Last week Newsweek published an article entitled “The Death of Generosity.”
The article outlines a decline in the West’s commitment to the aid goals set in the 1990s and makes ominous predictions for the future of the developing world: the Millennium Development Goals will not be met, corruption will run rampant in over-bureaucratized governments, and states that fail to develop run the risk of becoming breeding grounds for radicalism and militancy. The author observes that the global economic crisis has led to cuts in Western aid budgets, leaving an opening for countries like China and Venezuela to offer grants to the developing world that often do not come with the restrictions that the West requires, specifically with regards to human rights and democratization.
It’s a bleak picture that the author paints, and in many ways I agree with his analysis. There is little doubt that the Millennium Development Goals will not be met by the extended deadline of 2015, and it is true that the world is frustrated by the painfully slow pace of reform in the developing world.
But I think the piece deserves a response, lest readers of Newsweek put down their magazines believing that all Americans are closefisted and the developing world is doomed. Below, I offer my thoughts to a few excerpts from the article:
Fair point. The administration has had some difficulty following through with President Obama’s promises to double the foreign aid budget and modernize aid delivery mechanisms. It took 8 months to appoint Rajiv Shah as the administrator of USAID (due mostly to false starts from the White House, which had initially lined up Paul Farmer for the role), and many other high-level posts remain vacant. USAID itself has also grown weaker, in part because, under the Bush administration, many of USAID’s projects were outsourced to private consulting companies, leaving the organization too weak to handle the increases in foreign aid. Instead of restructuring USAID, Congress has increasingly dispersed foreign aid among a growing number of government departments, agencies and offices, adding to the general confusion. But a light shines through the chaos: in 2009, the U.S. government dedicated $28.7 billion to foreign aid—more than double what American taxpayers paid for overseas development projects in 2000. President Obama may be having a harder time selling foreign aid, but he certainly hasn’t given up on it.
The poll data are surprising: for the first time since 1964, more Americans than not think that foreign aid should be curtailed. But the light still shines! The split is only 49% to 44%, and minds can yet be changed! In response to the idea that “Americans are not in a generous mood,” I disagree. Americans increased their charitable donations significantly in 2006 to more than $295 billion – a record, according to a study released in 2007 by the Giving USA Foundation. Most of these donations were by individuals. Of the $122.8 billion of foreign aid provided by Americans in 2005, $95.5 billion, or 79 percent, came from private foundations, corporations, voluntary organizations, universities, religious organizations and individuals, according to the Index of Global Philanthropy.
A big round of applause for the 40. Wikipedia tells me there are 403 billionaires in the U.S., so at the time of writing, within three weeks of the launching of this initiative, 10% of American billionaires have pledged to donate more than $40 billion in aid. I find this news hopeful and inspiring, rather than an example of the miserliness of the rich.
True. China, especially, has entered the business of development aid with a bang. In 2009 Premier Wen Jiabao offered Africa $10 billion in concessional loans over the next three years. Almost anywhere you go in the developing world you can see signs of Chinese investment, as well as aid projects sponsored by the Saudis, the Indians and Venezuelans, among others. And true, many of these new donor nations provide aid unconditionally, without the same requirements for improvements in human rights and democratization mandated by the West. But without such strings attached, and if there is no governance of the aid, it can simply end up being sent to someone’s Swiss bank account. The West is left in a difficult position: if we refuse to direct aid to places where we know it will be misspent (Somalia, Chad, etc), we leave the door open for donors who will give unconditionally, providing further support to the autocratic regimes we objected to in the first place. And, more worryingly, we keep aid from the millions of people living under such regimes. It’s inherently difficult, though desirable, both to send aid to bad governments and ensure that it gets to the people it’s meant to help. How is THAT accomplished? (This is a digression from the article, but it gives me a chance to rant…)
In a larger sense, my argument is this: charity isn’t the point. It’s not about the amount of funding that is donated, who gives it or the celebrity that surrounds it. It’s about building a country’s capacity to operate without aid, and provide its citizens with the services they need. Ultimately, we should all hope that a decline in foreign aid represents a movement away from charity toward sustainable development (those magical buzzwords). We have not reached that stage yet, and clearly much remains to be done, but we should not view the decline in funding as “the end of generosity.” Aid is evolving, and it will continue to change as new challenges emerge that require a revision in the structure and function of development. But this certainly does not mean the world has given up. Funding may have declined as countries take care of their domestic well being, but that does not mean the developing world has been forgotten. We’re still here, and our commitment is still strong. Generosity lives!
