The global suspension of nearly all funding for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is shuttering peace and anti-gang programs in Colombia’s most impoverished places, endangering the implementation of the country’s 2016 peace deal with leftist FARC rebels, according to officials, people working with the agency and beneficiaries. The Trump administration’s freeze of nearly all USAID funding has thrown humanitarian initiatives around the world into turmoil. In recent years, Colombia received as much as $440 million annually in USAID assistance for more than 80 programs, making it the largest recipient of the agency’s funds in the Western Hemisphere, according to U.S. government data.
Cuts will endanger implementation of the accord with the leftist FARC rebels, which includes efforts to cut the production of cocaine, said Colombia’s former foreign minister, a lawmaker, an official who worked on USAID programs and another source with knowledge of the funding. Aid has funded reintegration programs for former rebels, including economic projects to employ ex-combatants. Even with international support for reintegration, some rebels, alleging failure to implement the FARC deal, began returning to armed groups as early as 2019. Parts of the country are still plagued by violence.
President Gustavo Petro had pledged to end the country’s war, but he has less than 17 months left in his term and has yet to ink any deals. Major armed groups like the National Liberation Army (ELN) rebels and former FARC who formed dissident organizations have internally fractured during Petro’s term, undermining most negotiations. Luis Gilberto Murillo, who until January was Colombia’s foreign minister and previously served as the country’s ambassador to the U.S. and an adviser to USAID, said the cuts would affect numerous organizations focused on human rights, democracy, peace-building and helping Indigenous and Afro-Colombian people.
