USAID suspension shutters Colombia programs, endangering FARC peace deal

By Alfie Pannell

QUIBDO, Colombia (Reuters) - The global suspension of USAID funding is shuttering peace and anti-gang programs in Colombia's most impoverished places, endangering 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 funding for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) 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 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. 

"I think it will create more risk of violence and more vulnerability because the role of USAID programs in those regions has been decisive," he said.

Cocaine production and trafficking – carried out by a constellation of rebel groups and crime gangs descended from former paramilitaries – are a top driver of continued violence. Cocaine's principal destinations are the U.S. and Europe.

The Colombian government did not respond to a request for comment on the cuts and the effect on peace prospects. Neither did USAID or the State Department.

The U.S. provided 42% of the foreign aid for implementation of the deal - which includes land reform and a transitional justice system to sentence combatants for war crimes - between 2018 and 2024, totaling some $1.26 billion, according to figures from Colombia's government.

"The USAID cuts will have a significant, negative impact on the implementation of the peace accords," said James Hermenegildo Mosquera, a lower house lawmaker from Choco province who occupies a seat specially reserved for conflict victims. He said victim reparations and land reform will be affected, "increasing the risks of violence stemming from drug trafficking."

Elizabeth Dickinson, senior Crisis Group analyst for Colombia, said: "A number of the projects that were canceled focused on providing alternatives to former farmers who had cultivated coca."

Colombia's government was forced to reduce spending last year and Reuters could not determine whether the country will make up for canceled aid or raise it from other donors. 

Choco, which boasts both Caribbean and Pacific coastline and borders Panama, has long been a strategic hub for drug trafficking and a stop for northbound migrants. It is the country's poorest province, according to the national statistics agency, and is populated mostly by Afro-Colombian and Indigenous communities.

Luz Mely Moreno, 25, now a student, grew up in a gang-controlled neighborhood in provincial capital Quibdo. She says she was on the verge of joining a criminal group before taking part in a mentorship program at USAID-funded national anti-gang program Jovenes Resilientes, or Youth Resilience.

The organization has had contracts with USAID every year since 2021, mostly for programs categorized as 'conflict, peace and security' and for as much as $14.3 million total annually. It was set to receive more than $3 million in funding in 2025 but instead has closed its doors and let all its staff go.

"Before I didn't study, I didn't know what to do, I was rude, undisciplined," Moreno told Reuters. 

Youth Resilience's mentorship gave her a chance to imagine a different life and now she is studying psychology at a local university.

"Today I am a woman who has achievements and goals," she said.

Moreno fears without the program other young people will be lured by gangs: "They will fall back into drugs, they will fall back into criminal gangs because we have been rendered hopeless."

"APPALLING WASTE"

Funding of $60 million for "Indigenous Peoples and Afro-Colombian empowerment in Central America" was cited by U.S. President Donald Trump in his recent address to Congress as an example of "appalling waste". Colombia is in South, not Central, America.

The program mentioned by Trump is one of USAID's most successful in Colombia, according to former foreign minister Murillo, who himself is Afro-Colombian and from Choco.

At least two current cabinet members have benefited from scholarships through the program, which has had bipartisan support from U.S. governments since the administration of George W. Bush, he said.

"Young people have been left at the mercy of illegal groups and in a state of defenselessness," said Wilmer Serna, coordinator for Youth Resilience, which also provided entrepreneurship opportunities, sports and music lessons before it shut down. He said USAID was its only source of funding. 

Youth Resilience, which had 30 offices nationwide, reached about 60,000 young people with its programs, according to a post on LinkedIn by its former director, who did not respond to Reuters questions.

The Quibdo office rehabilitated some 200 gang members, Serna said, and documents from the organization show it provided opportunities and mentorship to more than 3,100 youths.

A ceasefire between three gangs has cut Quibdo's homicide rate by more than half since December, but officials say social programs such as Youth Resilience are as important as ongoing negotiations to continue the city's truce past a March 31 expiration.

"We must, necessarily, move forward with the route of (...) dialogue with the gangs, but at the same time we must continue with other actions including social ones," said Francisco Vidal, Choco's secretary of government.

Thousands in the province have been displaced this year by clashes between the ELN rebels and the Clan del Golfo crime gang.

The aid freeze undermines peace efforts in rural Choco, said one source who worked on a USAID program implementing the 2016 deal there, and production of cocaine and migrant flows could rise. 

The source, who was not authorized to speak to the media, said it was unlikely other armed groups would want to negotiate their own peace agreements if the FARC deal is not fully implemented.

(Reporting by Alfie Pannell in Quibdo, additional reporting by Julia Symmes Cobb and Luis Jaime Acosta in Bogota; Editing by Julia Symmes Cobb and Claudia Parsons)