Development Aid: Some Small Steps Forward
Haugaard, Lisa
The commitment of some Clinton Administration appointees to a more participatory approach to development has given significant space to some development professionals to design...
...Substantial resources were spent observing voter registration in former conflict zones, since Republican staffers feared discrimination against former members of the Contra resistance...
...These drastic cuts, however, may turn out to be a blessing in disguise...
...Women rolling cigars in a Guatemalan community development project...
...As the period for the Accord's implementation winds down, AID is proposing a primary focus on rural poverty 31REPORT ON U.S...
...In 1990, the United States provided $8 million to Violeta Chamorro's campaign-with nary a pretense of impartiality...
...assistance to developing nations does there appear to be serious discussion about the ways in which economic reform goals could possibly conflict with laudable goals of poverty reduction and the support of small-scale development pursued in bilateral aid programs...
...The rily represent the of congressional resistance...
...Influence over adjustment is limited to a few policy advisers in each country in addition to some assistance for implementing privatization...
...7 According to these critics, AID's Haiti programs focus on agribusiness and U.S...
...In El Salvador, millions of dollars flowed into government coffers, which freed government resources to fuel the war effort...
...ation, and excluded aid to cooperatives, which were seen as Sandinista strongholds...
...Yet it was government disorganization and occasional incidents of fraud from Liberal observe the elections...
...The Summit of the Americas, the centerpiece of Clinton's Latin America policy, featured expansion of trade agreements as the solution for hemispheric problems, downplaying serious discussion of bilateral assistance and new strategies for addressing poverty...
...9 Such serious innovation, however, has not yet materialized...
...When the mission's health expert determined that the Ixchen women's movement, formed by renegade Sandinistas who left the party because they felt there was no space for women's issues, could offer excellent rural outreach for family planning, Helms' staff found out and nixed the project-charging that Ixchen was not only carrying out abortions, but operating in a confiscated house...
...The Administration's approach shifted from a proactive attempt to reform aid into a defensive attempt to protect aid programs from budget cuts and to fend off the worst aid-restructuring efforts being pushed in Congress...
...agency delivering development aiddependent on the U.S...
...Assistance reforms moving in a "sustainable" d advance lim- direction would encourage self help, promote environmentally friendly production techniques and include a nistration offi- recognition of the importance of food security...
...The new AID Chief of Staff Dick McCall had overseen and critiqued AID programs in El Salvador in his previous post on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, while Latin America director Mark Schneider had also expressed sensitivity to such concerns...
...opment policy Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, the landmark Cold War -, the phrase is legislation that, amended over the years, has provided daily record of the framework for all aid programs...
...No other part of the world faced U.S...
...AID invited some of its most persistent critics to dialogue...
...Under pressure from AID as well as multilateral financial institutions, even peaceful, social-democratic Costa Rica was pushed to privatize financial institutions and other state-owned enterprises, to cut government spending and to reorient agricultural production towards an export-led strategy...
...Like "put people first" at home meaningless until measured against the policy choices on foreign aid and lendin on domestic issues, the Administration substantial ground to conservatives on t structure of foreign aid...
...government employees in Nicaragua had to abide by a "non-fraternization" code, under which they had to report each and every social or job-related contact with anyone even vaguely associated with the Sandinistas to embassy superiors...
...Sustainable development" is "the catch phrase of the Clinton Administration's devel abroad...
...Such a to rewrite the development path would be more likely than the currently fashionable neoliberal path to promote equitable, ie Latin America broadly shared progress...
...AID, to meet with the agency's Central America staff...
...An initial grant of $700,000 to the AFL-CIO's American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD) included plans to "recruit and retain new members from the ranks of Sandinista unions...
...6 In the end, ET may overcome its partisan origins and provide domestic observation that would be preferable to continued dependence on outside fixes...
...investment rather than peasant farming, and thereby undermine food security...
...AID: A Central American Perspective," Oxfam America, Summary of Meetings, Washington, D.C...
