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Jeremy Konyndyk is at jeremykonyndyk.bsky.social Profile picture
Jeremy Konyndyk is at jeremykonyndyk.bsky.social
@JeremyKonyndyk
President of @refugeesintl. Former lead for COVID (46) & disaster relief (44) @USAID. Also, bread. Support our work at the link below!
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Feb 13 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
So...Max Primorac was the lead anti-USAID witness in the House hearing this morning and is one of the architects of the assault on the agency.

He made a few odd claims about his credentials at USAID in today's hearing. He claimed that he "oversaw containment of two Ebola outbreaks and led the Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance."

Neither of these claims are accurate.
Feb 13 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
As I told CNN earlier, most of the disinformation about @USAID falls into one of three categories:

▶️ Outright fabrications

▶️ Real programs, but not USAID-funded

▶️ Programs that make sense if you take 2 minutes to understand them ▶️Fabrications:

"Gaza condoms" is the classic here.

Absurd on its face, but still Elon and Trump spent a week repeating it as the pretext for destroying USAID.

Until Elon just glibly admitted it was bullshit and we shouldn't trust what he says.
Feb 9 • 21 tweets • 8 min read
OK, time to bust another @USAID myth.

Stephen Miller said on Fox today that USAID is a rogue slush fund. Trump & Elon have made the same accusation.

FALSE. They're either ignorant of how USAID spends money, or willfully lying about it. Or...

Anyway, caffeinate and read on.

🧵 Buckle in for a roller coaster ride through the USAID budget process. To keep you reading, I will use memes.

Step 1.

Every year, the White House (via OMB) puts together a federal budget proposal to Congress. Every federal agency (incl USAID) sends OMB their budget wishlist.
Feb 7 • 20 tweets • 6 min read
The state of play, a week into Elon's assault on USAID.

USAID is in a state of suspended animation - it has been powered down, but it's not *quite* to the point where it can't be powered back on.

What happens next comes down to the courts & Congress.
🧵 Ignore the wood-chipper tweets and here's where things actually stand:
- USAID's HQ is intact and could resume work
- USAID's staff are mostly furloughed - but could be recalled
- Overseas missions have been told they'll be drawn down - but for now remain intact and in place
Feb 4 • 12 tweets • 4 min read
Might not feel this way on twitter - but back here on earth, DOGE did not have a great day yesterday on the @USAID front.

Elon's attempt to speedrun the destruction of USAID is starting to hit real legal and political bumps.

The pushback is starting - and must be sustained.
🧵 Congress is waking up to what is happening, on both sides of the aisle.

Big spontaneous rally outside of USAID HQ yesterday with a sizable contingent of Congressional Dems defending the agency.
Feb 2 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
Whether or not you care about foreign aid, you should be very worried about what DOGE is doing to @USAID right now.

Breaching highly classified systems and unlawfully attempting to unilaterally dissolve an independent federal agency.

This is a test run.

🧵 Since last week rumors have been swirling of a potential Exec Order to dissolve USAID into State.

I did an earlier thread on why that would be deeply damaging to the USG's ability to advance American interests and values in the world. Would harm millions.
Jan 29 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
So look - on the "Gaza condoms" thing.

USAID procures condoms for around $0.05 apiece.

$50m would be ONE BILLION condoms.

What's going is here is NOT a billion condoms for Gaza.

What's going on is that the bros at DOGE apparently can't read govt spreadsheets. This data is publicly available! A short conversation with staff at USAID would have made it pretty obvious.

usaid.gov/sites/default/…Image
Jan 25 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
A global stop-work order on foreign aid will cost many lives if kept in place.

As written, it halts ALL ongoing humanitarian relief activities, except food aid, in places like Syria, Sudan, Gaza.

Also halts all global health programs.

What this will mean in human terms:
🧵 US-funded relief operations in Gaza will have to halt amid the ongoing cease-fire.

US-funded health clinics, nutrition support, safe water provision, etc etc will all have to stop work unless this is revised or waived.
Dec 19, 2024 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
Just as Assad's mass graves and torture prisons are coming to light, Jeff Sachs is on a media tour claiming the whole Syrian revolution was a US intel op.

Unspeakably insulting to the countless Syrians who resisted Assad's tyranny.

What an ignorant jackass. Moreover - as someone who (unlike Sachs) actually served in the Obama admin and took part in the debates over Syria policy....his claim that Obama pressed a regime change policy is laughable.

Lots of us wanted a more muscular US policy toward Assad. Obama sure as hell didn't.
Nov 12, 2024 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Today we @RefugeesIntl joined 7 other humanitarian agencies to publish a scorecard on Israel's compliance with US demands on humanitarian access.

Across the board, the Israeli govt has failed to comply with US & intl law on relief in Gaza. It is past time to halt arms xfers. Image Last month, Secretaries Blinken and Austin wrote to the Israeli defense minister outlining a detailed series of demands for humanitarian progress in Gaza.

The letter reminded Israel that under US law, countries that block US aid are ineligible for security assistance.
Sep 21, 2024 • 11 tweets • 5 min read
Blockbuster report on widening UAE support for the genocidal RSF militia in Sudan.

Also confirms what @RefugeesIntl has called out for a year: UAE is using Red Crescent (@emiratesrc) as humanitarian cover for military ops.

