US: Global Health Aid Tied to Harmful Conditions

Pacts Require Abortion Surveillance, Rights to Specimen Sharing, Data Access

June 8, 2026
Human Rights Watch

(Washington, DC) – The United States government is conditioning lifesaving health assistance on broad access to surveillance data and extractive rights to pathogen samples and data for pharmaceutical development, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch issued an assessment of seven bilateral health agreements signed in late 2025 with Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Liberia, and Uganda.

“The agreements show the US intends to condition vital health assistance for millions of people on acquiescence to troubling conditions,” said Julia Bleckner, senior health researcher at Human Rights Watch. “After the sudden and devastating pullback from US assistance in 2025, governments are now being pressured to accept agreements with contingencies that jeopardize human rights.”

Continued: https://www.hrw.org/news/2026/06/08/us-global-health-aid-tied-to-harmful-conditions

08.06.2026

US Agency for International Development

Too many global funders are overlooking women in Latin America

Alyse Lopez-Salm and Daniela Perdomo

1 June 2026

Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) is one of the most dangerous regions in the world to be a woman—yet it remains one of the most underfunded.

Despite systemic denial of reproductive rights, high levels of gender-based violence, accelerating climate risk, and worsening restrictions on civil society’s freedoms of association, assembly, and expression, global investments in women in LAC fall short—with drastic consequences in a region rife with extreme inequality.

Continued: https://www.alliancemagazine.org/blog/too-many-global-funders-are-overlooking-women-in-latin-america/

01.06.2026

gender-based violence

global funders of abortion

“We are going to die”: The frontline costs of Uganda’s new US health agreement

“We are fighting political and cultural wars. Wars that are not ours.”

Soita Khatondi Wepukhulu
6 May 2026

On an early morning in February, 23-year-old Suzan Akello was found lying dead on a veranda outside a house she had visited in Namataala, Mbale town, in eastern Uganda. Friends said she could not afford a clinic and had taken herbal medicine to terminate a pregnancy. By the time Akello needed urgent care, it was too late.

Post-abortion care services (PAC) are legal in Uganda, secured through years of advocacy and government-NGO collaboration, some under US-supported programmes. But health workers, activists, and patients told The New Humanitarian that in recent months, post-abortion care and critical HIV/AIDS services are increasingly caught in the fallout of a new $2.3 billion health agreement between Uganda and the United States, one that is integrating donor-funded programmes into Uganda’s public health system while reducing reliance on NGOs.

Continued: https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news-feature/2026/05/06/frontline-costs-uganda-new-us-health-agreement

Whistleblower says Trump officials thought USAID did ‘just abortions,’ asked for ‘Barney-style’ slides before gutting agency, per new book

Marisa Kabas
April 13, 2026

One of the first acts by the second Trump administration was the complete gutting of the US Agency for International Development, a workforce of more than 10,000 people that had administered humanitarian aid and public health support to nations around the world since 1961. Thousands of jobs were immediately slashed by Elon Musk’s para-governmental Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and political appointees took over posts previously held by career civil servants. An agency once charged with fighting poverty, curbing the spread of infectious diseases, and promoting education and democracy abroad had been effectively thrown in the woodchipper.

Continued: https://www.thehandbasket.co/p/trump-usaid-abortions-barney-nicholas-enrich-into-the-wood-chipper-book-exclusive

How U.S.A.I.D. Birth Control Meant for Africa Was Ruined

The Trump administration had options for offloading contraceptives once destined for Africa, a newly obtained memo shows. Instead, it has let them collect dust and go bad.

By Jeanna Smialek and Stephanie Nolen, New York Times
March 26, 2026

Millions of dollars’ worth of contraceptives that have been stranded in Belgium since the Trump administration dismantled American foreign aid are no longer usable, according to a newly obtained memo written for a Trump administration official.

About $9.7 million of contraceptives purchased by the United States Agency for International Development and originally destined for low-income nations in Africa got stuck in Belgium after the Trump administration shut down the agency last year.