...development policy should take advantage of opportunities to dialogue and offer concrete proposals for changes to programs and policies...
...POLICY Foreign Assistance Act was entirely abandoned...
...With the mid-term congressional elections of 1994, the attempt to rewrite the 29REPORT ON U.S...
...POLICY reduction in El Salvador...
...Unlike progressive critics of foreign aid who saw U.S...
...Agency for International Development (AID)-the primary U.S...
...Nowhere with- money is rolling into the country in AID, Treasury, State or any other agency principally concerned with U.S...
...while efforts at the structural level proved ineffective, however, certain U.S...
...While AID's role as adjustment enforcer in Latin America-with the exception of Haiti--has sharply diminished, U.S...
...The "current situa- lenged the established water electricity and telephones wisdom on structural ad- private companies are more sta- justment...
...7.Tom Carter, "Inadequacies in U.S...
...Smaller-scale programs that are less in the political limelight may actually offer greater space for innovation...
...AID's bilateral assistance program in Haiti, however, remains the target of progressive critics like the Development GAP and Grassroots International, which charge that U.S...
...While the Administration has joined with nongovernmental critics to push the multilaterals to improve public access to information and to put in place some minimal mechanisms for accountability, it has not chaltalization...
...32 NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 32REPORT ON U.S...
...While the rest of its first-aid program was slow in coming, U.S...
...AID staff provided well-grounded, nonpartisan technical advice throughout the process, and worked diligently to help Nicaraguan electoral authorities surmount considerable logistical difficulties...
...8. Lisa A. McGowan, "Democracy Undermined, Economic Justice Denied: Structural Adjustment and the AID Jugernaut in Haiti," The Development GAP, January, 1997...
...Some voluntary organizations complain that AID's participation in Vice President Gore's "Reinventing Government" initiative, which has resulted in a renewed emphasis on working toward and measuring specific results, is having unintended side effects...
...Yet, unfortunately, this legislation still ams and trade grounded U.S...
...and visiting Central American non-governmental leaders, but actively searched out such dialogue, asking NGOs to convene meetings when mission directors were in town...
...8 The agency held up an allotment of aid until cement and flour mills were sold, and it hired a public-relations firm to sell the virtues of privatization to the Haitian public...
...1 0 Where there are sympathetic political appointees and development professionals, advocates working to improve U.S...
...The IRI, in turn, helped to establish Etica y Transparencia (ET), a Nicaraguan election monitoring group...
...AID El Salvador," LAC Bureau Mission Directors Conference, Antigua, Guatemala, February 1315, 1997...
...and on the poli perspectives behind its lending progr agreements, the Administration simply di its predecessors...
...As the Administration attempted to defend budgets from even steeper cuts, it gave ground in its rhetorical justifications for foreign aid...
...Merger critics worry that this move will give short-term U.S...
...30 30 NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICASREPORT ON U.S...
...3 AID not only funded the program, but made it self-sustaining by brokering an arrangement for loan forgiveness to ensure that the new beneficiaries would not soon lose their land...
...AID missions in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala paid greater attention to consulting with local partners, and cast their net more broadly to consult with and fund progressive as well as conservative NGOs and individuals...
...Assistance to the Democratically Elected Government," May 1, 1991...
...A look at U.S...
...No more postcard campaigns, please," asked one AID official...
...Again, AID's old alliances showed: ET's board turned out to be primarily allied with candidate Arnoldo Alemdin's rightwing Liberal Alliance, a connection that grew to be embarrassing when the chair of the supposedly nonpartisan board, Emilio Montalban, was picked to be Aleminn's foreign minister...
...Within these strong limitations, the Clinton Administration's bilateral aid programs, at least in Central America, are more participatory, less polarizing and more focused on small-scale development than in the past...
...aid programs there are still tied to structural adjustment...
...While no one holds a copyright on the true path to ment of some sustainable development, its advocates generally supmore participa- port participatory and community-based development ven significant efforts that focus on small-scale farmers and entrepretals within the neurs...
