UN World Food Program to cut food aid for over 1 million people in Myanmar

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UN World Food Program to cut food aid for over 1 million people in Myanmar

2025-03-15 01:08 Last Updated At：01:11

BANGKOK (AP) — The United Nations food agency said on Friday that more than 1 million people in the war-torn nation of Myanmar will be cut off from food assistance due to critical funding shortfalls.

A statement released by the World Food Program said that most food rations currently distributed in Myanmar will be cut off in April, even as the country faces a desperate humanitarian crisis caused by bitter fighting between the military government and powerful militias opposed to its rule. The WFP said it would need $60 million to continue food assistance in Myanmar and called on its partners to identify additional funding.

It was not immediately clear if the WFP’s decision was directly related to the Trump administration's recent moves to stop most foreign aid and dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development, which have had wide-ranging effects on humanitarian efforts around the globe.

U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric, asked whether the Myanmar funding cuts were a result of the U.S. cuts, told reporters at U.N. headquarters in New York: “It's all co-mingled,” stressing that the U.S. is a big funder of WFP.

He said all U.N. agencies are actively engaging with U.S. authorities “to explain to them the damage — the immediate damage that's been done.”

A 90-day freeze on foreign assistance programs announced by U.S. President Donald Trump has led to other cuts in services for refugees from Myanmar, including the shutdown of hospital care in camps in neighboring Thailand where more than 100,000 are living, according to activists and Thai officials.

The U.S. has been a “core contributor in the food security and livelihood sector in Myanmar,” and there was already a shortfall last year with humanitarian needs only about 40% funded, said a senior leader in the aid sector based in Asia, who spoke on condition of anonymity to freely discuss the issue.

The new cuts, she said, have created a “devastating situation,” forcing NGOs to abandon many programs, hitting vulnerable populations like people with disabilities, women and children the hardest, she said.

“The lifesaving work must continue,” she said. “It’s just not possible for us to stop that because if we stop it means people will not survive. But the funding gap we’re facing has forced us to close programs that are the lifeline, I think, for many people, in Myanmar.”

The nationwide armed conflict in Myanmar began after the army ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021 and suppressed widespread nonviolent protests that sought a return to democratic rule.

In Friday’s statement, the WFP said 15.2 million people, nearly one-third of the total population, are unable to meet their minimum daily food needs, and some 2.3 million face emergency levels of hunger.

The WFP said it will only be able to assist 35,000 of the most vulnerable people, including children under the age of 5, pregnant and breastfeeding women, and people living with disabilities.

“The impending cuts will have a devastating impact on the most vulnerable communities across the country, many of whom depend entirely on WFP’s support to survive,” said Michael Dunford, WFP’s Representative and Country Director in Myanmar. “WFP remains steadfast in its commitment to support the people of Myanmar, but more immediate funding is crucial to continue reaching those in need.”

The WFP said the cuts will also impact almost 100,000 internally displaced people, including Rohingya communities in camps in Myanmar’s western state of Rakhine, who will have no access to food without WFP assistance.

The Rohingya, a Muslim minority, have long been persecuted in Buddhist-majority Myanmar. More than 700,000 have fled from Myanmar to refugee camps in Bangladesh since August 2017, when the military launched a clearance operation against the minority in response to attacks by a rebel group.

More than 600,000 Rohingya remain in Myanmar, confined to squalid displacement camps, in addition to those living in crowded refugee camps in Bangladesh. Still, more have fled toward Bangladesh and elsewhere in recent months as violence surged again when a group called the Arakan Army started fighting against Myanmar’s security forces.

Why Trump is singling out South Africa and accusing it of being anti-white and anti-American

2025-03-15 17:46 Last Updated At：17:51

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — The Trump administration’s decision to expel the South African ambassador is its latest move against a country it has singled out for sanctions and accused of being anti-white and anti-American.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted on X that Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool was “no longer welcome in our great country” and said he was “a race-baiting politician” who hates America and U.S. President Donald Trump.

