Tag: aid reform

USAID Adds Value in Disaster Response, Says Former Hunger Notes Chair

Opinion piece from the former WHES Board Chair:   Most people do not realize what a huge mistake it would be to eliminate the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), as appears to be underway here in February 2025.  It would be like throwing the proverbial baby out with the bathwater.  I cannot imagine that either Elon Musk or President Trump are aware of full range of ramifications this elimination would have on the world.  If we as a nation eliminate USAID whole cloth, then all the disaster response and humanitarian efforts including the USAID Disaster Assistance (DART) teams would stop.  I know it has been said that the State Department will maintain emergency food and material aid.  In practical terms it is unclear how that can happen, when staff with institutional memory are gone, grant making ability is gone, and the  DART is gone.

I recently stepped down as Volunteer Board Chair from the World Hunger Education Service (WHES) Board.  WHES was started 50 years ago to inform the US Congress about international hunger issues and needs.  It widened its scope in the internet age beyond Congress to the public at large.

Prior to my role on the Board, I worked 23 years in USAID.  My USAID career was with the Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) within USAID. At OFDA, I initially served as a contingency planner and nutrition advisor then as a member of the Senior Management Team and Division Director for the Technical Assistance Division which included all the assistance sectors for disaster relief; Health, Pandemic response, Clean Water and Sanitation, Famine and Nutrition, Volcano and Earthquake risks, Floods and Storm risk, Pestilence, Shelter, Anti-trafficking in persons and Protection of Vulnerables.

Growth of Disasters

OFDA grew as post-cold war disasters and responses around the world became greater.  I was in Rwanda after the 1994 genocide, then DR Congo which had a internal war taking place as well as Sudan and Kosovo.  Historically, disaster assistance was modeled on refugee camps; including feeding, shelter, health care, and food distribution.  As internal wars increased, the global number of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) became greater than the number of refugees. As a result, humanitarian assistance became more dangerous and more complicated.  I was familiar with refugee assistance; before OFDA, I worked in Cambodian refugee camps on the Thai border; in Cambodia on health programs with World Vision, and the Red Cross and then in UN refugee camps in Congo during the Rwandan genocide.

Operational DART Teams

Until last week, USAID, through OFDA, funded many different non-governmental organizations (NGOs) like Catholic Relief Services, International Rescue Committee, and World Vision.  However, USAID, through OFDA, was also operational; it had the ability to send Disaster Assistance Response Teams (DART) to disasters.  The purpose of these teams was to report, to coordinate the US efforts and to fund humanitarian partners.  This was a much better model to keep an eye on the funds, literally in the field.

Another clear advantage was the DART also became a platform for coordination for the whole US Government.  As a DART team leader, I witnessed this on the DART during the Indian Ocean Tsunami in 2004; The US Navy, Marines, US Air Force reserve, Embassy Jakarta, and USAID all assisted there, in a coordinated effort.  The response dramatically changed Indonesian public opinion of the United States from negative to positive.

I also witnessed this on the 2014-15 DART when the DART platform was used to combat and eventually defeat the Ebola epidemic.  This involved US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), USAID, Embassies in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone and US Defense Department.

Ramifications

During this aid freeze, NGOs will go bankrupt.  The US Government was the largest single supporter of global disaster response and humanitarian efforts.  In my experience, it has always had bipartisan support, and goodwill from the House and the Senate. It would be a terrible mistake to continue down this destructive path.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BOOK REVIEW: The Enduring Struggle: The History of the U.S. Agency for International Development and America’s Uneasy Transformation of the World

BOOK REVIEW:  The Enduring Struggle:  The History of the U.S. Agency for International Development and America’s Uneasy Transformation of the World, by John Norris.   2021.   Lanham MD:  Rowman & Littlefield Publisher.

America’s primary international assistance organization, for moving federal tax dollars to solve global problems, has for over 60 years been the United States Agency for International Development, known more commonly as USAID (or in the past, AID).

USAID has had a long and illustrious history of providing varied development and emergency assistance in most countries of Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and the former Soviet Union since its founding in 1962 at the initiative of President John F Kennedy.  In The Enduring Struggle, author John Norris tackles the sweep of USAID’s work, starting in the late 1950s.  The book is organized largely around big new decadal initiatives undertaken.    Parenthetically, it recounts the creation of the separate Millennium Challenge Corporation.

This book provides readers with the context for how anti-hunger programs are marshalled for federal funding of agriculture, “feed the future,” nutrition, livelihoods, and anti-poverty projects by NGOs in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

The USAID Alumni Association provided critical support for the writing.  One supporter, Alex Shakow, says “We are especially pleased. We hope that students and scholars will, over time, dig more deeply into the many issues raised and programs… readers have said all AID staffers should read the book to help them better understand the history, experience, and culture of the agency of which they are a part.  In fact, AID Management has made it possible for every person in AID to have access to the book.”