As UNGA convenes in NYC, this demands urgent action.🧵 What's at stake here? Quite literally genocide.

The RSF grew out of the Janjaweed militias that committed genocide in Darfur 20 years ago.

Now rebranded, the same forces are resorting to the same tactics. We documented some of their atrocities last fall. refugeesinternational.org/reports-briefs…

Image
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Sep 12, 2024 • 17 tweets • 4 min read
New from us at @RefugeesIntl on famine in Gaza. Key takeaways:

- Parts of Gaza saw famine-like conditions in Feb/March
- Israeli concessions on aid access after ICJ order & WCK strike moved Gaza tenuously back below famine threshold
- Hunger worsening again since Rafah offensive Since spring there has been a concerted pushback by the Israeli government seeking to cast doubt on the official famine analysis by @theIPCinfo.

Basic argument is that spring famine projections were overblown and therefore risks of future famine should be discounted.
Aug 12, 2024 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Striking wording in this carefully-worded statement.

An "embargo" generally means a total ban on arms transfers. Opposing an "arms embargo" leaves the door pretty open to restrictions short of a full embargo. The main thrust of advocacy on arms transfers Israel has not been a full embargo - it has focused on restricting things like 2000lb bombs and 155mm shells that are causing enormous civilian harm in Gaza.
Jul 12, 2024 • 15 tweets • 4 min read
The pier was an expensive, shiny-object solution to a fundamentally political problem: Bibi was restricting aid access and Biden wouldn't deploy real leverage to change that.

The pier was a way to signal action on aid while avoiding the real obstacle.

🧵 This chart shows UN-verified aid & commercial inflows since October. The pier ("JLOTS") barely registers - just small slivers in May and July.
ochaopt.org/content/report…
Image
Jun 17, 2024 • 19 tweets • 4 min read
Just back from a Gaza-focused trip to Egypt/Jordan/Israel.

Key takeaways 🧵:
- Aid push in March/April made progress against famine
- Rafah offensive then wiped out much of that progress
- Huge obstacles remain on access & last-mile distro
- Little progress on aid worker safety .@JesCMarks and I conducted hours upon hours of extensive interviews with Palestinians who had fled Gaza and (remotely) with others still inside; with staff of aid agencies working in Gaza; with Israeli & Jordanian govts; and with USG humanitarian & diplomatic officials.
May 24, 2024 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
Rishi Sunak staked his leadership on extreme, illegal anti-asylum policies.

This proved to be a legal and political fiasco and ultimately a failure. He is on track to lose in a landslide.

There is a lesson here!

🧵 theguardian.com/politics/artic… Conventional wisdom across western democracies for the last decade has assumed that performative "toughness" on asylum is a political necessity.

The center/left has accepted this toughness/deterrence framing by the far right, and the debate is over how inhumane to be.
Apr 2, 2024 • 18 tweets • 5 min read
There are no words to adequately convey the rage heartbreak of the Israeli govt murdering 7 aid workers.

First and foremost, my deepest condolences and full solidarity with @WCKitchen, @chefjoseandres, and the families of the 7 heroes who gave their lives feeding Gazans. These were targeted hits on clearly marked humanitarian vehicles whose movement had been cleared with the IDF.

Clearly forbidden under international law. A total violation of IDF's legal obligation to distinguish non-mil objects and protect aid workers.
Mar 19, 2024 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
Is famine in Gaza "looming" or "imminent" or "underway?"

What do terms like that mean in practice?

A quick primer on famine terminology, technical jargon, and plain language. Humanitarians tend to be very cautious in using the term famine - it has a lot of power and shouldn't thrown around casually.

But that can lead to some confusion for laypeople.

Not to pick on Martin, but his statement ("imminent") is a good example.
Mar 18, 2024 • 13 tweets • 3 min read
A 🧵 on today's horrifying @theIPCinfo report on famine in Gaza.

In my 25 years as a humanitarian this may be, pound for pound, the grimmest analysis I have ever seen.

All the more indefensible since the December projections made clear this was coming.

ipcinfo.org/ipcinfo-websit… What makes this report so uniquely grim?

Starvation is astonishingly pervasive - touching the entire population. Typically (e.g. Somalia 2011) famine affects a subset, not the whole.

Rate of deterioration - never seen a population go from stable to famine so quickly.
Mar 6, 2024 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Clear example of why kids are starving in north of Gaza.

WFP sends 14-truck convoy w/ 200 tons of food to the North.

IDF refuses to grant access through checkpoint.

WFP and Jordan then airdrop just *6* tons of food to N. Gaza instead.

Prima facie aid obstruction. Notably this comes immediately after Benny Gantz got an earful this week from Harris, Sullivan, Blinken et al about Israeli aid obstruction.

Seems to have made no difference to Netanyahu's behavior.
Feb 29, 2024 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Correct. Airdrops are massively expensive and low-volume.

Only used in areas that are besieged (e.g. Sinjar mountain, Berlin 1948) or cut off by natural disasters.

The fact that they need be considered is a major policy failure. Important to recognize this as a form of bureaucratic obstruction by Israel - not cooperation.

Rather than open the border for overland access, this forces aid groups to burn scarce funding to deliver small amounts of aid.