Editor's note: Thanks to all Gatherers who participated in our online dialogue on foreign assistance with Sheila Herrling and Paul O'Brien. The entire discussion follows...
Over $100 billion crosses the planet each year in efforts to improve life for the world's poorest, yet poverty remains a serious concern year after year, decade after decade. Is aid working? How can it work better? What can regular people do to help out, and to make sure our donations are doing as much good as possible?
OneWorlders have posed these questions and more to Sheila Herrling of the Center for Global Development and Oxfam America's Paul O'Brien. The two have advised presidents and aid officials across the world. They understand the realities of providing foreign aid -- from the White House to the smallest villages and everywhere in between.
In the dialogue below, they offer us some real insight into those realities.
Read it through top to bottom, or navigate the discussion through the following topics:
- Is Aid Working?
- Who Is Accountable?
- Who Does It Best?
- On Women's Rights and Equality
- On Military and Foreign Aid
- On Alternative Ways of Reducing Poverty
- The Global Economic Crisis
- The Bush and Obama Years
Enjoy the discussion, and please add your own thoughts in the comment section. And for more background on foreign assistance, see Perspectives Magazine: Foreign Assistance - What Happens with All That Money?
Jeff (Minneapolis): My father-in-law likes to grumble about how "we were giving money to UNICEF back in the '50s and those people are still just as poor today as they were then." Is he right?
Sheila: There have been some remarkable achievements accomplished with the help of U.S. foreign assistance. Over the past decades, our assistance has: created the capacity for millions of people to feed their families through the green revolution; nearly eradicated river blindness and polio; helped Mozambique, El Salvador, and other countries rebound from civil war; stimulated economic growth in countries around the world; saved millions of lives each year through routine vaccinations and access to basic health care; and put hundreds of thousands of HIV patients on life-saving anti-retroviral treatments. These are not small accomplishments.
But do remind your father-in-law when next he grumbles, that foreign aid is not a panacea nor even the main attributor of real, sustained poverty reduction. And the way the U.S. typically delivers its aid -- tied to purchasing American products and service-providers; earmarked to special-interest sectors; and with burdensome reporting requirements -- minimizes the impact of the investment.
An Indian farmer tends his crops in Manthralaya. © antkriz (flickr)
"Libramoon C.": I keep wondering, whenever I hear of groups dedicated to one cause or another, money dedicated to solving some crisis or improving lives, careers dedicated to helping others cope with poverty or disease or genocidal neighbors or environmental degradation, why the world in aggregate never seems to become that better place so many seem to be working for.
Paul: I agree with you -- there are more people alive today than ever before who face unspeakable choices. It is hard to grasp how we can have so much global wealth, so much technological know how, and yet, if you're born in the slums of Nairobi, the slopes of the Hindu Kush, or the desert scrub of S. Sudan, your chances of fulfilling your human potential are limited in so many ways.
But still, think about this: if you were born at the end of the 20th century, on average, you had a better chance of surviving your birth, earning more, learning more, traveling further, choosing your partner, voting for your leader, and dying of so called "old age" (in your 60s) than ever before.
"Greenmum": If it isn't working why are we still sending aid of money. These poor people need help to rebuild their lives -- all the money will not build you a house if there are not any builders or materials available. All governments misuse money. For example, my kids' school got a grant of more than $10,000 for shelving when they could use only a fraction of that, but the rest had to be used for shelves and not put to better use -- so we have excess of shelves now. This is not an isolated case, and I live in a so-called modern country. We all know where the money goes, so get real and stop being so stupid.
I worked for a charity door knocking for cash money and got good pay -- plus the guys running it got paid too. Out of, say, five dollars collected, when all people involved had their share, there was only $1.80 left for the poor. I stopped collecting in disgust.
Paul: Aid is working, but just not as well as it should. In these economically trying times, we can't afford to waste money, but neither can we afford to give up on the global poor or pretend that their problems won't affect us if we ignore them.
Some developing country governments don't use aid as effectively as they should, but we can't just give up on them -- there has never been a development success story without strong country leadership. We have to stop buying political and security favors from governments and calling it "development aid." If we really want to help governments be more responsible, transparent, and effective, we can find better ways to help them. In the end of the day though, all that governments can do is give citizens the tools and space to help themselves out of poverty. That is where the real development miracle happens.
W. Jerde: Any good program has an evaluation stage with appropriate follow-up. So, (a) What type, if any, evaluation is done after money is given? (b) Who does the evaluation? (c) Who sees the evaluation?
Paul: Good question, and the answer is...it depends. Different NGOs, private contractors and donors use different tools.
But let me say this...the most important thing in evaluation is the question you ask. If you ask "show me the money and what we spent it on," a lot of the time you get bean counting -- lists of items bought, people trained, workshops held. What you really want to know is whether your money made a lasting difference.
