Associated Press writer Bassem Mroue in Beirut contributed.

But in February, Mercy Corps abruptly ended the program that was entirely financed by USAID. Two weeks later, one of the twins died, Bulama said.She has no more tears, only dread for what may come next.

“I don’t want to bury another child,” she said.Globally, 50% of the therapeutic foods for treating malnutrition in children were funded by USAID, and 40% of the supplies were., according to Shawn Baker, chief program officer at Helen Keller Intl and former chief nutritionist at USAID.

He said the consequence could be 1 million children not receiving treatment for severe malnutrition, resulting in 163,500 additional deaths per year. For Helen Keller Intl, its programs in Bangladesh, Nepal and Nigeria have been terminated.“It is very traumatic,” said Trond Jensen, the head of the United Nations humanitarian office in Maiduguri, Borno’s capital, of the funding cuts, noting that other donors, including the European Union, have taken similar steps this year. “One of the things is the threat to the lives of children.”

UNICEF still runs a therapeutic feeding center nearby, which now supports Bulama’s surviving baby, but its capacity is stretched. It is turning away many people previously served by other aid groups that have pulled out due to funding cuts.

Intersos, an Italian humanitarian organization, has the only remaining facility providing in-patient services for malnutrition in Dikwa, treating the most perilous cases. Its workers say they are overwhelmed, with at least 10 new admissions of seriously malnourished children daily.Conflict in eastern Congo is estimated to have killed 6 million people since the mid-1990s, in the wake of the Rwanda genocide. Some of the ethnic Hutu extremists responsible for the 1994 killing of an estimated 1 million of Rwanda’s minority ethnic Tutsis and Hutu moderates later fled across the border into eastern Congo, fueling the proxy fighting between rival militias aligned to the two governments.

“Today marks not an end but a beginning,” Congolese Foreign Minister Therese Kayikwamba Wagner said Friday before signing the broad agreement, which commits Rwanda and Congo to draft a peace accord and work to instill security and a good business environment, allow the return of the millions of displaced and accomplish other goals.“The good news is there is hope for peace,” she said. “The real news is peace must be earned.”

She directed part of her remarks to the civilians of east Congo, brutalized, isolated and displaced by the fighting: “We know you are watching this moment with concern, with hope and, yes, with doubt. You are entitled to actions that measure up to the suffering you have endured.”Rwandan Foreign Minister Olivier Nduhungirehe said the two rival governments were now addressing the root causes of the hostility between them, the most important of which he said were security and the ability of refugees to return home.