USAID Contractor Forced Out Over Presentation on Palestinian Maternal and Child Mortality

A contractor for the US Agency for International Development (USAID) was forced out of his job over a disagreement on a presentation he prepared on maternal and child mortality among Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, The Guardian reported on Thursday.

Alexander Smith worked for USAID as a senior advisor on gender, maternal health, child health, and nutrition. He was scheduled to present the paper on mortality at an internal USAID conference, and it was initially cleared. But it caught the attention of officials in the USAID’s Middle East department, who asked for redactions to be made.

Smith told The Guardian that the edits they requested involved removing a slide describing the applicable international law and removing any language that implied the recognition of a Palestinian state, including names of UN agencies that include the word “Palestine.”