US Aid Cuts Hamstring Peace Winds’ Life-changing Work
Last week, nearly 10,000 American foreign assistance awards were abruptly cancelled, accounting for more than three-quarters of all US foreign aid projects. Peace Winds America was not spared.
We received a termination notice from the US State Department for our core program supporting refugees who have fled war for safe haven in northern Iraq. This helps more than 30,000 Syrian refugees each year by providing vocational training that gives them a foothold in the job market and innovative tool-lending services that enable them to save and even earn money by repairing their own homes and those of their neighbors. After learning construction skills, participants got on-the-job training building wheelchair ramps, installing accessible bathrooms, and undertaking other accessibility upgrades to schools, clinics, and other public facilities. In refugee camps where one of the greatest challenges is finding a job, this helped refugees become financially self-sufficient while enabling them to give back to their community.
This initiative has proven so successful in equipping refugees to stand on their own and so popular with local Iraqi communities that we had been encouraged to expand this year beyond seven Syrian refugee camps to four camps for internally displaced Yezidi Iraqis, who fled genocide and religious persecution by Islamic State. That is all on hold now, and 70+ staff who were directly or indirectly employed on the program—many of them refugees themselves—will lose their livelihoods.
Another unique aspect of the program is that it has been the only genuinely integrated example of US-Japan cooperation on humanitarian assistance and development. It was made possible by US funding, carried out in-country with local staff officially employed by Peace Winds Japan, and operated under joint American and Japanese leadership. Its demise makes US-Japan relations less vibrant and meaningful.
USAID funding that enabled our sister organization, Peace Winds Japan, to host cutting-edge regional disaster preparedness exercises was also cancelled at the same time. Elsewhere around the world, Peace Winds is also seeing US funding dry up that had been regranted to us through UN agencies to provide clean water, sanitation, and other lifesaving services to hundreds of thousands of refugees. People will die as result.
For eight decades, the United States has taken foreign assistance as both a moral obligation—tending to those less fortunate—and as a political obligation—carrying forward the torch of freedom and making the world a safer, more secure, and more prosperous place for Americans and those of all nations. The American people’s commitment to helping their neighbors has left a historic legacy, and we call on the US government to reconsider the wholesale gutting of its foreign assistance and to return to its global leadership role.
As for us, given this challenging new reality, we will be redoubling our efforts—through the global Peace Winds alliance—to secure new relationships and resources in support of our humanitarian efforts, which continue to reach the neediest people in more than 30 countries around the world.
