"US investments have contributed to the largest reductions in extreme poverty ever recorded in human history,” chief executive Carrie Hessler-Radelet said. “The Administration’s proposed budget cut to lifesaving health, food security, and humanitarian programmes will compromise the development gains of recent years and weaken our own security and global leadership.”
And aside from the humanitarian issues inherent in cancelling a major food aid programme, several of the countries served by McGovern-Dole are strategic allies of the United States, noted Kimberly Flowers, the director of the Global Food Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Kenya and Ethiopia border Somalia, the base for the militant group al-Shabab. Boko Haram, another militant group, began in Nigeria and has since ventured out to other countries in West Africa.
The United States doesn’t need those countries only as partners in the war on terrorism, Flowers said, it also needs their civil societies to remain stable. That’s undermined by issues like food insecurity.
Good article on the subject.