Basic

There is a tendency to talk about foreign aid cuts primarily as a political concern. But Donald Trump’s chainsaw approach to U.S. assistance – and accompanying reductions in overseas aid announced by countries including the U.K., France, Germany and the Netherlands – will have real-life consequences felt by ordinary people around the world.

Take HIV awareness, prevention and treatment. Due to a global campaign and, largely, American money, new HIV infections have dropped by 39% since 2010 and deaths are down by half. That success is now in jeopardy due to the slashing of overseas aid.

To find out just how badly the fight against HIV will be affected, a trio of researchers from Australia’s Burnet Institute modeled how funding cuts would impact 26 low- and middle-income nations. “We estimated there could be 4.43 million to 10.75 million additional HIV infections between 2025 and 2030, and 770,000 to 2.93 million extra HIV-related deaths,” they write. “Most of these would be because of cuts to treatment. For children, there could be up to an additional 882,400 infections and 119,000 deaths.”

HIV infections and deaths is only one way that the cuts will be felt in nations around the world. Tharaphi Than, an expert on political dissent in Myanmar, explores how U.S. cuts in support to Myanmar through the gutting of USAID and the BURMA Act is impacting that country’s ongoing civil war. “Services such as Voice of America and Radio Free Asia have been suspended amid the recent U.S. cutbacks. As a result, people in Myanmar have more-limited access to reliable information and, more importantly, fewer media to represent and amplify their voices,” she writes. Other U.S. policy decisions are affecting the yearslong conflict in Myanmar, too. Trump’s embrace of Russia – one of the few allies of Myanmar’s military – could work against the various ethnic groups and pro-democracy parties by giving the coupist generals a voice of support on the international stage. All of this may play into the hands of Beijing, which has been keen to use its economic influence to stabilize it’s southern neighbor. Resistance groups, starved of U.S. support, might be “under greater urgency to accept China’s role as a mediator” and agree to a negotiated solution to the conflict, argues Than.

Elsewhere this week, we have been tracking the fallout of the Signal group chat security breach in the U.S. and explaining the significance of the latest developments in Sudan’s civil war.