Department of State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs Subcommittee Hearing June 13, 2017, 2:30pm
The world is facing a daunting set of simultaneous and significant global challenges. Protracted conflict, violence against civilians, and total disregard for the humanitarian laws of war have driven 65 million people from their homes; famine threatens four countries and puts 30 million at risk of starvation; and United States military forces are engaged in countering terrorism in a dozen countries from Syria to Somalia. These challenges threaten to deepen current crises and foment further instability if not appropriately addressed. Our response must be strong, efficient, effective, and commensurate with the global challenges we face, which will require continued leadership of the United States through the foreign aid budget and its programs and activities.
The international response to these crises is already grossly underfunded, and the reductions included in the Fiscal Year 2018 foreign aid budget request would unquestionably serve to widen the gulf between needs and available assistance. United Nations appeals outlining the needs for the largest seven crises around the world, which affect over 78 million people and overlap with conflicts in which U.S. forces are engaged, have an over $10 billion funding gap so far in 2017. In the face of these challenges, cutting the U.S. foreign aid budget as the administration has proposed—a nearly one third reduction overall, with a 46 percent cut to development assistance, a 26 percent cut to global health programs, and a stunning 45 percent cut to life-saving humanitarian assistance—would shirk America’s moral obligations and be self-defeating to its strategic interests. These cuts would translate into excruciating choices for aid organizations like the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and for the people we serve. They would also significantly set back U.S. strategic leadership.
The U.S. is often called upon to mitigate the threats to human lives and U.S. security and economic concerns from unchecked conflicts, poorly managed and chaotic migration flows, pandemics, and famines. Resolving these crises and preventing future ones requires fully funding the U.S. humanitarian assistance budget and addressing the structural problems of fragile states in smarter and more robust ways, with sustained development assistance and aligned diplomatic efforts. It also requires living up to the United States’ commitment to offer safe haven for a portion of the world’s most vulnerable refugees through resettlement. And while we should expect other nations to do more, it is U.S. leadership that leverages commitments from other countries. The U.S. FY 2018 foreign aid budget should match the scale and nature of current global challenges and reflect the U.S. government’s longstanding bipartisan commitment to shared responsibility and the safeguarding of its own vital interests.
The IRC has a unique vantage point, serving clients across the full arc of these crises in conflict/disaster zones, in countries of first refuge, on transit routes in Europe, and resettling the most vulnerable few (who are admitted via the most stringent security vetting in the world) to start new lives in the U.S. Many of the humanitarian crises roiling globally threaten U.S. interests in key strategic locations. IRC and organizations like ours serve wherever there is need, including in many locations where U.S. national security interests are at stake, including NE Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, and Afghanistan. In many cases, given the grave security concerns and risks on the frontlines, we and our partners are the first responders those in crisis meet coming out of direct conflict. We therefore understand all too well what is at stake in cutting foreign assistance funding, and offer the following evidence and argument against it.
Aid saves lives. Foreign aid has clearly demonstrated effectiveness in saving and improving the lives of people in crisis and poverty around the world. For example, USAID’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) responds to 60 humanitarian crises per year affecting tens of millions of people, and the State Department Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM) leads on refugee assistance including through support to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). U.S. foreign assistance has helped ensure that in 2015, 6.4 million fewer children died before their fifth birthday than in 1990. Because of programs like Feed the Future, nearly 500 million fewer people go hungry every day. Over the last two decades, the number of people living in extreme poverty worldwide has been cut in half, even while the global population has increased by two billion people, thanks in part to U.S. assistance to promote economic growth, stability, and opportunity.