Rubio’s post didn't explain what was behind the decision but linked to a story by the conservative Breitbart news site. The story reported on a talk Rasool gave Friday on a webinar where he said the Make America Great Again movement could be seen as being a response to “a supremacist instinct.”

Trump had already issued an executive order last month cutting all funding to South Africa over some of its domestic and foreign policies. The order criticized the Black-led South African government on multiple fronts, saying it is pursuing anti-white policies at home and supporting “bad actors” in the world like the Palestinian militant group Hamas and Iran.

A white minority group in South Africa has been a central focus for Trump.

Trump falsely accused the South African government of a rights violation against white Afrikaner farmers by seizing their land through a new expropriation law. No land has been seized and the South African government has pushed back, saying U.S. criticism is driven by misinformation.

The Trump administration’s references to the Afrikaner people — who are descendants of Dutch and other European settlers — have also elevated previous claims made by Trump's South African-born advisor Elon Musk and some conservative U.S. commentators that the South African government is allowing attacks on white farmers in what amounts to a genocide.

That has been disputed by experts in South Africa, who say there is no evidence of whites being targeted, although farmers of all races are victims of violent home invasions in a country that suffers from a very high crime rate.

The issue of land in South Africa is highly emotive given that more than 30 years after the end of the apartheid system of white minority rule, whites still own most of the good commercial farming land despite making up just 7% of the population. The South African government says the expropriation law aims to address those historic inequalities but is not “a confiscation tool” and will target unused land.

Trump has offered Afrikaner farmers refugee status in the U.S. and a fast track to citizenship, but groups representing them say they want to stay in South Africa.

Trump’s sanctioning of South Africa also cited the country’s case at the United Nations’ top court accusing U.S. ally Israel of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

During arguments in that ongoing and highly controversial case, Israel accused South Africa of acting as a proxy for Hamas. Trump has repeated that, questioning South Africa’s motives and accusing it of an anti-American foreign policy that supports Hamas, Iran, China and Russia.

South Africa’s post-apartheid government has long been a supporter of the Palestinian cause, going back to the time of Nelson Mandela, its first Black president. It compares the treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank to the experiences of Black South Africans who were confined to certain areas during apartheid.

Rasool, the South African ambassador, comes from a Muslim community in South Africa that has been a center of support for Palestinians. The Breitbart writer whose story was cited by Rubio — senior editor-at-large Joel Pollak — was also born in South Africa and is Jewish. His story cast Rasool as a Hamas supporter.

Pollak has other connections to the U.S.-South Africa situation after recently meeting with a lobby group representing Afrikaners. South African media have reported that Pollak is a contender to be Trump’s pick for U.S. ambassador to South Africa.

The U.S. criticism of South Africa has extended to its presidency this year of the Group of 20, a bloc of major economies that aims to bring the developed and developing world together. Rubio skipped a meeting of G20 foreign ministers in South Africa last month and said he would boycott the G20 summit in South Africa in November.

He said he had a problem with South Africa's theme for its G20 presidency, which is “solidarity, equality and sustainability.” Rubio, in a post on X, dismissed that as “DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) and climate change” and said he would not waste taxpayer money on it.

The South African government has expressed surprise at Trump's sanctions and says it wants to fix its relationship with the U.S. “South Africa remains committed to building a mutually beneficial relationship,” said a statement from the office of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Saturday in response to Rasool's expulsion.

But U.S.-South Africa ties were strained even before Trump. The Biden administration accused South Africa of supporting Russia in the war in Ukraine while claiming a neutral stance. Like with the Palestinians, South Africa has historic ties to Russia, which supported the fight against apartheid.

While Ramaphosa has repeatedly said he wants to engage in talks with the Trump administration, his African National Congress party has at times been defiant. The ANC recently invited the Iranian ambassador to its headquarters in Johannesburg and said it wouldn't hide its friends.