The Trump administration has begun to pay organizations back for humanitarian assistance work completed in January and February, after going several rounds in court. But the future for humanitarian aid groups is still shaky.
A handful of international organizations, led by the Global Health Council and the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, won a temporary restraining order in February that forced the administration to hold off on enforcing its foreign aid freeze from January 20. Organizations are finally starting to see the money paid back.
Mitchell Warren, executive director of the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, said the 8,000-some payments that the government has reportedly made so far are a step in the right direction but not enough.
“I’m really proud of the fact that there is now money flowing,” Warren told NOTUS. “The downside is that we didn’t sue to get the government to do what it legally has to do, which is to pay bills for past work. The lawsuit was about really protecting and ideally restarting foreign assistance, and that’s not happened. And I think that’s one of the great frustrations in all of this.”
The Trump administration is processing payments owed to organizations for work done between January 20 and February 13, according to court-ordered weekly updates. As of April 2, the administration reported processing about 500 payments per business day, and says it’s on track to finish paying them all by the last week of April.
Those payments only came after a back-and-forth in court after organizations had still not seen money returned to them even once a judge had ordered it. And the administration is fighting back in court — the government appealed the court order on April 2.
In the meantime, the administration has dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development, which works with organizations receiving federal funding to implement foreign assistance around the world. It has terminated thousands of grants to American nonprofits for foreign assistance. It has laid off employees who used to liaise between the government and the nonprofits.
Even though many groups are getting their money, the future is murky, said a staffer for a humanitarian and development advocacy organization not involved in the lawsuit.
“There are still organizations that the last communication that they’ve had from USAID or the State Department was telling them to stop work,” said the staffer, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record. “So they don’t really know what to do. Like, if the last communication that they got was to stop work and they still haven’t received any money, what do you do? Do you confront the government?”
Aid groups are also struggling with uncertainty over which programs will continue. The State Department gave a waiver to allow work to continue on PEPFAR, a 22-year-old program providing HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention around the world.
Warren said the program is still significantly altered — he said it will now deal only with treatment and not prevention, likely driving up the number of new infections dramatically. Some prevention work is provided in the waiver restarting PEPFAR, NPR reported in February, but specifically for “pregnant and breastfeeding women,” and likely not other high-risk groups.
The State Department did not respond to a request for comment on the future of aid payments and what PEPFAR will cover going forward
For groups involved in refugee resettlement, the outlook is even more uncertain. World Relief, a Christian organization that provides both humanitarian aid overseas and refugee resettlement services in the U.S., has had all its continuing international aid grants paid back as of Thursday.
Matthew Soerens, vice president of advocacy, told NOTUS World Relief is still hoping for refugee resettlement to be restarted after it was broadly halted in January.
“I don’t want to predict that there will be any resettlement going forward, but I’m still hopeful there could be,” Soerens said. “If there is, it’ll be at a much lower rate than historical norms, most likely. But in any case, though, the funding will look different, most likely. We intend to continue to serve refugees in the United States.”
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Helen Huiskes is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.