...Vocational and academic training as well as medical rehabilitation services were offered to ex-combatants...
...These efforts were led by Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC), the powerful chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who for years had characterized foreign aid as "throwing money down foreign ratholes...
...Recognizing that weak social organizations will have a hard time taking full advantage of the openings provided by the Peace Accords, AID is also funding a program for advocacy training that focuses on Guatemala's "politically disenfranchised" sectors to help them "participate actively in public decision-making and ensuring government accountability...
...In tha overtly funded the anti-Sandinista campaign of Violeta Chamorro...
...Within the first few months, this orientation VOL XXXI, No 2 SEPT/OCT 1997 began to make itself felt...
...Country strategy documents, which AID missions produce every five years to analyze a country's political and economic landscape and to identify AID's strategic role, were written, at least in El Salvador and Nicaragua, with participation of local nongovernmental leaders and researchers as well as voluntary organizations from the United States...
...aid within narrow foreign policy objecffers little from tives...
...3. U.S...
...Early emphasis on sustainable development and the need to address global poverty gave way to an emphasis on providing U.S...
...Whether AID's withdrawal from enforcing adjustment has any real effect is debatable, given the International Monetary Fund and World Bank's continuing influence-although the change gives AID a different profile in the region...
...AID, G-CAP, "Request for Applications (RFA) Guatemala 52097-A-015, Strengthening Civil Society," May 23, 1997, p. 5. 6. Former First Foreign Minister of the Sandinista government, Alejandro Bendana, now leading a reconciliation project for excombatants from both sides, joined the board, and the progressive Protestant development agency CEPAD and the human rights organization CENIDH provided some of ET's volunteers...
...Ben Gilman and other Republican leaders, who upon occasion exercise veto power over projects...
...AID micromanaged the Nicaraguan economy through its conditionalities tied to privatization, government layoffs and cutbacks...
...Other ongoing questions about AID's effectiveness touch on basic dilemmas about bureaucracy...
...Meanwhile, the Clinton Administration's emphasis on extending NAFTA and building a free trade area of the Americas overshadowed any attempt to form a coherent vision of sustainable development...
...The commitment of some Clinton Administration appointees to a more participatory approach to development has given significant space to some development professionals to design new initiatives and advance limited reforms...
...Since these programs had been the ideological showpieces of the Reagan and Bush Administrations' aid policies, the recent changes merit a close look...
...The private voluntary organizations and advocacy groups that had focused on aid reform also turned their efforts to the defense of aid budgets, leaving little energy for reform...
...Sandinista-affiliated peasant leaders in the National Union of Farmers and Ranchers (UNAG) claim that AID mission director Janet Ballentine told them that the agency aimed to "undermine their control over the countryside...
...During the 1980s and early 1990s, Central America aid programs formed an integral part of a political and military strategy to defeat Central American leftist insurgencies, isolate the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, and promote a free-market agenda...
...Overall economic aid levels to Latin America in 1997 are one-third their 1990 levels...
...To its credit, AID attempted to correct ET's bias by encouraging the organization to invite progressive organizations to join...
...AID's program in Nicaragua is still heavily scrutinized by Senator Helms, Rep...
...The U.S.funded international and domestic observation efforts seemed to be designed primarily to monitor fraud from the Sandinista side...
...To kick off debate, for example, Administration appointees asked the left-ofcenter Development Group for Alternative Policies (Development GAP) to arrange a Latin America roundtable discussion, and the new appointees invited Oxfam America to bring Central American leaders of peasant associations and development projects, along with researchers from throughout the region who had published studies criticizing U.S...
...Some $100 million was channeled to the private sector to stimulate export promotion...
...2. Laura Renshaw, "The Reform of U.S...
...aid as not selfserving enough...
...After three years of attempting to stave this off, the Administration recently agreed to a State-AID merger that technically preserves AID independence but in practice may ensure greater State Department control over aid programs...
