US foreign aid cut to put 1,500 pregnant women in Afghanistan at risk, says UN

US aid freeze to Afghanistan will put over 1,200 pregnant women at risk of losing their lives, the United Nations Population Fund said on Tuesday.

UNFPA’s regional director for Asia and the Pacific, Pio Smith, said, “Obviously we’re pretty concerned about that substantial loss in funding.” He added that by 2028, the absence of US funding “will result in 1,200 additional maternal deaths and 109,000 additional unintended pregnancies.”

Why has US frozen funding?

US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order freezing foreign aid for 90 days, arguing that the step was needed to eliminate waste and block “woke” spending that doesn’t align with American interests.

Now, the Trump 2.0 administration has announced that it will bring USAID under the ambit of the State Department. This unprecedented move is expected to reduce USAID’s workforce and cut down on foreign aid spending to suit the president’s agenda.

As he signed the executive order last month, Trump declared that “no further United States foreign assistance shall be disbursed in a manner that is not fully aligned with the foreign policy of the President of the United States.”

Hitting Afghanistan where it hurts

The consequences of Trump’s actions were immediately felt in Afghanistan which already holds an abysmal track record in human, particularly women, rights.

For a country that survives on foreign aid, Trump’s decision to freeze spending was devastating for Afghanistan.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban’s deputy minister of economy, Abdul Latif Nazari, stated that around 50 national and international aid organisations had partially or entirely suspended their operations.

“These organizations have contributed to humanitarian aid for the people of Afghanistan,” said Nazari.

The suspension of aid to Afghanistan comes at a critical time, with around 15 million people—roughly a third of the population, primarily women and children—suffering from malnutrition or starvation. Last year, the World Food Programme had sufficient funds to assist less than half of them, with approximately 40 per cent of its funding coming from the US.

With inputs from agencies