Tag - aid

 
 

AID

A Buddhist monk walks past the damaged Mandalay Palace on Monday. The country's ruling military junta can repeat the mistakes of 17 years ago by blocking aid after Cyclone Nargis left 140,000 dead or allow urgent assistance to flow freely.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 1, 2025
The quake in Myanmar should force the junta’s hand
The ousted civilian administration initiated a two-week ceasefire in quake-hit areas to allow aid to reach victims. It doesn’t look like the junta will do the same.
A man stands near the remains of a building destroyed in a strong earthquake, in Amarapura, Myanmar, on Monday.
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Apr 1, 2025
U.S. aid response in Myanmar faces hurdles after staff cuts
Response hobbled by the huge fund cuts, contractor terminations and plans to fire nearly all USAID staff, source says.
The World Health Organization's headquarters in Geneva. The WHO is facing an income gap of nearly $600 million in 2025 and has "no choice" but to start making cutbacks, the organization's chief wrote in an internal email.
WORLD / Science & Health
Mar 30, 2025
WHO must cut budget by a fifth after U.S. pullout
The WHO is facing an income gap of nearly $600 million in 2025 and has "no choice" but to start making cutbacks.
Rohingya refugees hold up signs at a camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, on March 14.
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Mar 28, 2025
Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh fear U.S. aid cuts will deepen crisis
The U.S. had been the largest provider of aid to the Rohingya refugees, contributing nearly $2.4 billion since 2017, according to a State Department website.
There is concern about a severe decline in democracy in Asia, with many former success stories now backsliding.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 27, 2025
An Asian democracy collapse amid the new world order
By the monitoring organization Freedom House's calculations, for 19 years, democracy has eroded around the world.
A member of a medical team takes a patient's blood pressure during an HIV clinic day in Kampala, Uganda, on Feb. 17.
WORLD / Politics
Mar 27, 2025
Trump’s foreign aid retreat guts funding for HIV treatments
The withdrawal is risking lives globally and threatening to unravel decades of progress made toward ending AIDS as a public health threat.
Women and babies at the Zamzam displacement camp, close to al-Fashir in North Darfur, Sudan, in January 2024
WORLD / Society
Mar 26, 2025
Sudan's RSF squeezing relief supplies as famine spreads, aid workers say
The move puts hundreds of thousands of people in the western region of Darfur at greater risk of starvation.
Defense Minister Gen Nakatani said Wednesday that the government will continue to provide assistance in addressing humanitarian needs in the Gaza Strip.
JAPAN
Mar 26, 2025
Japan takes in Palestinian woman injured in Gaza war for treatment
Tokyo plans to accept another injured Palestinian woman in the coming days, marking its first acceptance of patients from Gaza since the conflict broke out in October 2023.
A maternal handbook used by Heba Jibril in northern Gaza
JAPAN / Society
Mar 21, 2025
In Gaza, Japan-backed maternal handbooks a vital source for child care
The health handbooks provide crucial information for women at a time when medical facilities are closed and digital information is scarce.
Elon Musk and President Donald Trump's assertion that U.S. aid cuts to programs including PEPFAR and USAID in Africa aren't causing harm is not true. Children and others are already dying as a result.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 19, 2025
Musk says aid cuts haven’t killed anyone. That's not true.
In South Sudan, one of the world’s poorest countries, the efforts by Musk and U.S. President Donald Trump are already leading children to die.
People protest as the USAID building sits closed to employees after a memo was issued advising agency personnel to work remotely, in Washington on Feb. 3.
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Mar 19, 2025
Powerful Asian countries will struggle to fill aid gap left by U.S.
China may be reluctant to fully fill the void, while South Korea and Japan could struggle to give enough.
People wait to receive bags of rice distributed by the World Food Program on the outskirts of Yangon in 2021.
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Mar 18, 2025
Myanmar faces 'untold' suffering due to U.S. aid 'betrayal': U.N. expert
A former U.S. congressman has torn into the cuts, saying they were politically motivated, based on distortions and being carried out in the worst possible manner.
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba and others attend a Cabinet meeting on Friday at the Prime Minister's Office
JAPAN / Politics
Mar 14, 2025
Japan touts benefits of foreign development aid
Japanese aid has helped the country win trust globally, the government said in an annual white paper.
Rohingya refugees use a makeshift raft to cross the Naf River from Myanmar into Bangladesh in 2017.
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Mar 6, 2025
Rohingya refugee food aid to be halved from next month: U.N.
The U.N. World Food Program says that "severe funding shortfalls" has forced it to cut monthly food vouchers for around 1 million Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh.
Campaign supporters light a total of 1,638 candles, representing the number of dead victims claimed by HIV/AIDS in the Philippines since 1984, as part of their commemoration of International AIDS Candlelight Memorial Day in metro Manila in 2016.
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Mar 6, 2025
Philippines' LGBTQ+ groups seek options to replace U.S. aid
Advocacy groups are looking at new financing strategies and calling for greater involvement by local health institutions to protect against foreign aid withdrawals.
A Rohingya girl feeds a child from a jar carrying the USAID logo at a refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, on Feb. 11.
WORLD / Politics
Mar 3, 2025
USAID official put on leave after warning of deaths due to Trump's aid block
The Trump administration announced last week that it was canceling nearly 10,000 foreign aid grants and contracts worth almost $60 billion, ending about 90% of USAID's global work.
People gather by the rubble of destroyed buildings for a mass gathering for a communal iftar fast-breaking meal on the second day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in the area of al-Dahduh in Gaza City's Tal al-Hawa district on Sunday.
WORLD / Politics
Mar 3, 2025
Israel blocks aid to devastated Gaza as truce's first phase ends
The decision came as talks on a truce extension appeared to hit an impasse, after the ceasefire's 42-day first phase drew to a close.
The minaret of a mosque is pictured next to destroyed buildings in the Khalidiya district in Homs on Feb. 10, 2025.
WORLD / Politics
Mar 2, 2025
'Total panic' as USAID cuts jobs from Syria to Haiti
In 2023, USAID spent $42 billion to support programs across 157 countries — ranging from malaria and HIV prevention to fighting starvation and helping those displaced by war.
A scientific officer works in the research lab at the University of Cape Town's Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine, in Cape Town, South Africa on Feb. 17.
WORLD / Science & Health
Feb 28, 2025
Services to millions of people collapse as USAID cuts contracts worldwide
Among those to get termination notices were major U.N. health programs, which might have different sources of funding, and smaller groups that relied mostly on U.S. grants.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa at a news conference following the Group of 20 foreign ministers' meeting in Johannesburg on Feb. 20
JAPAN / FOCUS
Feb 26, 2025
Japan's soft power may hold key to African development as U.S. cuts aid
Businesses linked to Japanese food and anime, for example, may play an important role in investments to Africa from Japan.

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Professional cleaner Hirofumi Sakurai takes a moment to appreciate some photographs in a Gotanda apartment whose occupant died alone.
The last cleanup: Life and death in a lonely Japan