Elevating Development to be a Primary Goal
of Foreign Assistance
We need to elevate development among our national priorities, placing it alongside defense and diplomacy. We need
to refocus our foreign assistance on poverty reduction and
give it resources equal to the task. We need to consolidate our
development programs in one place with a clear mandate. If
we do these things, U.S. tax dollars will be invested more effectively to help the people who need it the most.
The hunger crisis should also serve as a wake-up call for the
United States to rethink development and foreign assistance.
The United States must provide leadership commensurate
with its resources and values. The challenges we face in
the 21st century argue for a fresh approach. Elevating
development and fixing foreign aid are the most important
things we can do to respond to the global hunger crisis.
Endnotes
1 Excluding
Pakistan earthquake response, which totaled roughly
$117 million.
2 Birdsall, Malik and Vaishnav: Poverty and the Social Sectors: The World
Bank in Pakistan 1990-2003; Center for Global Development, August,
2005.
3 These different categories of aid are not, of course, mutually exclusive. There are areas of overlap, e.g., road and school construction in
the frontier regions of Pakistan, or urban infrastructure in Cairo. The
problem arises when the different goals are not explicit, with appropriate indicators of effectiveness.
4 Brainard, Lael, in Security by Other Means: Foreign assistance, Global Poverty, and American Leadership; Brookings Institution, 2007, pp. 33-34.
5 Smart Development: Why US Foreign Aid Demands Major Reform: Oxfam
America, 2008.
6 It should be noted that this is a role the Defense Department is assuming largely by default, in the absence of capacity on the part of
USAID and the State Department to take on these responsibilities.
7 Strategic Plan, FYs 2007 - 2012: Department of State and USAID,
2007; http://www.usaid.gov/policy/coordination/stratplan_fy07-12.
pdf
8 Gates, Robert: Landon Lecture, November 26, 2007: www.
defenselink.mil/speeches/speech.aspx?speechid=1199
9 Doesn’t include counter-narcotics, refugees and military training
administered through State Dept.
10 Includes Andean Counter-drug program, much of which is for alternative livelihoods.
11 Beyond Assistance: The HELP (Helping to Enhance the Livelihood of People around the Globe) Commission Report on Foreign Assistance Reform; Final
report, December 2007.
12 CSIS Commission on Smart Power: A Smarter, More Secure America, Center
for Strategic and International Studies, 2007; Embassies Grapple to Guide Foreign Aid: A Report to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Richard
Lugar, Ranking Minority Member, November 2007.
13 Robert Gates, Landon Lecture, Kansas State University, November
26, 2007: www.defenselink.mil/speeches/speech.aspx?speechid=1199.
generous share of total U.S. foreign aid. Non-military aid to Pakistan
has totaled almost $1.9 billion since 2001.
Rev. David Beckmann, President of Bread for the World, (right)
meets with farmers in Buwana, Uganda.
Bread for the World is part of the Modernizing Foreign
Assistance Network (MFAN), a coalition of international
development experts working to modernize U.S. foreign
assistance and elevate global development. For more
information on MFAN and to read their New Day, New
Way: U.S. Foreign Assistance for the 21st Century report,
please visit www.modernizingforeignassistance.net.
www.bread.org
Bread for the World Institute 7