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This is an archived USAID document retained on this web site as a matter of public record.
JANUARY 2006
In this section:
Quake Victims Receive Food, Shelter, Jobs
Foreign Operations Budget Approved
Indoor Spraying Fights Malaria
Sen Delivers USAID Marshall Lecture
Quake Victims Receive Food, Shelter, Jobs
Three months after a 7.6 magnitude earthquake struck Pakistan
and neighboring India, hundreds of thousands of people have
received food and shelter to get them through the winter,
and jobs programs for Pakistanis are well under way.
USAID’s Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance
(OFDA) has provided $4.5 million to NGOs operating cash-for-work,
cash-for-training, and voucher programs.
USAID’s Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) says
these kinds of programs play a key role in recovery from the
massive earthquake, which left nearly 3 million people homeless
and an untold number of people without a way to make a living.
Pakistanis are being paid for a range of work, including
clearing debris and repairing infrastructure like roads and
public works facilities, under USAID programs. For example,
the American Refugee Committee is paying 169 local carpenters
to provide their expertise to 7,000 families whose homes were
destroyed.
Other NGOs are focused on building shelters, a key need
as winter advances. Save the Children has begun a cash-for-work
program aimed at promoting earthquake-proof construction.
All told, the cash-for-work and similar programs should
help 45,000 people directly and another 250,000 indirectly,
OFDA says.
Since markets outside the most damaged areas of Pakistan
still function, such programs give participants a way to earn
cash, support their families, and stimulate recovery of local
markets.
The Oct. 8 earthquake ravaged parts of Pakistan and India
just weeks before winter hit.
The epicenter was near Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani-administered
Kashmir, and approximately 60 miles north-northeast of Islamabad.
More than 73,000 people died in Pakistan and just under
70,000 were injured. The death toll in India was much smaller—1,309—and
about 6,600 people were injured.
USAID has given $22.6 million in response to the United
Nations’ flash appeal, which included $3 million for
shelters, $2 million for water and sanitation, $2 million
for health programs, and $15.6 million for airlifts, food,
logistics, and other kinds of relief operations.
That U.N. donation is part of the U.S. government’s
$510 million in assistance for those affected by the South
Asia earthquake.
Separately, private donations from U.S. citizens and businesses
are estimated to have reached nearly $100 million.
Foreign Operations Budget Approved
USAID’s budget for operating expenses for the 2006 fiscal
year is $630 million, a nearly 3 percent increase over 2005
funding, but about $50 million short of what the Agency requested
from Congress, leading Agency officials to reduce hiring.
The funding was part of the $20.9 billion foreign operations
appropriations bill agreed to by a House and Senate conference
committee Nov. 4. The bill covers expenditures by USAID, the
State Department, and part of the Treasury Department.
“Even though we are working to streamline our business
model, the low level of operating expense funds [means]…we
won’t be able to hire enough U.S. direct hire staff to
keep pace with attrition. The work force will shrink,”
said Doug Menarchik, assistant administrator for Policy and
Program Coordination.
Andrew S. Natsios, who is leaving as administrator Jan.
12, added: “The Agency will not diverge from its core
mission of providing development and humanitarian assistance
to those in need.”
The legislators faced a “difficult challenge challenge,”
because budget requests by the three agencies were cut by
nearly $2 billion, said Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., chairman
of the House Foreign Operations Subcommittee, in a statement
released after budget negotiations ended.
“The conferees took on the challenge of making hard
choices necessary to meet budgetary realities while funding
this country’s top foreign policy priorities at responsible
levels,” he added.
Although USAID manages over $14 billion in resources, the
Agency’s total appropriation for FY 2006 is $4.3 billion,
$93 million below 2005’s enacted level. That figure includes,
among other things, $1.5 billion for development assistance,
which funds programs such as providing safe drinking water
and promoting elections.
Other key measures from the bill include the following:
• $135 million in Economic Support Funds (ESF) for
Egypt, with most earmarked or set aside for democracy, governance,
education, and scholarships.
