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Note: This document is from the archive of the Africa Policy E-Journal, published by the Africa Policy Information Center (APIC) from 1995 to 2001 and by Africa Action from 2001 to 2003. APIC was merged into Africa Action in 2001. Please note that many outdated links in this archived document may not work.

Africa: NGO Aid Proposal
Date Distributed (ymd): 950512

The Development Gap

NGOs RELEASE PROPOSAL TO RESTRUCTURE U.S. DEVELOPMENT AID

5 May 1995

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."

 - 30 -

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: [email protected].

*******************************************************
This material is being reposted for wider distribution
by the Africa Policy Information Center (APIC). APIC's
primary objective is to widen the policy debate in the
United States around African issues and the U.S. role
in Africa, by concentrating on providing accessible
policy-relevant information and analysis usable by a
wide range of groups and individuals.  APIC is
affiliated with the Washington Office on Africa (WOA),
a not-for-profit church, trade union and civil rights
group supported organization that works with Congress
on Africa-related legislation.

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