Some members of Congress think Americans only care about accounting for their tax dollars. I think Americans want to know that they are making a real difference in the world, and that means asking different questions about our development funding -- not just "what did my money buy" but "what did it lead to in terms of lasting impact."
Sheila: Couldn't agree with you more, Paul. At the end of the day, we want to know what was achieved with our hard-earned tax dollars sent overseas, not just that it was spent on something.
But patience is often the enemy of the good and most politicians and Congressional members are focused on showing quick results. In development, there aren't quick results besides spending on inputs.
I think the evaluation work undergirding the new Millennium Challenge Corporation program is perhaps the most innovative yet. But its merits will only be known if Congress gives it a fighting chance to demonstrate its potential.
Jerome (Canada): How will the Paris Declaration or the Accra Action Agenda make aid more effective? I seem to recall a lot of talk about the Millennium Goals but has that changed anything?
Paul: I love that question, and will try to keep my answer short, but can't resist a bit of theorizing:
The idea behind the Paris Declaration (2005) and last year's Accra Agenda for Action (AAA) was that if we wanted aid to be more effective, donors needed to put countries responsibly in charge of their own development.
Not one donor, recipient government, nor NGO in Accra thought the Paris Declaration process was on track. Accra was time for a political course correction. If the AAA is fully implemented, three commitments in particular will really improve the way U.S. foreign aid is delivered. Starting now:
Every year, the U.S. will provide every developing country with an indication of its expected overall aid for three to five years (not just from USAID, but across the U.S. government) -- today, no such comprehensive system is in place;
The U.S. will use country systems as the first option for its aid programs, (now it uses country systems for 5 percent of its aid). When it doesn't, it will transparently state why not and review that position regularly;
The U.S. will elaborate a plan to further untie its aid from any requirements to purchase U.S. goods and services. (While the survey finds U.S. tied aid has gone from 93 percent (2005) to 23 percent (2008), the latter figure discounts food aid, so the actual change may be much smaller).
All donors made these commitments, and many others, but implementing these three in particular will make U.S. foreign aid a much more powerful tool in fostering responsible leadership by developing country governments. Now the challenge from Accra is...action.
Stephanie MacGregor (Canada): Does the $100 billion [that crosses the planet each year in foreign assistance] include the high priced consulting fees and salaries paid out (e.g. UNICEF pays their directors $275,000 per year).
My question: what is the $ amount that reaches the poverty reduction programs?
USAID-donated food items are distributed by Save the Children staffers in Guatemala. © S. Dominguez / USAID
Paul: Good question. Yes, it certainly does include the salaries of all development professionals, from the high paid consultants and managers to the vast majority of aid workers who earn far less than their private sector counterparts. Some of those high salaries are just a waste -- so called "experts" jetting in to contexts they know little about and offering canned advice that pad their resumes so the next fee is even higher. But in my years in this business, those folks -- the ones who make the news and the reveal-all books -- are the exception.
Hermant: Foreign aid -- does it really reach to whom should it reach? Many NGOs are functional only in pocketed places with absolutely no transparency. Many receive funds but never disclose it or never ever publish the amount received and the amount spent. Many hide this information. This is true with several NGOs who are active in the field of environment movement. Do these funds help to solve the problem ever or keep the problem alive for years together so that foreign aid can be siphoned in one or other name.
I strongly feel foreign aid which has its action only on papers do not have any meaning -- one should do the realty check. But who is going to bell the FAT CAT or may be BIG RATS?!
Paul: There are some "briefcase NGOs" -- NGOs in name only -- who have the paperwork, but not the capacity to support real and lasting change in people's lives. But there are really effective NGOs too. If you are going to fight global poverty by supporting an NGO, do your homework. With modern communications technology, including Web sites like www.charitynavigator.com, there is a lot more timely information on the Web right now about what NGOs are doing and where your money is going.
Anonymous OneWorlder: I am trying to find statistics about the cost effectiveness of aid on the ground. Things like "we prevent X number of cases of malaria by providing Y dollars for Z number of malaria nets. This in comparison to the cost of the medication to treat that many patients."
Does anyone know where I could find those kind of facts? Thanks!
Sheila: We need to do a much better job of communicating development and foreign aid successes in this way. And aggregating them in a central way where attribution by donor or funder is less important than the collectively achieved outcome. The newly established International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3IE) is a promising resource.
OneWorld.net Editor (Washington, DC): Compared to the United States, many European governments seem to place a stronger emphasis on foreign assistance as a part of their overall foreign policy strategy. I know European governments also have a slightly different approach to the process of providing assistance to developing countries -- more focus on end results and less on mid-project accounting.