The impact of these cuts will be swift and devastating, and will be felt for years to come. It is difficult to estimate the full extent of such a retreat from U.S. engagement, but at least with regard to humanitarian needs, this budget proposal would undoubtedly cost many human lives. According to analysis from the former head of U.S. disaster response, under the proposed budget food aid funding would drop from $3.5bn in 2017 to $1.5bn in 2018, feeding 38 million fewer people. International disaster assistance, which cover non-food relief, would decrease from $2.5bn to $1bn. As a result, USAID could lose the resources they need to reach, among others, up to 3.3 million Yemenis, 1.8 million Syrians, 1.2 million Somalis, 945,000 South Sudanese, and 640,000 Nigerians. Refugee assistance through the Migration and Refugee Assistance (MRA) and Emergency Refugee and Migration Assistance Fund (ERMA) accounts would be cut by 18 percent, meaning that an estimated 3.5 million refugees and Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) would not receive assistance globally, including about 1 million in the Middle East and 1.1 million in Africa. Cutting off funding to immediate life-saving health care, water/sanitation services, shelter assistance, gender-based violence treatment and psychosocial support at a time of multiple famines and raging conflict around the world would lead to increased levels of refugees and IDPs and greater instability.
Aid is critical to U.S. strategic interests. There can be no effective foreign policy without effective humanitarian policy. Humanitarian assistance is a moral choice and a strategic necessity. President Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, Mick Mulvaney, has stated that this budget request is a “hard power budget…not a soft power budget.” But over 120 retired three and four-star generals publicly affirmed that a one-sided defense strategy that under-resources humanitarian and development aid is costly and ineffective. While Commander of U.S. Central Command, Defense Secretary James Mattis himself stated, “If you don’t fully fund the State Department, then I need to buy more ammunition.” Here’s why:
The experience of civilians caught in conflict—whether their safety, security, and basic needs are met—determines the trajectory for the aftermath of crisis and whether the sacrifice of American lives and resources leads to successful stability or future resurgence of extremism. As U.S. forces drive ISIS from Mosul and Raqqa, and support local forces fighting Boko Haram in the Lake Chad Basin, al-Shabaab in Somalia, and AQAP in Yemen, humanitarian organizations like the IRC provide immediate life-saving assistance to civilians caught in these conflict zones and lay the groundwork for longer-term stabilization. Sustained support to multilateral and USAID initiatives in delivering emergency assistance and planting the seeds of good governance is a critical ingredient for sustained conflict resolution. The proposed cuts to USAID and the Department of State undercut whole-of-government efforts that senior diplomatic, development, and defense officials have long stressed are necessary to bring stability to conflict zones.
Humanitarian aid also supports the low and middle income countries that collectively host 88 percent of the world’s 21 million refugees. These countries, like U.S. allies Jordan and Turkey as well as long-term hosts like Pakistan, Kenya, and Uganda are shouldering the responsibility of millions of refugees at cost to their own political and economic development as well as to regional stability. Both refugees and these countries are pushed to desperate measures: according to an IRC survey, 65 percent of Syrian children are at least four years behind in math and reading skills, and many schools stretched beyond capacity have implemented double shifts each school day. With widespread poverty among refugees (90 percent in Jordan and 70 percent in Lebanon), it is troubling but unsurprising that reports of child labor have risen by 73 percent in Jordan since before the influx of refugees. The U.S. commitment to provide humanitarian, development, economic, and security assistance to support the protection of civilians in countries of first refuge is also a function of enlightened self-interest—the forced and premature return of Syrian refugees to an unstable Syria, of Afghan refugees to an unstable Afghanistan, or of Somalis to an unstable Somalia foments new currents of conflict and crisis that, given U.S. interests and commitments in these regions, draw U.S. funds and U.S. troops into further quagmires.
We are already seeing the cost of inadequate crisis response and prevention in many areas where the IRC works. The toll is evident in the flows of Syrian refugees to Europe, triggered in part by a halving of humanitarian assistance to Syrian refugees in 2015, which pose great risk to refugees’ lives and have had profound political consequences for Europe. It is evident in the drastic choices Syria’s overwhelmed neighbors have made to close borders, which have created humanitarian and security challenges like the situation at the Berm, where tens of thousands are trapped in a no-man’s land between Syrian and Jordan with little humanitarian assistance and preyed upon by violent groups. And it is evident in the involuntary return of over 600,000 refugees from Pakistan to an unstable Afghanistan last year—the most since 2005 and a six-fold increase from 2015. Reducing our emergency and refugee assistance support for frontline states will heighten these high pressure situations.
