Sam Worth Ing Ton

Photo courtesy of InterAction

Sam Worthington visits children affected by the 2004 tsunami in Hambantota, Sri Lanka.

for U.S. Foreign Assistance By Sam Worthington Sam Worthington is the president and CEO of InterAction, which is the largest alliance of U.S.-based international development and humanitarian nongovernmental organizations. With more than 160 members operating in every developing country, the alliance works to overcome poverty, exclusion and suffering.





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he nature of foreign assistance has grown increasingly complex since the inception of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in 1961. Multilateral institutions—such as the various United Nations agencies and the World Bank—governments of affluent countries and large foundations all invest in development assistance as a key component of their operations. In this increasingly multipolar world of official relief and development, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are major players, often garnering more trust and resources than the official institutions. Recipient countries have also sought to increase the local effectiveness of development assistance by creating plans to achieve results that will further their efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). United States foreign assistance must be able to operate effectively within this environment, a world significantly different than when USAID was created. USAID was formed to unite the various nonmilitary foreign assistance programs initiated by the United States after World War II. Although attempts to reform or modify USAID have been ongoing in the years since its inception, the general structure of USAID as “an independent federal government agency that receives overall foreign policy guidance from the secretary of state” has remained in place for more than 45 years. The current administration has recognized that it needs to significantly transform the U.S. government’s approach to foreign assistance. In 2006, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced a new framework for aid known as “transformational diplomacy,” which emphasizes rebuilding states in transition and fostering democracy. In an attempt to consolidate foreign assistance operations, Secretary Rice announced the creation of the Foreign Assistance or “F” Bureau within the Department of State to be headed by the director of foreign assistance, a newly created position that spans both state and USAID, with the incumbent serving concurrently as USAID administrator and holding the title of deputy secretary of state. The overall impact of this consolidation was intended to “ensure that foreign assistance is used as effectively as possible to meet our broad foreign policy objectives; and more fully align the foreign assistance activities carried out by the Department of State and USAID.”

Change from Within For years the U.S. NGO community has called for more coherence among the myriad disconnected threads in U.S. foreign assistance and initially welcomed this attempt to bring a degree of consolidation. But have these reforms really been effective in streamlining U.S. foreign assistance? More importantly, have they been aligned with the development community’s best practices to help lift people around the world out of poverty?

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As a consortium of NGOs with more than 60 years of experience delivering relief and facilitating development in poor countries, we recognize that collaboration among these varied actors is crucial to ensuring the effectiveness of overall foreign assistance in any country. Our experience shows that an effective reform of U.S. foreign assistance should encourage programs that include local ownership and partnerships with stakeholders in developing countries. Sustainable development is long-term and requires commitments that should not be trumped by short- or long-term political goals. U.S. foreign assistance programs should be coherent, not fragmented. The goals of the U.S. government, recipient countries and multilateral institutions including the United Nations must as much as possible be harmonized and mutually reinforcing. The MDGs, which have been endorsed by President George W. Bush and adopted by donor and recipient countries around the world, are a good example of internationally agreed-upon steps that can be taken to reduce poverty. Efforts to improve the well-being of people occur within a challenging, complex world full of conflict and elusive peace, injustice and power imbalances, failing states, human rights abuses, poor governance, militant ideologies and the consequences of increasingly scarce resources—a reality exacerbated by global warming. All of these challenges require greater attention in a more coherent U.S. foreign assistance framework. Photo credit: Dan Gudahl Copyright: Heifer International

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If this is to be realized, the development component must be equal to—not subsumed under—defense and diplomacy and should not be dictated by the strategic or political significance of any nation. Despite the best efforts of the State Department to streamline foreign assistance, the current arrangement—with the director of foreign assistance reporting to the secretary of state—has significant limitations and can hinder some of the principles of effective foreign assistance. Additionally, although the new reform efforts do begin the process of unifying foreign assistance, the reorganization still excludes the major presidential initiatives such as the Millennium Challenge Corp. (MCC) and the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which account for billions of dollars of U.S. foreign assistance each year. In this sense, the current reforms do not go far enough and must be even more comprehensive.

