Photograph by Mathurin Napoly via Unsplash

Amid the flurry of executive orders signed by President Donald Trump during his first two weeks in office, most Americans may not have noticed the January 20 order to pause all United States foreign aid. The initial text of the order simply enacted a pause on “new obligations and disbursements of development assistance funds” while the administration reviews existing U.S.-funded aid efforts for “programmatic efficiency and consistency with United States foreign policy.” Yet as implemented over the past two weeks, the order has ground life-saving efforts to a halt across the globe as humanitarian organizations have been ordered to stop work on U.S.-funded projects, effective immediately.

While Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a waiver January 28 exempting programs delivering “core life-saving medicine, medical services, food, shelter, and subsistence assistance” from pausing their efforts, many organizations providing these services had already received stop-work orders (or in some cases, received them after the waiver was issued). And while the waiver instructs “implementing partners and NGOs…to work through their U.S. government agency partners” on requests to authorize continued assistance, the process for requesting case-by-case waivers has been unclear, and agency partners difficult to reach, with at least 56 senior USAID officials placed on administrative leave, and hundreds of agency contractors laid off. As of February 1, even the agency’s website was unavailable, and as of February 3, its offices were closed and its future uncertain.

The impact has been felt immediately in the over 100 countries worldwide who receive aid from the United States. Life-saving resources already funded by Congress, from food assistance to anti-retroviral medicines, languish in warehouses in the countries they have been delivered to, as the U.S. and international organizations tasked with distributing the aid have been ordered to stop work. TIME magazine reports, “Charitable groups around the world [are making] agonizing choices. One had to decide whether to abide by a stop-work order or deliver lunches to schoolchildren in impoverished communities, as it has for years. It decided to obey the order, wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of perishable food. Another is figuring out whether to close health clinics for pregnant mothers in Haiti, leaving them with scant alternatives for a place to give birth. Yet another was forced to pause a program that helped migrants fleeing Venezuela stay in South American countries (rather than continuing north to the U.S. border), through work training, housing, and support of the host community.”

In a globalized world where a disease outbreak in one country can turn into a pandemic, where natural disasters, conflicts, and the people displaced by them cross borders, does withdrawing U.S. aid and collaboration with other nations in addressing these risks make America safer? Does reneging on commitments we have already made to other nations, damaging trust and credibility in the United States abroad, make us stronger? Does abruptly cutting thousands of American jobs related to international aid make America more prosperous?

When done well, U.S. foreign aid exemplifies what is truly great about America. I have witnessed this firsthand as a volunteer, an intern, and later an employee of CitiHope International. Since 1990, CitiHope has partnered with USAID, the U.S. Department of State, private foundations and corporations, churches and nonprofit organizations to deliver humanitarian assistance – from medicine and medical supplies to food to disaster relief to health education – to over 40 countries on 5 continents. We have seen U.S. government-funded efforts achieve measurable results in programs we have assisted in – from helping rebuild the healthcare system in the Republic of Belarus in the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union, bringing pediatric cancer survival rates from 5% to 74% in a nation deeply affected by the nuclear fallout from Chernobyl, to delivering food assistance to over 700,000 people in crisis situations in the former Soviet republics, Africa, and the Caribbean. And we have been involved in just a tiny fraction of U.S. foreign assistance over the past decades! The relationships and goodwill for the United States built through these programs cannot be measured, but have been valued by U.S. governments for decades as helping to make our nation safer, stronger, and more prosperous – and well worth the 1% of the federal budget that international aid represents.

No system is above scrutiny, and valid criticisms of the existing U.S. foreign aid system have been raised on both sides of the political aisle, as well as by nations that have been partners in and recipients of U.S. aid. Several worthy reforms have been undertaken in recent years, including increased oversight and screening of programs in sensitive locations to reduce the risk of armed groups diverting, benefiting from, or taking credit for humanitarian assistance; increased safeguards against abuse and exploitation in humanitarian contexts; efforts to increase accountability to the most vulnerable populations receiving aid; requirements to minimize the environmental impact of aid distributions; improved coordination with local governments to ensure non-duplication of efforts; and increased emphasis on designing programs led by local organizations and with clearly designated objectives and exit strategies.

More work is needed to reimagine U.S. partnership with the world in addressing current humanitarian crises and preventing and mitigating future ones. But the cost to the United States and to the world of abruptly cutting off lifesaving assistance and firing the public servants responsible for delivering it far outweighs any short-term cost savings achieved in the process.