It is also demonstrated by the fact that U.S. troops in Iraq are working to clear some areas of terrorist groups for the third time, in part because insufficient investment in humanitarian response, development progress, and political reform has each time allowed extremists (first AQI, then ISIS) to take hold. Cuts to humanitarian budgets or development assistance will only exacerbate the situation. Reducing funds to the IDA and MRA accounts will curtail emergency responders’ ability to respond to immediate needs for shelter, water and sanitation, medical assistance, and psychosocial support to those who have been living under ISIS rule. Moreover, the 83 percent cut to Iraq’s development and economic assistance funding will inhibit essential investments to rebuild institutions and strengthen governance systems—the kind of long-term planning for stability that needs to happen today in order to prevent another round of fighting and mass displacement tomorrow.
Development assistance is key to stemming global threats. Fragile states—the source of many threats to U.S. security like large-scale displacement, pandemics, terrorism, arms and drug trafficking—are characterized by weak governance, corruption, and limited growth. High-profile arenas like Syria and Afghanistan are certainly fragile, but the list also includes more overlooked crises like South Sudan (which has produced over one million refugees in the last three months) and Niger (one of the poorest countries on earth and a major transit point for West African migrants headed to Europe). Resolving fragility requires helping these states build and sustain effective institutions, inclusive governance structures, and economies that can respond to the needs of their people.
In past years, only 30 percent of USAID spending has been in fragile states, half of that to just four countries. And the assistance they do receive is often through singular interventions that do little to build resiliency (e.g., a siloed HIV program that does not strengthen health systems and is thus of limited use in stopping an Ebola outbreak; or overinvestments in service delivery while ignoring economic development and institutional reforms to support sustainability and paths to aid independence). The administration’s ESDF request results in the elimination of traditional development and economic bilateral assistance for 8 fragile states (Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Cote d’Ivoire, Niger, Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe, and Thailand) and reductions of over 20% to 8 others (Ethiopia, Liberia, Mali, Tanzania, Uganda, Burma, Iraq, and Jordan).
U.S. assistance helps counter unique vulnerabilities for neglected populations, including for women and girls. The risks women and girls face in crisis situations are striking: 1 in 3 women worldwide experiences some form of gender-based violence in her lifetime, including at least 1 in 5 displaced women. Girls are 2.5 times more likely to drop out of school during conflicts than boys, and child marriage rates among Syrian girls have quadrupled since the onset of the crisis, as families cope with poverty and insecurity. Already facing economic and gender inequality, displaced women are often forced for reasons of survival into taking low-paid, low-skilled jobs with higher risks of exploitation.
Funding for programs with a gender component would be cut by 55 percent from 2016 to 2018. The direct decrease in gender-specific funding would have serious consequences (e.g., 1.8 million fewer girls would receive an education). However, the cuts to refugee and humanitarian assistance will also disproportionately impact these neglected populations, as, for example, 75 percent of Syrian refugees in neighboring countries and 86 percent of South Sudanese refugees in Uganda are women and children. The U.S. foreign assistance budget should deepen integration of gender programming across foreign aid accounts, shore up dedicated gender equality programs, and mandate best practices by implementers (e.g. lighting and locks on latrine doors) to help ensure women and girls can overcome barriers and receive the specialized protection and programming they need.