Finding a Coherent Policy The keys to the success of any reform include coherence across all civilian U.S. foreign assistance programs; a focus on



Photo credit: Darcy Kiefel Copyright: Heifer International

Both President Bush and Secretary Rice have declared the State Department a “national security agency” alongside the departments of Defense and Homeland Security. The administration also has stated that U.S. foreign assistance is one of the key pillars of its “three D’s” national security strategy, which targets defense, development and diplomacy. As explained in the 2006 National Security Strategy, “development reinforces diplomacy and defense, reducing long-term threats to our national security by helping to build stable, prosperous, and peaceful societies. Improving the way we use foreign assistance will make it more effective in strengthening responsible governments, responding to suffering, and improving people’s lives.”

improving the well-being of the poor, with the space to shape effective, long-term and impartial programs; and programs that enhance local capacity and work to meet mutually agreed-upon results. Together, these factors point to the need for an important institutional step, the creation of a Cabinet-level department for international relief and development alongside the secretaries of state and defense. The model of a Cabinet-level department dedicated to international development is not new. The U.K. Department for International Development (DFID) is widely acclaimed as a successful model for elevating international development to an overarching national priority. With a very clear mandate of “leading the British government’s fight against world poverty,” DFID has placed much of its emphasis on multilateral cooperation and has adopted the Millennium Development Goals as the heart of its mission statement. Despite recent political and military engagements in Afghanistan and Iraq, DFID has largely succeeded maintaining its focus and funding for poverty eradication and not allowed potentially competing strategic political objectives to undermine this goal. A heavy emphasis on public education, combined with DFID’s central focus on poverty alleviation and the broad support of the British government, has resulted in an increase in the proportion of the U.K. population who say they are “very concerned” about development. DFID does have its drawbacks; however, it is fundamentally solid, and the DFID model of a top-level development organization has garnered support from the academic and NGO community. “Ultimately, a new, empowered department of global development is likely to be the model that holds the greatest promise of transforming the U.S. foreign assistance enterprise to lead in addressing the challenges of the twenty-first century,” says Lael Brainard of the Brookings Institution in her work “Security By Other Means.” “Only

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Photo Credit: Darcy Kiefel Copyright: Heifer International

a new cabinet agency will be able to boost the stature and morale of the development mission and attract the next generation of top talent within the U.S. government. Only an independent department will be able to realize the president’s vision of elevating development as the third pillar, alongside diplomacy and defense, underpinning America’s international leadership.” In order to ensure its independence and to prioritize the eradication of extreme poverty through efforts such as the MDGs, such an independent development and humanitarian assistance department should be headed by an official who is a member of the president’s Cabinet and reports directly to him. This position should oversee all U.S. foreign assistance programs including the MCC, PEPFAR and initiatives currently administered by other Cabinet departments and agencies. In a recent article in The American Interest, Stewart Patrick of the Center for Global Development states that foreign assistance stems from 18 separate accounts in the State Department and USAID, in addition to about 20 other federal agencies. He argues that the current role of the director of foreign assistance is too narrow to oversee all of these outlets: “To bring coherence to U.S. aid policy, the Director of Foreign Assistance needs the practical capacity and legal authority to shift funds across accounts within USAID and State; to roll back outdated and irrelevant congressional earmarks on foreign assistance; to coordinate the independent MCA [Millennium Challenge Account], and HIV/AIDS initiatives, and to influence foreign aid spending by other U.S. agencies, including the Department of Defense.” The NGO community also has pointed out that several other Cabinet departments— including Agriculture, Energy, Health and Human Services, Labor and Treasury—have foreign aid programs that currently lie beyond the purview of the director of foreign assistance. The establishment of a Cabinet-level development department would not only help streamline these efforts but place development at the same level as State and Defense.

Systems should be created to ensure that the new department is accountable on a number of fronts. This can be done by linking spending to results, measuring results against the interests of the recipient populations and other measurements of effectiveness, and fully integrating gender at the institutional and program level. A Cabinet-level department is the best way to ensure that international development is a top priority of the U.S. government and all mechanisms to achieve global poverty alleviation operate in harmony. Until such an organization is created, the three pillars of national security—defense, diplomacy and development—will remain unsteady. Photographs courtesy of InterAction and Heifer International.

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