And now there's talk of rewriting the rules that govern how the United States provides assistance abroad. What should U.S. lawmakers learn from European -- or other countries' -- approaches?
Paul: Great question. The Europeans don't know it all...except me of course (I'm Irish). They do some things better than the U.S., some things worse.
Things I think they do well include the following:
They think longer-term about measuring results. Many European governments will commit funding for five years and sometimes 10 -- its easier to do long-term development with that kind of predictability.
Most Europeans have a clear development strategy. They know what their overall goal is. We need a national strategy for global development in the U.S.
Things I think that the U.S. does better:
The U.S. Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) is setting new standards for transparency -- they select countries against clear, objective criteria. They focus on countries not because they are politically important, but because they have development needs and the capacity to manage their own development. Some of those characteristics are under threat -- some policy makers want more MCA money to be used for geopolitical not development purposes -- that would be a shame.
In my view some of the U.S. development and humanitarian NGOs are some of the best in the world. They cultivate people to spend a lifetime learning about development. In Afghanistan, where I worked from 2002-2007, U.S. NGOS like CARE, Save the Children, Mercy Corps, and the International Rescue Committee (IRC) had leaders with decades of relevant experience and really strong staffs of Afghan managers and implementers -- and they made a huge difference for ordinary Afghans.
On Women's Rights and Equality
Diana Duarte, MADRE (New York): The U.S. still has not ratified CEDAW (the Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination Against Women). Could you speculate whether and how the ratification of CEDAW would advance women's human rights internationally, particularly with regard to U.S. foreign assistance policies? For instance, how might USAID programs in areas like disaster relief or food aid be re-evaluated to bring them into compliance with CEDAW?
A group of women involved with the Salvadoran women's rights group CEMUJER participate in a guided discussion about respect, responsibility, and gender roles. © Hannah McKeeth / Advocacy Project
Paul: I think it would make an important difference, but not legally so much as in terms of awareness raising and the global profile of the U.S.
I think the real reason that the U.S. hasn't ratified CEDAW is because it balks generally at ratifying any human rights treaty with economic rights obligations. It is one of only two nations not to have signed the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) -- the other is Somalia.
While it is a good thing that the U.S. doesn't sign treaties if it cannot legally enforce them, it is a bad thing that the U.S. reads CEDAW and CRC to impose unenforceable obligations. Neither treaty requires the U.S. to provide economic rights like health care or education non-discriminatorily through big government. It simply requires that the government create an enabling environment for those rights to be enjoyed by all -- and that is something the U.S. should commit to doing today.
I don't think ratifying CEDAW would have a huge impact on USAID's programs. To my understanding, it wouldn't require every program to integrate a proactive non-discrimination component. It would simply require the U.S. government to fight discrimination globally and ensure that none of its programs exacerbate discrimination -- both of which they do already.
JL (Washington, DC): What do you think about converting military budgets to foreign aid budgets? Has this been tried anywhere? Is it possible? Is it a good idea? Thank you for your time.
Sheila: There is indeed some interesting work done by Miriam Pemberton and Lawrence Korb at the Institute for Policy Studies that lays out the facts of the imbalance between military and non-military spending (18:1 in FY09). The report explores the notion of a unified security budget that would present and allow trade-offs to be made between military and non-military (mainly diplomacy and development) resources to yield true national security.
The notion is an interesting one in that it puts defense, diplomacy, and development at the heart of our national security strategy. Most development experts worry, however, that without specific ringfencing of development resources, they would always be sacrificed in the trade-off process to short-term crisis-driven needs.
On Alternative Ways of Reducing Poverty
"geonomist": Instead of giving money, what about allowing real free trade (not the favored trade posing under that name)? What about supporting land reform? And tax and license reform? What about modeling such reforms in the developed world? We could quit corporate welfare, quit taxing wages, sales, and buildings, and instead charge for use of land. It has worked wherever tried. We could export sound policy!
Sheila: For me, it's not a question of "instead." It's a question of designing a comprehensive national strategy for global development that brings all the tools and policies -- aid, trade, migration, climate change, stabilization, diplomacy -- to bear in an integrated and coherent way to foster global growth and reduce poverty. So that we don't have situations where we give aid to a country to combat poverty, only to take it away through tariffs.
My colleague David Roodman at CGD cites a startling example in his 2008 Commitment to Development Index: U.S. tariffs on imports from India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Thailand brought in $2.06 billion in 2005 -- twice what the U.S. committed to these countries for tsunami relief the same year.
'One Laptop Per Child' prototype
Edward Mokurai Cherlin: Most foreign aid does not seem to be aimed at helping the poor in developing countries, but rather their governing elites and their militaries, and industries with clout back home, including "defense" and agriculture, by tying aid money so that it cannot be spent in country, but only in the donor nation.