Continued: https://archive.is/b9eUZ

(https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/26/world/europe/usaid-contraception-birth-control-belgium-africa.html)

America’s culture wars are killing people overseas

When “pro-life” foreign aid hurts women and children the most.

by Sara Herschander
Jan 30, 2026

“The mark of barbarism is that we treat babies like inconveniences to be discarded,” Vice President JD Vance bellowed to a crowd of zoomer nuns, bagpipers, and white nationalists at the annual March for Life in Washington, DC, last Friday.

The vice president then proceeded to announce a threefold expansion of the Mexico City policy, a decades-old, controversial foreign policy that prohibits organizations from receiving foreign aid if they mention abortion as a family planning option. It was reinstated last year when President Donald Trump resumed office.

Continued: https://archive.is/vdb65

(https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/477125/foreign-aid-dei-gender-global-gag-mexico-city)

Expanded Global Gag Rule is a major blow to global health and human rights

The newly expanded rule further advances an extreme anti-rights agenda

Ipas
January 29, 2026

The Jan. 27 expansion of the Global Gag Rule is just the latest action by the current U.S. administration to decimate global health and human rights.

“This policy weaponizes U.S. foreign aid to force the administration’s harmful agenda on people around the world,” says Anu Kumar, Ipas President and CEO. The newly expanded Global Gag Rule will use the power of all non-military U.S. foreign funds to restrict work by a wide array of actors on gender equity, LGBTQI+ rights, and diversity, equity and inclusion—as well as abortion.

“Bullying countries into complying with anti-rights and extremist ideology is despicable and unacceptable,” Kumar says. “The imperialist goals of this administration are on full display in this policy’s conditions to receive U.S. foreign assistance.”

Continued: https://www.ipas.org/news/expanded-global-gag-rule-blow-to-global-health/

29.01.2026

Commentary

Anu Kumar

Dr. Jean-Claude Mulunda

Latest US Restrictions on Aid ‘Bully’ Recipients to Accept ‘Extremist Ideology’

29/01/2026
Kerry Cullinan

Global health organisations have reacted with anger to the new US foreign aid policy, which prohibits all aid recipients, bar military, from performing or promoting abortion, “gender ideology”, or “diversity, equity and inclusion” (DEI).

“Catastrophic”, “bullying”, “draconian” and “ideologically driven” – are some of their reactions to the Promoting Human Flourishing in Foreign Assistance (PHFFA) policy, announced by US Vice-President JD Vance at an anti-abortion event last Friday evening.

Continued; https://healthpolicy-watch.news/latest-us-restrictions-on-aid-bully-recipients-to-accept-extremist-ideology/

‘Coercive’ Trump-led US health deals could cause global abortion access to collapse, charities warn

Special Report: Leading NGOs fear the deals in Africa – offering financial assistance in exchange for things like mining rights and access to health data – are worded vaguely enough for the US to impose restrictions on reproductive rights

Rachel Schraer Global Health Correspondent
Friday 16 January 2026

'Coercive' health agreements between the US and poorer countries could block them from spending their own tax money on things Donald Trump’s administration disagrees with, leading NGOs warn – risking already-fragile access to legal abortion collapsing.

After a complete freeze on foreign aid spending when Trump took office, the US is now in the process of striking new funding agreements with African governments. These promise aid money in exchange for certain conditions – from mining rights and access to valuable patient data, to agreements to spend national health budgets on priorities dictated by America. The deals replace a patchwork of previous health agreements under the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which has been dismantled during Trump’s first year back in the White House.

Continued: https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-abortion-health-aid-africa-b2900590.html

‘Trojan horse moment’: anti-rights groups seize chance to fill void left by US aid cuts

Ultra-conservative Christian organisations look to reshape global health landscape as new aid agreements open door to demands restricting family planning services

Isabel Choat
Wed 17 Dec 2025

The sudden stop work order on USAID in January 2025 sent shock waves around the world. Many health clinics were immediately shut down, leaving millions without access to vital medicines and facilities, with potentially deadly consequences, especially for HIV patients, children, and women and adolescent girls.

To many, the subsequent axing of 83% of USAID programmes seemed like pure nihilism, engineered by ideologues who wanted to kill off the agency. But there was a long-term vision behind the destruction. The gutting of USAID has cleared a path for the next phase of a plan to reshape the global health landscape, say reproductive justice campaigners.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/17/trojan-horse-moment-anti-rights-groups-fill-void-us-aid-cuts