| UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA - AFRICAN STUDIES CENTER |
NGOs RELEASE PROPOSAL TO RESTRUCTURE U.S. DEVELOPMENT AID
CONTACTS: Tony Avirgan (The Development GAP),
Phone: (202)898-1566;
Rob Buchanan (Oxfam America),
Phone: (202) 783-7302;
Nicole Ellis (Friends of the Earth-U.S.),
Phone: (202)783-7400, ext.213
Three non-governmental organizations with a long involvement in international aid programs today released a detailed proposal for reforming and restructuring U.S. development assistance. The initiative was undertaken by The Development GAP, Oxfam America and Friends of the Earth - U.S., which have long sought to make aid provided by the United States more respnsive to local realities overseas.
The current battle over the future of foreign aid between the Clinton Administration and the Republican-controlled Congress is expected to intensify with Congress back from its April recess. Key Republicans are working on plans that would eliminate the existing U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and merge it with the State Department, where it would be subjected to the day-to-day management of short-term foreign policy. The Administration's position is that USAID should remain a semi-autonomous agency under the broad policy guidance of the Secretary of State.
"Unfortunately, the debate has focused too much on resource levels and turf," says Rob Buchanan, Oxfam America's Washington Representative. "We should be talking about how development aid can serve U.S. long-term interests in poverty reduction and stability abroad. At a time of shrinking budgets, we must ensure that each dollar of development aid is invested wisely in building more self-reliant societies."
The three NGOs are proposing a development assistance restructuring designed to provide policymakers with an option that would clearly differentiate and institutionally separate the various uses to which U.S. aid monies have historically been put.
The NGO proposal recognizes that broad-based development overseas creates economic opportunities and political stability that support long-term U.S. national interests. By emphasizing institutional streamlining, decentralized decisionmaking, community empowerment, and the separation of development aid from political, security and commercial assistance, the proposal echoes some of the themes put forward by Republican lawmakers this year. However, the NGOs recommend a different structure for development assistance.
"Turning development aid over to the State Department is not the solution," says Steve Hellinger, Executive Director of The Development GAP, the chief author of the NGO proposal. "Nor, despite Administrator (Brian) Atwood's admirable reform efforts within USAID, can we accept the Administration's continued use of its aid program in support of socially and environmentally destructive economic policies imposed on the people of the Third World. It is out of these concerns that we offer a different vision and what we consider to be a more rational structure for our aid program, one that the American people can relate to."
Institutionally, the NGO proposal, which has been shared with Administration officials and Congressional staff, would, if adopted:
* Transform USAID into a free-standing statutory agency known as the U.S. Agency for International Cooperation, which would coordinate U.S. assistance for long-term development, disaster relief and and the promotion of democracy abroad;
* Establish within the Agency the Development Assistance Administration (DAA), protected by a nine-member Board of Governors against political interference, to serve as the principal vehicle for the provision of U.S. bilateral evelopment assistance;
* Create a Center for Private and Voluntary Cooperation within the DAA, through which U.S. private and voluntary organizations would receive their funding for development assistance purposes;
* Give the Agency Administrator the flexibility to move resources from the Agency's Bureau of Disaster Relief and Humanitarian Assistance and the Bureau for Democratic Reforms to the DAA for the purpose of effecting long-term, sustainable development, with the approval of the DAA Board on which the Administrator would sit;
Place the majority of a streamlined DAA staff in provincial field offices coordinated by regional offices in order to identify and support development activities built on local initiatives and priorities; and
* Maintain the integrity and independence of the Inter- American and African Development Foundations so that their local-level funding and knowledge can provide an important base for DAA programming.
Specifically, the proposal extends to the Development Assistance Administration the following responsibilities:
* Promoting the decentralization of resources and decisionmaking to the local level and increasing self-reliance by investing in small producers, including farmers producing food for the domestic market;
* Supporting the work of local government and non- governmental organizations in building on effective community- level development initiatives;
* Helping women gain access to productive resources, promoting family well-being, and supporting ecologically sound development;
* Conducting and underwriting processes of consultation and democratic participation so that the DAA's own planning and program development and the projects and policies it supports are informed by the perspectives of local populations and their organizations; and
* Reviewing all projects and policy programs under consideration at the international financial institutions and contributing its field-based experience and analysis to the U.S. government's review of the loans proposed by those institutions.
To establish a clear separation of functions, the proposal recommends placing all programs and activities designed to promote strategic, security, commercial and related short-term foreign-policy objectives within the State Department. To the same end, it would prohibit the Department from attaching development-policy conditions to the foreign aid it provides for these non-developmental purposes.
According to Brent Blackwelder, President of Friends of the Earth, "The State Department and the Treasury, which have no field-based knowledge, already have too much power over the use of U.S. aid resources. The result has been the undermining of sustainable development around the world. We need a totally new approach in this post-Cold War era, and we are seizing this opportunity to put one forward that can gain broad-based support both in this country and abroad."
The Development GAP has worked over the past two decades to reform foreign assistance. Its award-winning book, Aid for Just Development, provided a basis for an NGO reform effort in 1990, which the organization led. It has helped to create new aid institutions and has worked extensively overseas demonstrating to the World Bank and USAID alternative aid approaches. Most recently, it provided assistance to the USAID Administrator in the Agency's internal reform efforts.
Oxfam America has supported community-based self-help development and disaster relief efforts for the past 25 years. Currently it works with local partners in 31 countries in Asia, Africa, the Americas and the Caribbean. The organization also produces educational materials on issues of hunger and development and speaks out on public policies that affect its partners and programs. Oxfam does not accept any government funds.
Friends of the Earth - U.S., founded in 1969, is a national environmental organization and part of Friends of the Earth - International, which has member groups in 52 countries. FoE-U.S. was one of the U.S environmental organizations that launched the campaign in 1983 to reform multilateral bank lending. It has worked with Congress since then in developing policy initiatives to accomplish these reforms.
The 16-page plan, entitled "Proposal to Reform U.S. Development Assistance," is available from The Development GAP and Oxfam America. On the IGC networks it is available in the conference econ.saps.
The Development Gap,
927 15th St. NW, 4th Floor,
Washington, DC 20005 USA
Fax: (202) 898-1612.
Email: dgap@igc.apc.org.
Message-Id: [199505122108.OAA01630@igc3.igc.apc.org] From: "Washington Office on Africa" [woa@igc.apc.org] Date: Fri, 12 May 1995 17:07:06 +0000 Subject: NGO Proposal on Foreign Aid Reform
Editor: Ali B. Ali-Dinar
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