...POLICY AID rushed to replace Sandinista textbooks in the school system, at a cost of $12.2 million...
...policy through the Treasury and LLIZASYON the multilateral lending agencies has continued to back free-market preStilyasyon an apre pwogram lan scriptions...
...To what extent this more participatory outlook resulted in program changes is more difficult to assess, although some progress is certainly clear...
...Despite being saddled with conservative board appointments from the Reagan Administration, the IAF has remained true to its mission of funding small-scale grassroots development with a minimum of red tape...
...Perhaps as important as what AID is funding is what it has stopped funding...
...Perhaps more damaging in the long term was his attempt to restructure the bureaucracy by making the U.S...
...Not-for-profit prig programs...
...AID El Salvador Mission, "Rural Poverty Reduction as a Strategic Focus: The Case of U.S...
...man rights, reli- The reform effort, however, soon crumbled in the face ganizations...
...Reagan and Bush Administration policy was so polarized that all U.S...
...All this is taking place against the backdrop of a dramatic decrease in assistance...
...AID's development programs targeted the 115 municipalities most affected by the war...
...Once the Sandinistas lost in Nicaragua, U.S...
...In El Salvador, for example, this meant funding a program which transferred land to 34,000 FMLN ex-combatants and landless poor...
...With Republicans in control of Congress and determined to reduce the deficit, Helms waged a campaign to cut the foreign-aid budget...
...policy interests even greater sway over what should be long-term development strategies...
...AID was up front about its aim of undermining Sandinista-associated organizations...
...assistance for demobilization camps for ex-guerrilla combatants flowed with unusual speed, and will continue to flow for reintegration programs, including vocational training...
...9. One inexplicable development is the Administration's failure to defend a bilateral aid program that has always been viewed as an outstanding example of grassroots development assistance, the independent Inter-American Foundation (IAF...
...In Guatemala, AID funds the UN mission set up to verify the accords, MINUGUA, and will supply at least $1 million to the Clarification Commission, the organization established to investigate cases of past human rights abuses...
...Department of State...
...For a given grant of $10 or $20 million, for example, a country would have to agree to lay off 10,000 employees in a given amount of time...
...bilateral aid programs have improved under the Clinton Administration...
...exports...
...Ongoing programs to promote justice reform, improve tax collection programs and basic education fit in well with some of the specific Peace Accord goals, thus development-aid programs have been redirected to target those areas most affected by the war...
...aid cuts on so large a scale at the end of the Cold War...
...The Cooperative League of the USA (CLUSA) was brought in as a contractor to work with cooperatives, including ones formed under the Sandinistas-although AID is still explicitly forbidden to fund any cooperative or organization using land confiscated from a current U.S...
...In the Washington office, AID was not only at year AID open to dialogue and meetings with both U.S...
...AID efforts to promote privatization appear to be as heavy handed as the Central American programs during the Bush Administration...
...The IAF has survived the threat of losing its independent status, but is losing its niche as the funder of grassroots organizations...
...When Bill Clinton took office, Admi cials launched an ambitious project Lisa Haugaard is Legislative Coordinator of th Working Group, a coalition of 60 national hu gious, grassroots, policy and development or views expressed in this article do not necessary Working Group...
...Aid Programs are no Mysteries to Poor Haitians," The Washington Times, May 7, 1997, p. All...
...5. U.S...
...POLICY MODENIZASYON PA KAPITA Sitlyasyon an koulye a An AID-funded ad in Haiti promoting "Modernization through Capi tion" in which public enterprises are failing and people are lacking is transformed by private investment into a situation in which new ble, the state has more tax revenue, the people have services, and While AID officials claim that there is simply not enough money to continue enforcing structural-adjustment programs, they appear to have decided that specific peace-implementation and poverty-reduction programs in Central America are a higher priority than continuing aid tied to conditionality...
...Onerous reporting requirements are easiest for the large for-profit contractors known as "the beltway bandits," difficult for many private voluntary organizations and impossible for small NGOs...