• $61 million in ESF for Iraq—$5 million for the
Marla Ruzicka Iraqi War Victims Fund and $56 million for democracy,
governance, and rule of law efforts.
• $931.4 million for Afghanistan, including $3 million
for reforestation and $50 million for projects aimed at women
and girls.
• Up to $10 million for a new Democracy Fund to promote
democracy, governance, human rights, independent media, and
rule of law.
• Establishment of a USAID coordinator for “Indigenous
Peoples Issues.”
The bill calls for withholding $227.6 million in funds to
Egypt until Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reports that
the country has met certain benchmarks for financial sector
reform.
It also requires that no more than $225 million in ESF funds
can go to Afghanistan until the secretary certifies that government
is fully cooperating with U.S.-funded poppy eradication and
interdiction efforts.
The bill also restricts 12.5 percent of funds slated for
Colombia until the State Department certifies the Colombian
government has made progress in several areas related to human
rights. Colombia will also receive $20 million to help disarm
irregular combatants.
The bill also authorizes the Agency to use up to $75 million
to continue Foreign Service Limited conversions.
Though indirectly related to the Agency, the President’s
Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief is to receive $2.8 billion,
up $629 million from 2005. This includes a $450 million contribution
from the United States to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis,
and Malaria.
The Millennium Challenge Corporation will get $1.77 billion
for 2006.
In response to the lower than anticipated budget level,
the Agency is looking at a number of ways to tighten its fiscal
belt.
The administrator announced that direct-hire employees may
request leave without pay in instances where their absence
will not disrupt office operations.
Nonessential travel by Agency staffers is also being curtailed.
To cut those costs, the Agency is suggesting more use of teleconferencing.
Indoor Spraying Fights Malaria
LUANDA, Angola—Five months after President Bush
announced a $1.2 billion Africa Malaria Initiative, the U.S.
government launched a large-scale indoor spraying program
in Angola in December when 300 insecticide spraying pumps
cleared Angolan customs on the way to begin spraying in southern
Angola.
Spraying began in two provinces on Dec. 10, in coordination
with the military, in Huampata, about 25 miles south of Lubango,
the capital of Huila province. By Christmas, 26,000 people
had their homes protected from mosquitoes that carry malaria.
The Angola spraying campaign will cover 120,000 households
and approximately 500,000 people through March.
By mid-January, 250 people are expected to be working as
sprayers to cover major population centers of Huila and Cunene
provinces, which have the highest levels of malaria transmission,
a Global Health bureau spokesman said.
The $1.2 billion President’s Malaria Initiative, for
which USAID is the lead agency, aims to cut malaria deaths
by 50 percent in Angola and other focus countries over the
next five years. Spraying campaigns will follow in Tanzania
and Uganda during 2006.
In Angola, USAID is funding an education program in three
dialects to tell people about malaria and the rationale for
the spraying campaign.
It is also working with the Angolan Ministry of Health,
the World Bank, the World Health Organization, the United
Nations Children’s Fund, the United Nations Development
Program, the World Food Program and other partners.
The campaign is spraying insecticide on the inside walls
of houses to eliminate the mosquitoes that carry malaria.
Malaria accounts for 35 percent of deaths in children under
age 5 in Angola, and 25 percent of maternal deaths. The southern
provinces bordering Namibia are epidemic-prone areas.
Worldwide, malaria infects between 300 million and 500 million
people annually and kills approximately 1 million.
“This is an important first step to protect children
and their families where malaria is a serious killer,”
said Dr. Kent R. Hill, assistant administrator of the Global
Health bureau.
U.S. antimalaria funds provide insecticide-treated mosquito
nets to children and expecting mothers, an antimalarial medicine
known as artemisinin that is a major component of the newer
combination therapies for malaria, and interventions to address
malaria in pregnancy.
Chris Thomas contributed to this article.
