Recent news
October 2011
Organizations fight cuts to foreign aid
October 20, 2011 -- Â After $8 billion was cut from the US State Department and other international programs earlier this year, 200 nongovernmental organizations have joined together to push for an end to further funding cuts.
A recent PBS story highlights the work that advocates, including GHTC members, are doing to prevent new cuts to critical international development programs. These supporters are arguing that foreign aid saves lives, boosts global security, and is a smart investment that reaps huge dividends considering it accounts for only 1 percent of the US budget.
Both the US House of Representatives and the US Senate are currently considering cuts ranging from over $6 billion to nearly $8 billion from the international affairs and State Department budget proposed by President Obama.
Many international aid organizations are arguing that public misperceptions of the amount of the US budget spent on foreign aid are contributing to the political problems with funding international development programs. According to the PBS story, “A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey this spring showed Americans on average estimate foreign aid at 10 percent of the budget, while one in five Americans believe the level is closer to 30 percent.”
In response to critics of foreign aid, ONE, a grassroots organization that fights global poverty and disease, argues that the cuts the House is proposing would have a direct negative impact on global health−“1 million more children would be at risk of severe malnourishment, 500,000 people wouldn't be able to start treatment for HIV and more than 200,000 won't get needed malaria nets.”
Aaron Emmel, Senior Policy Advisor at PATH, a GHTC member, was quoted in the PBS story from a recent editorial for Global Health Magazine.
"We face one of the most austere budget environments in our nation's history," he wrote, "making the need for an efficient, accountable, transparent, effective and strategic foreign assistance policy all the more important."
GHTC directory, Kaitlin Christenson, has also argued consistently against cuts to foreign aid due to the negative impact it will have on global health programs. In an interview earlier this year, she emphasized the need to preserve funding to protect the progress being made in global health R&D.