Let's start over. One Laptop Per Child expects to have a $75 laptop in 2010, beating the original $100 design goal. If we give every one of the billion or so children on Earth one of these laptops every four years, in first, fifth, and ninth grades, it would cost about $25 billion annually for the laptops, plus electricity, Internet, teacher training, and some other costs. On the other hand, it could eliminate costs for printed textbooks, and it would pay for itself many times over when the children graduated and got jobs or started businesses.
Is there any political will for this kind of real aid?
Sheila: I think there is often political will for these kinds of micro aid programs. And they do much good. The question is whether they add up to anything hugely transformational at a country and regional level, and how they are sustained without also building governance, educational and health systems, and infrastructure in countries.
Bill Gunyon, Editor of OneWorld Guides (United Kingdom): CitiGroup and AIG have each hoovered up U.S. government aid comparable to the total global foreign assistance budget. How would you advise campaigners to leverage this statistic?
Sheila: The entire world is going to suffer during this financial crisis, but it is absolutely clear that the poorest countries in the world will suffer the most. I believe one of the best things the U.S. can do to help the world's poor is to get its own economy back on track. At the same time, it is in the U.S. national interest -- security, economic and humanitarian -- to continue to invest in the economic and social well-being of its development partners.
Ann (Washington, DC): Officials and some members of the media have praised former President George W. Bush for essentially doubling the amount of aid to Africa during his time in office and point to this effort as a bright spot in an otherwise lackluster foreign policy record.
Some, however, have criticized the manner in which the aid was distributed. For instance, some of it was distributed as loans for subsidized American farm products, while funds for fighting AIDS were to be used only for "ABC" education programs and were restricted by the Global Gag Rule.
I would like to hear your opinions on:
1) How effective you think the increased aid to Africa was during the Bush administration;
2) If you saw any geopolitical trends or strategic aims in the method of dispersal or distribution of funds; and
3) If you think the funds could have been more effectively distributed, and if so, how.
Thank you for your time, and I look forward to your thoughts.
Sheila: The Bush administration's engagement in Africa may well be its most significant foreign policy achievement. Beyond substantially increasing aid to Africa, the administration advanced U.S. trade and private investment on the continent, launched OPIC equity funds, erased debt, and launched two major innovations in aid delivery systems -- the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA).
My colleague Steve Radelet at CGD published a brief you might enjoy that shows that assistance to Africa grew from $2.4 billion in 2000 to $6.9 billion in 2006, mostly on account of HIV/AIDS programs and debt relief, but declined 17 percent to $5.7 billion in 2007. U.S. assistance to sub-Saharan Africa has become less selective, as the shares going to the poorest and best-governed countries have fallen since 2000. In 2007, assistance averaged about $7.25 per African.
Going forward, I would like to see programs like the MCA get more time to provide their model and help support the real reformers in Africa with large, country-owned and implemented, untied aid. And I would like to see the amount of earmarks currently hamstringing USAID's Africa budget be rationalized to provide greater flexibility to the field to meet the real development constraints countries face.
A program in Kenya encourages schoolchildren to ask their questions about HIV/AIDS -- anonymously. © Peter Armstrong
OneWorld.net Editor (Washington, DC): Thanks for taking the time, Sheila and Paul. I know that the U.S. only allocates something like 0.17% of its national income to foreign assistance, even though most countries of the world have agreed that 0.7% is a good target. And I know that, especially in the United States, a lot of that money isn't as effective as it could be in reducing poverty and improving lives because there are so many strings attached.
I'm wondering if the election of Barack Obama and a strong majority of Democrats in Congress is likely to result in fundamental, long-lasting changes in the U.S. commitment to foreign assistance, whether in terms of increasing total assistance funds or altering how those funds are used/allocated. And, as a follow up, if the answer is yes (or at least maybe), how likely is it that the economic recession will now derail any increases that otherwise might have been instituted?
Sheila: Well, I think your question pretty much includes the answer. :)
The forces of support and public recognition of the importance of "smart power" -- bringing the full force of combined defense, diplomatic, and development tools to achieve U.S. national interests -- is at an all-time high. The Obama campaign platform contained aggressive commitments to raise foreign aid and strategically elevate development in U.S. foreign policy. We have a strong secretary of state who has a history of promoting development and effective aid.
And, we also have one of the most severe financial crises in history, which, unfortunately, may result in a change of opinion in the U.S. to focus on "home first."
I am not a fan of the UN goal of 0.7 percent. That is not to say I don't think the U.S. should spend more on foreign aid, but rather it shouldn't be THE metric for good development and/or commitment to development. I fear it detracts from the goal of also making our foreign aid better spent.
recommend this
email
print
link to this page