Sen Delivers USAID Marshall Lecture
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Amartya Sen delivered the 2nd Annual George C. Marshall
Lecture at USAID Dec. 7.
USAID |
Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen said that democracy is vital for
development as he delivered the second annual George C. Marshall
Lecture at USAID Dec. 7.
“The second half of the 20th century saw the establishment
of the general idea of democracy for everybody,” said
Sen, who won the Nobel Prize for economics in 1998 and currently
teaches at Harvard.
“And yet the institutional belief, which is now reasonably
common, that democracy governance as a formal political organization
is suitable for every country, is of very recent origin.”
Since authoritarian regimes in Asia in the 1980s such as
Korea and Taiwan made rapid economic growth, Sen noted, some
have asked “Is it really right to think democracy is
good for development?”
“There is an often-repeated presumption that democracies
do quite badly in facilitating development compared with what
authoritarian regimes can efficiently achieve,” Sen told
a packed audience of several hundred USAID employees at Washington
headquarters.
Asia’s tiger economies made progress “without any
help from democracy…because these authoritarian regimes
were not hindered by the inflexibilities and the ineptitude
of the democratic governments—that’s the thesis.”
Sen rejects this approach and reasons that only when governments
are subjected to public scrutiny of the free media, which
focus on problems and failures, do these governments respond
and correct mistakes.
“Political liberties and democratic rights are among
the complements of development. That is what development is
also about,” he said.
He noted that authoritarian China initially grew faster
than democratic India. But now India’s growth is catching
up and will be a little over 8 percent this year.
“Democracy and political and civil rights can enhance
freedoms of other kinds, such as economic security or transparency
guarantees, through giving voice to the deprived and vulnerable
and citizens in general,” Sen said.
“The fact that no major famine has ever occurred in
a functioning democratic country with regular elections, opposition
parties, and a relatively free media, even in the countries’
very poor and seriously adverse food situations, merely illustrates
the most elementary act of the proactive power of political
liberties.”
Sen said that “rulers never starve.”
“However, when a government is accountable to the public,
and when they see news reporting and uncensored public criticism,
then the government too has good reasons to do its best to
eradicate famines.”
As an example, he cited Zimbabwe where “the erosion
of democracy…has gone hand-in-hand with the development
of famine-like conditions.”
Sen said “democracy also makes a big contribution to
healthcare by bringing social failures into public scrutiny.”
Sharp news media criticism of India’s health system
led to reforms that pushed the government to sharply reduce
the gap in life expectancy between India and China, he said.
Sen also noted that democracy is a force and philosophy
that prevents violence and economic chaos by making all races,
religions, and ethnic groups equal parts of one society that
serves the common interest.
“If you look at violence generated by sectarianism
including fundamentalism of any kind, it always thrives on
the idea that even though we belong to many different groups,
somehow one of them is a principal identity of ours.”
He cited efforts by Hutu supremacists to persuade people to
kill Tutsis.
“I think if there’s something to be proud of in
India, I would say the fact that in a country with 82 percent
Hindu population, at the moment none of the three positions,
principal positions, are occupied by Hindus,” Sen said.
“The president is a Muslim, the prime minister is a
Sikh, and the leader of the ruling party is a Christian. This
is possible only because people don’t vote [for a candidate
for]…just being a Hindu, just being a Muslim, or just
being Christian.”
Speaking later that day during a dinner at USAID, Sen noted
that George Marshall—the founder of the U.S. foreign
aid program in whose honor the lecture series was created—understood
the importance of including all nationalities in efforts to
create prosperity in Europe and Japan after World War II.
The Marshall Plan assisted not only U.S. allies such as
France and Britain, but the defeated enemies Germany and Japan.
Sen’s forthcoming book, Identity and Violence, deals
with the way single-issue identity activists create anti-Semitism,
racism, anti-immigrant sentiments in Europe, etc.
“And I think democracy has a big role in changing that,”
he concluded.
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