Norris, who has written other books (including Disaster Gypsies) and a blog about political leadership at USAID, orients his history from the view of senior political leaders in Washington, DC.  Norris gives human face by quoting political appointees who interfaced between USAID, the White House and Congress.  More attention is given to USAID’s top officials (the head being called “Administrator”) and White House strategists, than to career aid specialists working in the field.  There is scant specific description of USAID’s large field offices, which today are in over sixty countries,, though Norris drew heavily on the many “oral histories” that have been done by many alumni and available at:  https://adst.org/oral-history/oral-history-interviews/#gsc.tab=0

The author credits a sea change in the US approach to foreign aid to Herbert Hoover who engineered life-saving food aid to Europe during World War I to Belgium and then after that war to the Soviet Union.  He gives weight to different decades, including the 1960’s and 70’s when there was an emphasis on endless new policy making, planning exercises and constant addition of new requirements for funding.   Aid had to reposition itself time and again, such as when it was no longer needed strategically as a tactic in the Cold War.  He notes the biggest jumps in USAID’s budget occurred under Republican Administrations (e.g. Bush, Reagan).  It casts light on provision of aid inside war zones, including Vietnam, Central America and Afghanistan.

The Enduring Struggle addresses food security and food aid, and health (smallpox, HIV, COVID-19), but keeps a broad sweep of initiatives, without discussion of the NGOs, Universities, UN agencies, and local organizations designing and implementing aid projects.  Norris covers the important early initiative to promote family planning was controversially led by Rei Ravenholt who had “unusual latitude and authority over personnel, spending and the direction of the program, reflecting a focus in the 1960s and 1970s on over-population.  This program laid the groundwork for dramatic decreases in fertility and a long-term plateau in population growth.

Norris’ references to food assistance, which has been the most popular, robust and consistent part of foreign aid (of over $100 billion in aid) are derived from selective and few references that led to further misconceptions about the effectiveness of Title II food aid, mostly delivered by NGOs and the World Food Programme.  He conveys none of the achievements in promoting local food security that have accounted for $100 billion of nonprofit efforts across the world during the last half-century.  Norris diminishes food aid as the product of farm and shipping lobbies, ignoring how US nonprofits fighting hunger have been the biggest supporters of food aid to Congress.

USAID Alumni leader, Alexander Shakow, who helped arrange for Norris to have inputs from USAID alumni, said “We are especially pleased that AID staff, current and retired, have been very positive in their reactions.  …Norris has made excellent use of AID retirees’ oral histories, files from Presidential libraries, and many other sources that bring his stories of major programs to life, and as a result the book is a very interesting read in addition to all the substance that one learns.”

The author gives greater attention in many cases to the politics or news-version of issues than the relevance in the field.  He comments about how HIV/AIDS was identified in the early 1980s but not a topic of interest to the President of the United States, presumably as a theme for foreign aid.  This makes little sense because, apart from Haiti, the AIDS epidemic was not understood at that time to be a problem elsewhere in the world.  It was really only in the 1990s (long after Reagan) that USAID programs revealed the prevalence of AIDS infection in countries like Malawi and much of southern Africa.

A strength of this book is that it is well vetted and is accurate in what it does  cover, particularly the politics of aid.  What’s unfortunate is that it does not touch on what was actually accomplished (for instance, lives saved) with US taxpayer’s taxes, in the form of a great many momentous successes of USAID (it does mention the eradication of smallpox).  It conveys well the inside baseball politics of USAID meetings in the Cabinet and White House.  But, in the end, it gives little insight about what assistance looks like at the level of its delivery in the field.

In the final chapter, Norris writes “The United States Agency for International Development has been in existence for sixty years, and foreign assistance has been established as an important part of the American ethos…. Aid can provide incentives for reform and encouragement and support to local reformers.  But it cannot, by itself, overcome entrenched resistance by those who benefit from bad policies or corrupt politics.”

He concludes, “As this history describes, the United States and other donors have delivered lifesaving humanitarian assistance to millions upon millions of people since 1960; without that assistance the death toll from wars and famines… would have been far higher.”

Shakow adds that “We hope that students and scholars will, over time, dig more deeply into some of the many issues raised and programs left without adequate detail.  Many readers have said all AID staffers should read the book to help them better understand the history, experience, and culture of the agency of which they are now a part.  In fact, AID Management has made it possible for every person in AID to have access to the book.”

One interview with the author, as streaming media, at the think tank CSIS, can be found at:  https://www.csis.org/events/book-event-enduring-struggle-conversation-john-norris