Donald Trump’s decision to dismantle USAID and halt its £55bn of spending has far-reaching consequences. Vaccination programmes, clean water projects, food aid and humanitarian work have all been abruptly halted, causing distress to millions of vulnerable people around the globe.
Refugee resettlement has also been badly hit. The US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants has called this a ‘devastating development’ for refugees in the process of being resettled to the USA. It also means that many people who have been waiting patiently to get on a plane, having been selected and vetted for resettlement, are now in limbo. I met two women in this position this week, as I visited Cairo with a parliamentary delegation.
Both are lone mothers and Christians from Sudan who have faced persecution for their faith, including being physically attacked in Egypt. Both families were scheduled to come to the UK as part of our very small resettlement programme.
Our failure to find them a resettlement place meant that the UN removed them from the UK list last year. They have respectively spent five and seven years waiting, and are still stuck in appalling circumstances. The UN put one woman on the list to go to Canada, and the other to the USA. The latter’s hopes of being able to make a fresh start free from persecution have now been dashed twice. I felt ashamed as I spoke to these women, and promised to pray for them by name. Someone once said that “If all you’ve got left to do is to pray… it’s still the most powerful thing”, but I felt powerless as I sat with two beleaguered women who have suffered more than most of us, and whom we had promised to help – but had let down.
I also spent an hour with a dozen young refugees from Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Syria; all living in Cairo, in poverty and in danger. I heard accounts of girls raped and becoming mothers, of friends whose sense of utter hopelessness led to suicide, of those who contemplated leaving Egypt and slipping into the lawless horror that is Libya, and then onto Europe via a rickety boat across the Mediterranean. I heard incredibly able and inspiring people speak of their inability to access education, of feeling trapped, without any prospect of becoming the doctors, teachers, architects and engineers they aspired to be. I asked them what turned out to be a pretty crass question: “What do you plan to be doing in ten years’ time?” There was a snigger around the room, gallows humour. A lovely young man called Thomas from Eritrea replied, “we can have no plan… but we do have hope.”
Inspired and heartbroken by these young people, we then met a family from Syria and one from Sudan, both containing vulnerable members, and due to be resettled in London. We spent time with them on their British orientation programme.
Numbers on the UK Resettlement Scheme have dropped off since 2020: only 506 people arrived last year. But the UK must now step up in the international community. We cannot match the funding that the US provided, but even taking a few thousand vulnerable people each year will make an enormous difference to these families. Their stories are of persecution, violence and abuse.
In terms of its global commitments, America has just left the room. The ‘soft power’ impact of building trust through being present, supporting local projects and communities, is just as vital as the hard cash. And despite the ill-judged closure of the Department for International Development under our last government, Britain is still well-respected in terms of influence, diplomacy and aid.
A multi-year quota commitment for the UK resettlement scheme would demonstrate the British government’s intention to stay in the room. We can’t allow the support systems for the world’s most vulnerable people to collapse because Trump chucks his toys out of the pram.
The more the president throws his weight around, the less credibility the US will have in the eyes of other nations. At first people may jump to his tune, but they will soon find a way to work around this erratic behaviour. Countries will start re-building without the US, which will ultimately weaken its position. Instead they will look to allies they can depend on. We know that China and Russia are jostling to fill the vacuum.
Churchill said: “Democracy is a terrible system…but it’s better than all the alternatives!”
The alternatives are despots and dictators who make war on a whim and would readily strip us of our freedoms. So, flawed as we are in the liberal democratic ‘West’, we are nevertheless the only show in town if we are to prevent the slide to a new dark ages. A united Europe and an engaged UK have no option. It’s time to step up and lead the free world.
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Source: Politics
