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Independent research & practical ideas for global prosperity
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Independent research & practical ideas for global prosperity
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Rethinking U.S. Foreign Assistance Blog
Posts Tagged: Aid EffectivenessGetting Greater Value from Post-Quake Aid to HaitiMay 14, 2012Posted by Vijaya Ramachandran in Aid Effectiveness Tags: Aid Effectiveness, Haiti, USAID
This is a joint post with Julie Walz The January 2010 earthquake that devastated Haiti, killed over 220,000 people, displaced several million, and flattened much of the capital, Port Au Prince, also unleashed a tsunami of outside assistance. In the 28 months since the earthquake official donors have disbursed almost $6 billion in aid to help the people of Haiti, the equivalent of $600 per person for a country where per capita annual income is just $670. Where has all the money gone? On the second anniversary of the quake we set out to answer this question; our new CGD policy paper is the result. The short answer is that the vast majority of the money so-far disbursed has been paid to international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and private contractors. And while many of these organizations do excellent work, there is shockingly little information on how they used the funds. 2 Comments »Engagement Amid Austerity – Or How the United States Stays in the Game Despite Budget PressuresMay 8, 2012Posted by Connie Veillette in Aid Effectiveness, Aid Priorities, Budget, Rethinking U.S. Foreign Assistance, State Department, USAID Tags: Aid Effectiveness, Aid Priorities, Budget, State Department, USAID
This is a joint post with John Norris of the Center for American Progress. Budget concerns will almost certainly put downward pressure on federal spending across a host of government programs for a number of years. Although some think it is almost heretical to point out the obvious, the international affairs budget will not be immune from this dynamic. In fact, international spending could take a disproportionate hit compared to domestic spending – despite the fact that discretionary international spending is a very small part of the overall budget puzzle. International affairs, and more specifically foreign assistance, have rarely been popular budget items among the public or on Capitol Hill – despite consistently comprising only about 1 percent of the total federal budget. Even so, foreign aid and international engagement make good political targets for elected officials out on the stump. It is far easier to demonize foreign aid than to explain how relatively modest programs to improve living standards in the developing world have consistently proven to be in the national interest over the long-term. 2 Comments »Food Aid Effectiveness Awaits Action on Farm BillApril 24, 2012Posted by Connie Veillette in Aid Effectiveness, Food Security, Rethinking U.S. Foreign Assistance, USAID Tags: Aid Effectiveness, Food Security, USAID
Congress last week released a draft farm bill that includes some promising fixes to the notoriously inefficient U.S. food aid system. I have written before about the USG’s poorly managed food aid programs, largely based on work from the Government Accountability Office, aid organizations and a number of academics. In light of last week’s draft, I am pleased to announce that we may finally be getting some traction on this issue amongst policymakers on the Hill. First, a little background. P.L. 480, or Food for Peace, is the largest program funded annually at about $1.5 billion on average. Although it is not well understood outside of budget wonk circles, U.S. food aid is part of the international affairs budget but is authorized and appropriated by the agriculture committees. (The House committees have some shared jurisdiction with the foreign affairs committees.) This structure goes back to a time when the United States used international food aid programs to distribute an abundance of surplus crops. 2 Comments »Civilian Assistance to Pakistan: Time for Tough ChoicesApril 19, 2012Posted by Milan Vaishnav in Aid Effectiveness, Pakistan, Rethinking U.S. Foreign Assistance, USAID Tags: Aid Effectiveness, Pakistan, USAID
This is a joint post with Nancy Birdsall. In a recent interview with the Associated Press, USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah stated that the United States will be working to significantly decrease the number of development projects it is currently supporting in Pakistan, from the current 140 to 35 by the end of September 2012. In Dr. Shah’s words, “If we [the U.S.] are trying to do 140 different things, we are unlikely to do things at scale in a way that an entire country of 185 million people can see and value and appreciate. We are just far more effective and we deliver much more value to American taxpayers when we concentrate and focus and deliver results.” Shah goes on to clarify that the United States will not be cutting back on the overall amount of assistance it provides: it plans to adhere to the Kerry-Lugar-Berman framework of $7.5 billion over 5 years. I applaud Administrator Shah’s call for greater focus in the U.S. assistance portfolio and his explicit emphasis on “results.” After all, as my colleague Connie Veillette has pointed out, the Obama Administration’s Presidential Policy Directive (PPD) on global development explicitly called for greater emphasis on “selectivity” and “results” in U.S. development assistance. 2 Comments »Will the President’s 2013 Budget Request Show More Focus and Selectivity?February 9, 2012Posted by Connie Veillette in Aid Effectiveness, Rethinking U.S. Foreign Assistance Tags: Aid Effectiveness, Budget, Selectivity and Focus
The President’s budget is scheduled for release on February 13. Many of us will be looking to see if the budget numbers back up some of the administration’s rhetoric. The elevation of development and the call to be more selective and focused in the use of foreign assistance funds are two in which I’m particularly interested. Both were called for in the President’s Policy Directive on Global Development. Last year’s budget request showed some moderate progress in zeroing out development assistance in a small number of countries and closing aid missions in Guyana, Montenegro, and Panama. There’s plenty more work to do, but I am hearing that the 2013 budget will not show much more progress. Comment »Busan Alert: The United States Is Still a UnilateralistNovember 28, 2011Posted by Nancy Birdsall in Aid Effectiveness, Rethinking U.S. Foreign Assistance Tags: Aid Effectiveness, Busan
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Mitt Romney (or is it Newt Gingrich) keeps accusing President Obama of apologizing for the United States – probably because Obama sees the world not only through unilateralist eyes. He is too much the multilateralist for their tastes. Maybe so. But in at least one area the Obama Administration has so far eschewed multilateralism: foreign aid. Comment »U.S. Foreign Assistance Dashboard: Show Me the Data!November 22, 2011Posted by Will McKitterick in Aid Effectiveness, Rethinking U.S. Foreign Assistance Tags: Aid Effectiveness, Foreign Assistance Dashboard, Transparency
Yesterday, I was happy to see the MCC finally publish aid data to the Foreign Assistance Dashboard, the government’s one-stop-shop for foreign assistance budget and appropriations information. But upon further examination of the website, I couldn’t help but feel a little cheated when I noticed the dearth of new data available in the tool. Nearly a year has passed since the Dashboard was launched in December 2010, and the U.S. government has yet to come up with the majority of its promised haul of agency data. Rolled out a day after the QDDR, Dashboard was a response to calls for greater transparency and accountability in government and development agencies. It aims to incorporate all U.S. government foreign assistance budget planning, financial program, and performance data in an easily accessible web format, allowing users to track, analyze, and monitor aid investments overtime. The website’s user-friendly graphics allow viewers to peruse through data displayed by country, sector, and year and generate their own tables through manual queries as well as download machine-readable data sets. Inspired by principles embraced in the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, the Accra Agenda for Action, and President Obama’s Open Government Initiative, the Dashboard was widely heralded as an important step toward establishing a new system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration for monitoring U.S. foreign assistance. 4 Comments » |
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