4 Aug 2003 VIEWPOINT: Wrong-headed U.S. aid policy hits the neediest
Nick Cater is a journalist who writes about disasters, development, the environment, crisis and conflict. In this column, he takes issue with U.S. aid policy, arguing that its political strings are harming not only NGOs but also those who most need their assistance.
Washington's difficulties in coping with the humanitarian consequences of its military intervention in Iraq come at a time when the Bush administration's neo-conservatives are reordering priorities in development spending, relief aid and funding for HIV/AIDS work while rewarding trusted companies and attacking NGOs' independence and neutrality.
U.S. NGOs in Iraq wrote to President George W. Bush to complain that his forces had not delivered a peace that allowed them to work, Iraqis to recover and democracy to develop.
However, they forgot to mention the outrageous efforts of their biggest paymaster, Andrew Natsios, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), to control charity contact with the media in Iraq and force them to become Bush cheerleaders.
Perhaps under pressure to prove his loyalty or angered by criticism of his too-little, too-late approach on Iraq, Natsios has threatened to take back grants unless agencies actively promote their American funding, a move that could put lives at risk.
USAID itself faces the loss of existing and potential funding, with a Bush promise to add $5 billion a year to overseas aid turning into the creation of a Millennium Challenge Corporation to separate that spending from usual aid flows.
The corporation will help not the poorest, most vulnerable or those trapped in failed states, but selectively deliver aid to perhaps fewer than 20 countries that fit Washington's selected rules about governance, investment and economic liberalisation.
'NO SEX PLEASE, YOU'RE AFRICAN'
Also separately from USAID, the former head of a drug firm will run the much heralded $15 billion budget for HIV/AIDS with a "no sex please, you're African" wish list set out by the White House as "abstinence, be faithful, or use condoms, in that priority".
A third of it is not actually new money, but will come from reduced spending on health infrastructure, which NGOs say will make it harder to use funds well. USAID plans cuts in work on infectious diseases, child survival and maternal health.
Even the small positive sign of $375 million over two years to go via USAID on microfinance will not make much of a dent in the multi-billion cost to poor countries of debt repayments and the barriers to trade imposed by the United States and others.
Meanwhile, U.S. aid bribery is becoming more blatant. Economists Alberto Alesina of Harvard and David Dollar of the World Bank have found that countries voting "correctly" on U.N. resolutions on Iraq received substantial extra U.S. assistance.
However, a few months into the occupation of Iraq, desperation at the seemingly unexpected costs in billions of dollars and dozens of military casualties is dragging the United States back to talk about U.N. endorsement of a multinational peacekeeping force.
Of course, it is the unsung heroes of the U.N., not the United States, who are restoring Iraq, and doing so on a pittance compared with the massive funding poured, without competitive tenders, by USAID into well connected U.S. companies.
IMPROVING ROLE OF WOMEN
All but ignored by the U.S. media, U.N. agencies are working alongside NGOs from around the world on almost every aspect of Iraq's recovery, from rehabilitating water and sewage treatment plants to improving the role of women.
The U.N. Chidren's Fund UNICEF is getting millions of children back to school, the World Food Programme has quietly delivered well over one million tonnes of foodstuffs and the World Health Organisation is bringing in 500 tonnes of medical supplies a week and disposing of hospital waste.
A key player is the U.N. secretary general's envoy, Sergio Vieira de Mello, who works closely with U.S. civilian administrator Paul Bremer, yet travels widely and consults Iraqis on issues, such as human rights and justice, well beyond the intended humanitarian role of the U.N.
Mutterings about the U.N. exceeding its brief again reveal the neo-conservative aid agenda: no independence or neutrality as the world is shaped to serve selfish interests, and no conventions -- Geneva or otherwise -- to limit U.S. power over others.
While the government uses Natsios to harass NGOs formally, its favourite think tank will harass them informally, as the business-funded American Enterprise Institute (AEI) launches its "NGO Watch" website to highlight the "growing power of the unelected few".
This, of course, does not refer to its own "fellows", including Vice-President Dick Cheney's wife Lynne and the hawkish former chairman of the Pentagon's Defence Policy Board, Richard Perle.
American assistance may be too little, and tiny as a percentage of GDP, but as its coherence and effectiveness is sliced and diced, and U.S. NGOs face attacks on their funding, impartiality and integrity, the unelected few must stand together despite the bullying of Natsios and AEI's sneers to defend aid against those who would destroy it.
# Nick Cater writes regularly for the Guardian's Society Online section . He can be contacted at: cateralert at hotmail.com
Links:
U.S. Agency for International Development
U.N. Children's Fund UNICEF