Trump’s Foreign Aid Cuts Halt NGO Projects in Belize

US President Donald Trump has withdrawn foreign aid resulting in the cessation of several projects.  Belize is one of several affected countries as non-governmental and non-profit organizations like the Love Foundation, RET International and others are being impacted.  Several organizations received a letter on Friday directing them to stop all projects as no more monies will be disbursed, at least for the next 90 days.  Trump’s rationale behind the move is to ensure that the monies are funding projects that are in alignment with US policies and ideals.  Minister Kareem Musa has dubbed the situation as unfortunate, but has expressed hope that this situation might only be temporary.

Kareem Musa, Minister of Home Affairs: “That’s a very unfortunate situation and I sincerely hope it is not a long-term position of the government of the United States because we have some excellent projects through CARSI like the Love Foundation that does a lot of work with at-risk and marginalized youth. We would want to see projects like those community hubs that have our young men and women engaged in positive activities continue. And so it’s regrettable that at this point we see certain of those projects being terminated or cancelled. Like I said, hopefully it’s just for a short time basis and it’s not a long-term policy of the U.S.”

One of the local agencies being affected is the PETAL Group who currently has five persons contracted with them for the US funded project.  Charice Talbert, PETAL’s President spoke with Love News saying that their current project is for 2-years and was centered on equity.  

Charrice Talbert, President, PETAL: “Full time staff that was one person but contractually it’s four persons outside of that and so that’s what we are concerned about because a contract is binding and it’s not like we got any warning to say well the embassy has advised that this is what is going to happen so we’re giving you like two week notice or something, we’re going to pay you up until the end of the month and then we will have to revisit it. It’s not anything like that. We just received notification that we are to cease everything, just cease and it doesn’t necessarily work like that in the employment arena unless you’re being terminated. I received this Friday night after eleven I think it was Friday night. Well I actually didn’t see it because I would not be checking my email at that time of the night and so I did send an email on Monday and I was advised that there is nothing that they can say. They can’t tell us anything because they themselves don’t know anything. I would say it is a breach of many things because one of the things that I shared in my email was that while they may be limited in terms of what they know we wanted some type of clarification as to how we move forward with addressing this because of example if you have persons on a contractual basis if the contract is for the duration of the project which is a two year project and it is like now we are in breach of that because it’s not that person terminating or giving us a notice or anything that’s us just saying well the embassy has advised this and so we have to cease everything. And even in terms of the project that we’re working on it’s like how can you just shut down a project midway.”

According to the Executive Order, signed on January 20, “it is the policy of United States that no further United States foreign assistance shall be disbursed in a manner that is not fully aligned with the foreign policy of the President of the United States.”