US lifts pause on food donations for World Food Program
NEW YORK/WASHINGTON—The United States has lifted a pause on food donations, the UN World Food Program (WFP) said, ending a suspension that an aid watchdog on Monday warned had left 500,000 metric tons of food currently at sea or ready to be shipped in limbo.
“We can confirm that the recent pause concerning in-kind food assistance to WFP—purchased from US farmers with Title II funds—has been rescinded,” WFP said in an X post on Sunday. “This allows for the resumption of food purchases and deliveries under existing USAID agreements.”
Washington had stopped purchases of commodities produced by US farmers for donation—despite a waiver for emergency food assistance—after US President Donald Trump paused all foreign aid for 90 days so contributions could be reviewed to see if they aligned with his “America First” foreign policy.
The United States also told WFP to stop work on dozens of US-funded grants, orders that were received five days after Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued the food waiver.
Bulk of aid
Several of the suspended grants were under the Food for Peace Title II program, which spends about $2 billion annually on the donation of US commodities.
The program, which makes up the bulk of US international food assistance, is coadministered by the US Department of Agriculture and the US Agency for International Development.
The US State Department did not respond to a request for comment.
The USAID grants that WFP was told to stop work on are worth tens of millions of dollars and provide food aid in impoverished countries including Yemen, Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, South Sudan, Central African Republic, Haiti and Mali.
A lack of detail in the Trump administration’s effort to slash and reshape US foreign aid has created chaos and confusion, say humanitarian officials, who have been left to work out whether to take the financial risk of continuing programs.
