Republicans gutted a program that saved millions of children. I know because I am one of them.

When I was a small child who grew in the 1990s during the Civil War in Bosnia and Herzegovina, fear and hunger were often my only friends.

For three years, from 4 to 7 years, I lived with my parents out of a wet underground bomb shelter without electricity when Serbian forces surrounded and besieged my hometown. Clean food and drinking water were scarce. My diet consisted mainly of beans and rice.

Outside, the war unleashed. Many nights, I went to sleep in the sound of booming artillery as thunder in the distance, falling mortar shells whistling through the air as fireworks, and the constant tattation of machine guns that marked a large part of my neighborhood.

We didn’t have much in those days, but at least UNICEF was there to help.

I did not know who or what it was at that time, but seeing her blue logo of a mother and a child stamped in flour sacks that my parents led to our shelter brought me instant joy. Like relief in their faces knowing that, at least for a while, they could feed their son.

This week, Congress voted to eliminate funds for that same organization, the United Nations Fund for Children, which was created after World War II to provide humanitarian and development aid to vulnerable children worldwide. The global aid organization has saved millions of lives by Provide vaccines For mortal diseases, as well as Sure water, sanitation services, supplies to save lives, medical care and nutrition to those in need.

The $ 137 million cut to UNICEF got into a largest recision package of $ 9 billion aimed at foreign aid and public transmission financing. President Donald Trump has affirmed that the programs were plagued by wasteful expenses, arguing that foreign aid must be detained in writing large. The White House went as far as call It is “antithetic to US interests.”

Domingo Alamba through News

I have to admit that the cut to UNICEF was not initially in my radar as a political journalist. Like many of my colleagues in the media and Capitol Hill Press Corps, I focused on the Trump administration attacks on the United States International Development Agency, as well as National Public Radio and the Public Transmission Service. Billionaire Elon Musk took a Costaia For Usaid earlier this year, and now he was in the Republicans formally coding his efforts because Trump had demanded it, threatening those who faced him with political compensation.

So, when an intelligent friend pointed to the disposition of UNICEF before a vote of the Senate on the bill, I decided Ask the Republican senators About that. What did I ask them, is it objectable about an organization dedicated to helping children? Is there anything they can point out as an example of unnecessary expense in UNICEF specifically, and not only in USAID?

They had no good answers. Instead, I heard many Republican conversation points about funds for transgender operas and sex workers, none of whom is backed by UNICEF’s work, which, again, is focused on helping children.

“They told us that they were spending money on humanitarian relief. And we discovered that they are giving money to male prostitutes in Haiti. I will not support that garbage,” said Senator John Kennedy (R-La) to News themezone, apparently refer to a USAID initiative.

Senator Katie Britt (R-ala.), Meanwhile, insisted that children would not go hungry and that UNICEF’s general mission would not be affected by eliminating all her funds this year.

“If I was spending it in a transgender opera, or in sex workers in Nepal, we are only recovering that amount of money, so it still has the amount of money it has for other things to continue doing the good job that these organizations or different things were established,” Britt said.

But that is not what the text The resource bill says, which is surprisingly short in details on how the cuts will be implemented. And it is not what Unicef believes. The help group warned that terminating its financing would lead directly to suffering and death.

“In a nutshell, we cannot provide the necessary services next year if our Fiscal Year 2000 contribution is rescinded and too many children will suffer or die as a result,” UNICEF executive director, Catherine Russell wrote In a letter to the senators this week.

The most immediate impacts Of the cuts they will feel in the most mortal conflict areas in the world, even in Western and Central Africa, the Gaza Strip and in Ukraine.

The UNICEF of $ 137 million was scheduled to receive this year is a relatively tiny number compared to what the United States spends annually on average: almost $ 7 billion. It is especially irritating since Congress Republicans have just approved a massive tax cuts package For the rich mostly that it is projected to add more than $ 3 billion to the national debt.

It is difficult to inform about this type of history as someone who has personal experience when growing in war. As journalists, we are supposed to inform the public in a precise and impartial way. But in Washington at this time, the facts have little impact. Republican members of Congress are terrified to draw Trump’s anger, leaning to their whims on government expenditure despite its constitutional prerogative on the power of the bag.

At the same time, it is still objectively true that I have perspectives on how Programs such as UNICEF work that many Americans, not to mention US legislators, do not. It seems impossible not to sympathize with vulnerable children such as me who could suffer as a result of this decision to attack an organization that has shown to save lives, including mine.