Programs in Colombia are suspended by USAID, jeopardizing the FARC peace agreement

According to officials, USAID employees, and beneficiaries, the worldwide suspension of USAID financing is halting peace and anti-gang initiatives in Colombia’s poorest areas, jeopardizing the country’s 2016 peace agreement with leftist FARC insurgents.

Humanitarian efforts around the world are in disarray as a result of the Trump administration’s decision to block almost all of USAID’s funding.

According to U.S. government records, Colombia has been the greatest recipient of USAID monies in the western hemisphere, receiving up to $440 million a year in aid for over 80 initiatives in recent years.

Cuts will jeopardize efforts to reduce cocaine production as part of the agreement with the communist FARC rebels, according to a former Colombian foreign minister, a politician, a USAID program official, and another source with knowledge of the funding.

Reintegration initiatives for former rebels, including business ventures to hire former soldiers, have been financed by aid. As early as 2019, some rebels started joining armed groups again, claiming that the FARC pact had not been implemented, despite foreign assistance for reintegration. There are still violent areas in the nation.

With less than 17 months remaining in his term, President Gustavo Petro has yet to sign any agreements despite his commitment to stop the nation’s war. Most conversations have been undermined by the internal division of major armed factions under Petro’s rule, including the National Liberation Army (ELN) rebels and former FARC who established dissident organizations.

Former Colombian ambassador to the United States and USAID adviser Luis Gilberto Murillo, who was Colombia’s foreign minister until January, said the cuts would impact many organizations that support democracy, human rights, peacebuilding, and 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 stated.
One of the main causes of ongoing violence is the manufacturing and trafficking of cocaine, which is done by a variety of criminal organizations and rebel groups that are descended from former paramilitaries. The United States and Europe are the main destinations for cocaine.

A request for comment on the reduction and their impact on peace chances was not answered by the Colombian administration. The State Department and USAID didn’t either.

According to Colombia’s government, the U.S. contributed around $1.26 billion, or 42%, of the foreign aid needed to implement the agreement, which includes land reform and a transitional justice system to punish fighters for war crimes, between 2018 and 2024.

“The implementation of the peace accords will be significantly hampered by the USAID cuts,” stated James Hermenegildo Mosquera, a member of the lower house from Choco region who holds a seat designated specifically for victims of violence. It will impact land reform and victim restitution, he warned, “increasing the risks of violence stemming from drug trafficking.”

Senior Crisis Group analyst for Colombia Elizabeth Dickinson stated: “A number of the projects that were canceled focused on providing alternatives to former farmers who had cultivated coca.”

Last year, Colombia’s government was obliged to cut spending, and Reuters was unable to ascertain whether the nation would raise the money from other contributors or make up for the lost aid.

Choco, which borders Panama and has a coastline that stretches both to the Caribbean and the Pacific, has long been a major drug trafficking hub and a destination for migrants traveling north. Afro-Colombian and Indigenous communities make up the majority of the province’s population, which the national statistics office claims is the poorest in the nation.

Born and raised in a gang-run neighborhood in Quibdo, the provincial capital, Luz Mely Moreno, 25, is currently a student. She claims that before to participating in a mentorship program at the USAID-funded national anti-gang initiative Jovenes Resilientes, or Youth Resilience, she was on the verge of joining a criminal organization.

Since 2021, the organization has had annual contracts from USAID, primarily for “conflict, peace, and security” activities, totaling up to $14.3 million annually. In 2025, it was supposed to get about $3 million in investment, but instead it has shut down and laid off all of its employees.

“Before I didn’t study, I didn’t know what to do, I was rude, undisciplined,” Moreno told Reuters.

She was given the opportunity to envision an alternative life through Youth Resilience’s mentorship, and she is currently enrolled in a nearby university to study psychology.

“Today I am a woman who has achievements and goals,” she stated.
According to Moreno, “they will fall back into drugs; they will fall back into criminal gangs because we have been rendered hopeless.” He worries that additional young people may be seduced by gangs in the absence of the program.

“APPALLING WASTE”

In his recent speech to Congress, U.S. President Donald Trump referred to the $60 million funding for “Indigenous Peoples and Afro-Colombian empowerment in Central America” as an instance of “appalling waste.” South America, not Central America, is where Colombia is.

According to former foreign minister Murillo, who is Afro-Colombian and from Choco, the initiative Trump referenced is among USAID’s most successful in Colombia.

The initiative, which has had bipartisan support from U.S. governments since the George W. Bush administration, has provided scholarships to at least two current cabinet members, he added.

Before it closed, Youth Resilience offered sports, music, and entrepreneurship programs. “Young people have been left at the mercy of illegal groups and in a state of defenselessness,” said Wilmer Serna, coordinator. Its sole financing source, he maintained, was USAID.

The previous director of Youth Resilience, who did not reply to Reuters inquiries, said on LinkedIn that the organization, which had 30 offices across the country, reached roughly 60,000 young people with its programs.

According to Serna, the Quibdo office rehabilitated about 200 gang members and gave more than 3,100 young people chances and mentorship, according to organization records.

Quibdo’s homicide rate has decreased by more than half since December due to a ceasefire between three gangs, but authorities believe continuing talks to extend the city’s truce past its March 31 expiration are just as crucial as social programs like Youth Resilience.

Francisco Vidal, Choco’s secretary of government, stated, “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.”

Conflicts between the Clan del Golfo crime group and the ELN rebels have forced thousands of people to flee the province this year.

According to one source who worked on a USAID program implementing the 2016 agreement in rural Choco, the assistance freeze jeopardizes peace efforts there and may increase cocaine production and migration flows.

If the FARC agreement is not completely executed, other armed groups are unlikely to want to discuss their own peace agreements, according to the source, who was not allowed to speak to the media.