Shutting Down USAID Meant Shutting A Global Anti Child Trafficking Network : The Last Mile with USAID

Shared by Robert Cohen 

America has a momentary fixation on issues like Epstein, while allowing much bigger issues slip by unnoticed.

Among many other critical aid programmes, the Trump Administration brought about the collapse of  the USAID's anti-trafficking structures, in particular USAID's child protection systems.

"....(we) let an entire child protection system disappear."  "This wasn’t a bureaucratic shift. It was an erasure—cut clean, without witness."

Click here for the article

Summary
The article documents how Executive Order 14169, signed on July 1, 2025, terminated or gutted over 90% of USAID’s anti-trafficking and child protection programs. These once enabled over 13,000 child rescues and hundreds of prosecutions globally.

From Cambodia to Kenya, Philippines to Malawi, safe houses were shuttered, investigators were laid off, prosecutions collapsed, and entire lifelines for trafficked children vanished. The author presents extensive field evidence: a failed rescue system in Cambodia, halted prosecutions in the Philippines, community alerts disrupted in Nepal, and HIV services shut down for survivors in Kenya.

By contrasting MAGA outrage over Epstein’s sealed files with silence on dismantled child protection systems, the article accuses the U.S. government of protecting powerful abusers while erasing vulnerable victims. It concludes with a call for a global, durable, nonpartisan child protection infrastructure to replace what was lost—before traffickers exploit the vacuum permanently.

Quotes
“We wouldn’t have had the confidence or the protocols to intervene or prosecute without it.” —Senior investigator, Women and Children Protection Center (Philippines)

“We thought we were free. But then the shelter closed, and we had to go back.” —16-year-old girl, Caritas Cambodia

“When the funding stopped, the teachers left. We were just there. No guards. No food. No way to stay safe.” —15-year-old survivor, Mombasa, Kenya

“Global rescue networks collapsed. Children were left untracked. No one came.” —WIRED

“Trump sealed the files. Rubio sealed the fate of thousands of trafficked children.”

“No child should be protected only when the right party is in power… USAID did more than fund programs. It held a line. That line is broken.”