — have caused widespread concern.
“We welcome President Trump’s attention to the global humanitarian crisis, but he was announcing aid that Congress approved months ago and that his administration has delayed,” Rev. David Beckmann, president of the Washington-based Christian organisation, Bread for the World, said in a statement.
The total US humanitarian assistance to the four countries is now more than $1.8 billion this fiscal year, the U.S. Agency for International Development said.
The WFP said in a tweet that the new US donation “comes just as families face the time of year when food stocks run out”.
The U.N. agency earlier this year warned that food aid could be cut for more than a million hungry Nigerians if promised funding from the international community didn’t arrive.
While the Trump administration’s 2018 spending plan does not eliminate money for emergency food aid, it ends a critical programme by consolidating it into a broader account that covers all international disaster assistance. Doing so reduces the amount of money the US dedicates to fighting famine to $1.5 billion next year, from $2.6 billion in 2016.
Trump officials say the proposed changes will streamline US aid programmes, eliminate redundancies and increase efficiency.
But relief organisations fear less US money will mean an increase in famine and hunger-related deaths, particularly in Africa, if Congress approves the budget.
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The business model is simple. Systematically create crisis, provide aid and release funds to enrich and fund crony organisation while the people never get any real benefit. The third world countries has never had it this bad! When will this end?