The Future of Foreign Assistance Amid Global Economic and Financial Crisis
Report from International Institutions and Global Governance Program
Report from International Institutions and Global Governance Program

The Future of Foreign Assistance Amid Global Economic and Financial Crisis

Advancing Global Health in the U.S. Development Agenda

January 2009 , 40 Pages

Report

Overview

Though the United States of America faces its toughest budgetary and economic challenges since the Great Depression, it cannot afford to eliminate, or even reduce, its foreign assistance spending. For clear reasons of political influence, national security, global stability, and humanitarian concern the United States must, at a minimum, stay the course in its commitments to global health and development, as well as basic humanitarian relief. The Bush administration sought not only to increase some aspects of foreign assistance, targeting key countries (Iraq and Afghanistan) and specific health targets, such as the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and the President’s Malaria Initiative, but also executed an array of programmatic and structural changes in U.S. aid efforts. By 2008, it was obvious to most participants and observers that too many agencies were engaged in foreign assistance, and that programs lacked coherence and strategy. Well before the financial crisis of fall 2008, there was a strong bipartisan call for foreign assistance reform, allowing greater efficiency and credibility to U.S. efforts, enhancing engagement in multilateral institutions and programs, and improving institutional relations between U.S. agencies and their partners, including nongovernmental organizations, recipient governments, corporate and business sector stakeholders, faith-based organizations, academic-based implementers and researchers, foundations and private donors, United Nations agencies, and other donor nations.

Laurie Garrett
Laurie Garrett

Senior Fellow for Global Health

This report describes:

More on:

Economic Crises

Foreign Aid

  • A brief lay of the foreign assistance landscape, outlining the current status of U.S. investment in health and development, the global donor panorama, basic needs assessment for poor countries, and forecast needs levels for 2009 to 2015;
Missing taxonomy term.
  • The rationale for continued, robust American engagement in foreign assistance, not just in spite of the economic downturn, but because of it;
  • A consensus view of what works, what needs to be improved, and what still needs to be examined regarding how the U.S. planned and executed foreign assistance in fiscal year 2007 to fiscal year 2008;
  • Consensus recommendations for the future of foreign aid under a new presidential administration and Congress.

More on:

Economic Crises

Foreign Aid

Top Stories on CFR

 

Russia

Liana Fix, a fellow for Europe at CFR, and Thomas Graham, a distinguished fellow at CFR, sit down with James M. Lindsay to discuss the future of U.S. policy toward Russia and the risks posed by heightened tensions between two nuclear powers. This episode is the first in a special TPI series on the U.S. 2024 presidential election and is supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Terrorism and Counterterrorism

Violence around U.S. elections in 2024 could not only destabilize American democracy but also embolden autocrats across the world. Jacob Ware recommends that political leaders take steps to shore up civic trust and remove the opportunity for violence ahead of the 2024 election season.