...However, the commit Clinton Administration appointees to a tory approach to development has gi' space to some development profession bureaucracy to design new initiatives an ited reforms...
...AID's election program in Nicaragua shows both the improvements and the continued influence of conservative members of Congress over the Nicaragua aid program...
...citizen with a title that is still contested...
...May 3-4, 1993...
...Without the large cash transfers, AID in Central America no longer acts as an enforcer of structural adjustment...
...In El Salvador and Guatemala, AID placed greater emphasis on funding the implementation of the Peace Accords, an emphasis made easier by bipartisan acceptance in Congress...
...AID designed its programs to bring the country back in line with the rest of the region by strengthening nonSandinista organizations and returning power to the large private-sector business organizations...
...AID El Salvador, "Results Review, Resources Request FY 1999," March 10, 1997, p. 3. 4. U.S...
...This resulted in the partial erosion of the country's more equitable development policies...
...As vate voluntary agencies and anti-poverty advocacy orgahas given up nizations were allowed input into the draft legislation, he overarching which contained a laudable chapter on sustainable tical-economic development...
...Focused on producing quantifiable results, some AID managers are turning more to contracts rather than cooperative agreements...
...aid programs as too self-serving and too little tied to global poverty reduction, Helms perceived U.S...
...AID's support for the 1996 election was, in comparison, far more nonpartisan, with $5 million devoted to electoral mechanics and voter education through the Supreme Electoral Council...
...But the mission did reach out to progressive sectors whom the previous mission director had alienated and excluded...
...organizations to These included the centrist Carter Center as well as the conservative Republican Institute (IRI...
...AID now provides funding to UNAG, for example, the very peasant organization whose influence the previous mission director had explicitly sought to undermine...
...4 Democracy programs will focus on strengthening NGOs, thus strengthening Salvadoran civil society so it can continue to press for needed reforms in the justice system and other sectors...
...AID played a much more active role in strucThe Administration's approach shifted from a proactive attempt to reform aid into a defensive attempt to protect aid from budget cuts and to fend off the worst aidrestructuring efforts in Congress...
...Alliance officials that turned out to be the more serious problems...
...These include downsizing government operations, privatizing a wide variety of services and industries, changing national investment regulations to protect foreign investors, raising revenues through user fees and value-added taxes and liberalizing trade...
...Large cash transfers were used to repay debt, prop up currencies and fund imports, while social programs were tied to specific structural-adjustment requirements, such as privatization, deficit reduction, restriction of credit and layoffs of government personnel...
...Changes in the Clinton Administration's approaches to Central America were set into motion by new AID appointees who had been critics of its Central American programs...
...On the observation side, the aid program was more distorted by politics...
...tural adjustment here than in other parts of the world, both through its policy advisers placed in local ministries, and through the way it made assistance conditional on certain market-oriented economic reforms...
...Development Aid 1. General Accounting Office, "Aid to Nicaragua: Status of U.S...
...5 In Nicaragua, old habits and alliances were the hardest to change, partly because of continued pressure from Senator Helms and other conservative members of Congress...
...These improvements have been most evident in the Administration's Central America programs which, for the most part, are under the authority of U.S...
...AID's rural development strategy relied heavily on the Nicaraguan Union of Agricultural Producers (UPANIC), the conservative farmers' associInternational observers at a Nicaraguan polling place in 1990...
...Come and talk to us instead...
...AID also funded U.S...
...2 Personnel rotations in the AID Washington Office of Central American Affairs and in the AID missions in Central America, along with new orientations from above, led to concrete program and process changes...
...Aid to the private sector and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) was aimed at creating and strengthening conservative think tanks, business associations and other institutions wedded to free-market philosophies...
...jobs and promoting and building markets for U.S...
...In Guatemala, AID funds the UN mission set up to verify the Accords, and will supply at least $1 million to the commission established to investigate charges of past human rights abuse...
Vol. 31 • September 1997 • No. 2
