MYITKYINA, Myanmar – Distraught Myanmar relief camp dwellers received final handouts from the World Food Programme (WFP) on March 19 as the UN agency begins halting aid to a million people in Myanmar because funding has dried up.
US President Donald Trump’s slashing of the US aid budget has contributed to “critical funding shortfalls” for WFP, forcing it to make sweeping cuts in Myanmar, which has been racked by a four-year, multi-sided civil war.
“I pray every night that this news is not true,” said Ms Byar Mee, who on March 18 received the last of her monthly payouts worth around US$50 (S$67), which she uses to feed her family of five.
“I pray to God that the donors are blessed and are able to help us again,” she said at a camp outside the north-eastern city of Myitkyina. “Please help us and pity us.”
Since the military toppled a civilian government in 2021, Myanmar has been in the grip of a conflict that has killed thousands, displaced millions and pushed the poverty rate up to 50 per cent.
Because of cuts, WFP says it will only serve around 35,000 people in April – a fraction of the 15 million people unable to meet their daily food needs.
One person in need, Mr Zi Yay Tar, has been displaced from his home by landmines and fighting for more than a year.
His family of seven have scraped by alongside Ms Byar Mee’s in the relief camp run by the Waingmaw Lisu Baptist Association in Kachin state, 40km from the border with China.
“We are struggling because we don’t have any other income,” the 32-year-old said. “The World Food Programme was our biggest hope.”
WFP Myanmar chief Michael Dunford said last week the organisation was being forced to winnow down aid because donors, including the United States, were no longer forthcoming.
Since returning to office in January, Mr Trump has overseen a crusade to dismantle federal spending spearheaded by his top donor and the world’s richest person, Mr Elon Musk.
The US Agency for International Development (USAid) – formerly a major WFP donor – has had its US$42.8 billion budget eviscerated.
‘We are going to starve’
There are 379 households – more than 1,800 people – living in the Waingmaw Lisu Baptist Association camp, which has been supported by WFP since July, according to Mr Le Tarr, a community organiser among its residents.
“After we heard the WFP announcement, all the people in the camp are depressed and are having trouble sleeping,” he said.
“Without food and supplies, we are going to starve. After we heard this announcement, we felt hopeless.”
Mr Trump has presented the cuts as part of his campaign to undo bloated government spending.
But USAid accounted for only between 0.7 and 1.4 per cent of total US government spending in the last quarter century, according to the Pew Research Centre.
The United Nations’ special rapporteur on Myanmar Tom Andrews on March 17 said the United States’ “sudden, chaotic withdrawal of support” was having a “crushing impact” on people in Myanmar.
“The abrupt termination of this support is going to kill them,” he told reporters in Geneva. AFP
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