The Facts
Foreign assistance is critical. It conveys America's humanitarian values. It helps protect America's national security. And it helps countries address dire poverty and develop so that they can better provide for their own people. Our foreign assistance system is broken. We ignore this reality at our peril. The American people, and those in the developing world striving for a better life, deserve a better foreign assistance system.
- HELP Commission Report on Foreign Assistance Reform
United States foreign aid currently serves a variety of disparate and often competing commercial, political, moral, and security interests. While defense and diplomacy are critical foreign policy tools, development — the third “D” — should be focused on the end of poverty. While an overwhelming majority of Americans support funding to help people in poor countries meet their basic needs, poverty reduction is not the focus of our foreign assistance program. A review of U.S. foreign assistance by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development concluded: “The U.S. is the largest aid donor in absolute terms, as well as a highly respected contributor to thinking on poverty in the international arena. . . . However, it does not have a clear policy on poverty reduction.”
Chicago Council on Foreign Relations. Worldviews 2002. September 2002. http://www.worldviews.org/detailreports/usreport/index.htm
OECD. The United Status Development Assistance Committee Peer Review. 2006. http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/61/57/37885999.pdf
