COMMENTARY: Reforming Foreign Assistance, Restoring America's Leadership

Commentary by CEDPA President Carol Peasley

As the new president of the Centre for Development and Population Activities (CEDPA), I am excited by the historic opportunity next year brings us to strengthen the U.S. role in creating a better world.

The U.S. Congress has put high on the agenda for 2009 the need to reform the 40-year-old Foreign Assistance Act, which governs how the U.S. contributes to global development. Nothing could be more important to CEDPA’s mission to improve the lives of women and girls in developing countries.

Reforming foreign aid also will be one of the most important challenges for the next U.S. president. If done right, it can help ensure that our aid to other nations is responsive to local needs, effective and has long-lasting impact. It can also help bolster the U.S. image around the world, showing the true generosity of Americans and our commitment to the global community.

No matter who becomes president, we can celebrate in advance that he is likely to join the growing new consensus that reducing global poverty and strengthening global development is critical to our national interest. The importance of advancing all 3 “Ds” in foreign policy—Defense, Diplomacy and Development—is now seemingly accepted by all.

It is especially gratifying to see growing support for a cabinet-level Development Agency. There clearly seems to be bi-partisan recognition of the need for streamlining and coordinating aid, and for organizational change. I am confident there will be improvements regardless of the winner on November 4.

But, we also need to remember that organization and structure are not the only important issues. While I do hope there will be a new cabinet–level agency, or at least a greatly strengthened and re-invigorated U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), we also need to be talking about the “what” and “how” of foreign assistance.

Here are a number of priorities that our new president and Congress must consider to make aid more effective:

1. The U.S. development agenda must be grounded in local needs and support capacity building. When we work and support locally led priorities—and help communities increase their capacity to improve their own development—we are much more likely to see significant and sustainable long-term impact. While presidential and congressional initiatives directed at specific issues and results are important—whether to improve basic education or stop HIV/AIDS—these are not sufficient. There must be attention to and considerably greater investment in training local organizations.
2. Greater investments must be made in women’s empowerment and gender equality for sustainable development, poverty reduction and better governance. Research from the United Nations, the World Bank and others proves this case—as does CEDPA’s more than 30 years of experience in development. Countries worldwide agreed to time-bound commitments through the Millennium Development Goals to reduce gender inequality in order to reduce poverty and advance communities. A reformed U.S. foreign aid system must do a better job of using gender analysis at all levels of planning and implementation, and across all sectors. It must provide a higher profile for gender issues, as well as dedicated resources.
3. New legislation to replace the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act should include agreements on priorities and approaches, so that development does not become politicized in yearly budget battles between the president and Congress. An important model could be the Development Fund for Africa. That 1988 legislation clearly identified and mandated resources for congressional priorities in Africa. It also, in turn, gave USAID the flexibility to design development programs that had significant impact. These included critically important economic growth activities and the capacity to provide non-project support to reform-minded countries.
4. To improve health and reduce poverty, support for family planning and reproductive health programs should be a clear recommendation within the new Act. The international community should be embarrassed by the lack of progress in reducing maternal death, which claims one woman’s life every minute. Domestic political debates do not diminish the reality that there is an enormous unmet need for family planning around the world. It also saves lives. Greater access to family planning services could prevent 31 percent of total maternal deaths. And, Americans support family planning. More than 98 percent of sexually active U.S. women of childbearing age use contraceptives, according to the CDC. If it is good enough for Americans, then we should ensure that women and men worldwide have access to these lifesaving, voluntary programs.
5. Finally, the new president and Congress must recognize the broad array of American actors working in the development sphere, beyond the U.S. government. This includes international organizations like CEDPA, foundations, private companies and religious groups. How can we all build stronger collaboration and work within a commonly understood development framework? How can we build true public-private partnerships? We may need to think about a new advisory or collaborative architecture that goes beyond the current Advisory Council on Foreign Voluntary Assistance (ACFVA) structure to bring to the table the voices and experiences of, for example, the Gates, Ford and Packard Foundations; corporations including ExxonMobil, Levi Strauss and Nike; and religious groups such as the American branch of the World Council of Churches.

As someone who has spent my adulthood working on international development—and has seen foreign aid being used as a political football for too many of those years—it is exciting to see the growing consensus that it is time to strengthen and reform U.S. foreign aid.

We need a variety of voices in this discussion, we need to learn from the past, and most of all, we need to put aid effectiveness at the center.

At CEDPA, we look forward to working with the new U.S. president and Congress to support changes that will improve impact on the ground, put the lives of people at the center, and help build a safer world that truly enables girls and boys to achieve their maximum potential.

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