A strong resettlement program is a critical strategic element of U.S. foreign policy. The proposed cuts to the foreign assistance budget impact not only our ability to help vulnerable populations and diminish risks abroad, but also here in the United States. The President’s FY18 budget request for MRA proposes $410 million for the refugee admissions program, roughly $100 million less than the estimated amount spent on refugee admissions in FY16—another indication of the administration’s intentions to dramatically reduce and alter refugee resettlement in the coming months and years. In addition to the lives that will be lost as a result of this abdication of U.S. global leadership, this move sends the wrong signal to critical U.S. national security and foreign policy allies who are hosting vastly greater numbers of refugees. It emboldens terrorist groups who seek to sow fear by targeting the very people they have victimized. It deprives American communities of the talents and contributions of these new Americans, and also keeps American families indefinitely separated. IRC recommends the United States admit at least 75,000 refugees in FY18.
U.S. leadership generates more commitments from the international community. We have seen that U.S. global leadership leverages commitments from other countries, such as the 30 percent increase in humanitarian funds pledged at last year’s UN General Assembly, with 11 countries doubling their contributions. Additionally, 18 countries committed to start or expand resettlement programs, roughly doubling the number of refugees they would collectively admit. Among major refugee-hosting nations, 17 countries committed to increase refugees’ school enrollment, and 15 host countries committed to change their laws and policies to make it easier for refugees to work lawfully and support themselves. Many of these changes come with significant political tradeoffs for host nations; following through on them will take continued global encouragement and accountability. It will be difficult to ensure other countries uphold their commitments and shared responsibility if the United States retracts its leadership.
Moreover, U.S. leadership and contributions through multilateral institutions allow for greater leverage per dollar and greater global reach than we can accomplish alone. The UN system has overseen decades of unparalleled international peace. Every year, the UN provides food to 80 million people in 80 countries. It vaccinates 40 percent of the world’s children, coordinates responses to epidemics like Zika and Ebola, and has virtually eradicated the crippling polio virus. It provides life-saving assistance to the 65 million people displaced by conflict and instability. UN peacekeeping efforts, too, have been shown to shorten conflicts, prevent them from recurring, and reduce harm to civilians. Yet the administration’s request would cut U.S. contributions to the UN peacekeeping and regular budget by 37 percent and 27 percent, respectively. There are undoubtedly improvements that can and should be made to improve the efficiency, effectiveness, accountability and transparency of these critical partners, but the consequences of these drastic cuts will fall first and foremost on civilian lives and U.S. interests.
The World Bank and other multilateral development banks (MDBs) likewise have leading expertise in development programming, and also have the advantage of borrowing against capital contributions on the private market, enabling them to extend 2-5 dollars of financing every year per each dollar invested (in a one-time contribution) by donor countries. The MDBs have stepped up in humanitarian response as well, mobilizing over $17 billion to support refugee-hosting countries and fragile states while partnering with UN agencies to deliver emergency famine relief in Yemen and the Horn of Africa. However, the MDBs’ effectiveness depends on continued donor support and partnership in delivering committed contributions and aligning development strategies. The President’s budget request would cut contributions to the MDBs by $426 million, effectively reducing our leveraged impact by up to $2.13 billion.
U.S. foreign assistance is needed now more than ever. It is a critical lifeline for the world’s most vulnerable and the visible expression of America’s interests and values. The drastic cuts proposed in President Trump’s FY18 budget do nothing to further either those interests or those values. Cutting foreign aid could further set back an entire generation of people in crisis, and give rise to additional threats against our strategic concerns. The current global challenges we face as a nation argue for more, not less, foreign aid, and strong U.S. leadership. The President’s budget represents a retreat from that leadership and the global actions that support America’s security and prosperity. It is a budget without strategy, disconnected from the threats and challenges that must be contained, and the opportunities that could be seized, to make the world safer and more prosperous for all. The IRC calls on the U.S. Congress to ultimately fund a robust foreign assistance budget that supports these critical goals.
For more information, please see:
Letters of support for U.S. foreign assistance compiled by USGLC from over 225 business leaders, 100 Christian faith leaders, and 120 U.S. military generals.
Testimony by IRC President and CEO David Miliband for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearing on March 15, 2017: “Six Years of War in Syria: The Human Toll.”
IRC statement on the administration’s FY18 Budget request from May 23, 2017.