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Obama Administration

Five Things To Know About the White House Foreign Aid Budget Proposal |

If you remember how a bill becomes a law from your Schoolhouse Rock days, you already know that the the White House proposal is just that, a proposal. The real work is getting agreement in the House and Senate to get a bill that lands on the desk of the President. If all goes well, President Obama signs that budget. The problem here is that the House and Senate are led by opposing parties with different ideas on how to deal with the financial troubles that face the United States.

The usual order of things goes that the President sends recommendations to the congressional bodies and then they hammer out the details. This time it is the other way around.

This proposal comes two months later than expected. It offers plenty to snack on, but below are five highlights – the good, the bad, the ugly and the rest. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Politics, budget, disaster relief, foreign aid, Obama Administration

April 9, 2013 | 12:20 PM | By Tom Murphy |

Obama delivers on global promise to lesbian, gay, bi- and transgender community |

The Obama administration made good on its 2011 memorandum to support lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights with the announcement of a four year LGBT Global Development Partnership.

The collaborative effort between USAID, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, gay rights groups and private sector actors will bring foreign assistance to support LGBT equality in developing countries.

“I am directing all agencies engaged abroad to ensure that U.S. diplomacy and foreign assistance promote and protect the human rights of LGBT persons,” said President Obama in December of 2011. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Justice, gay, human rights, lesbian, Obama Administration, USAID

April 5, 2013 | 12:45 PM | By Tom Paulson |

The push is on to make food aid assist the poor, instead of us |

: Gates Foundation

Americans like to think we are a generous people. But if our approach to food aid is any indication, much of our generousity as taxpayers appears to be aimed at helping ourselves more than the poor.

That’s why the Obama Administration is trying to change the way we do food aid. Here’s a similar report from NPR on our ‘selfish’ food aid program and why some powerful political forces want to keep it that way. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Basics, Politics, food aid, Obama Administration, Roger Thurow

January 9, 2013 | 2:25 PM | By Tom Paulson |

A renewed push to ban spies from overeas health and aid work |

: Is it foreign aid or covert aid?; Flickr, johanoomen

Co-authored by Tom Murphy

The latest assassination of health workers vaccinating kids against polio in Pakistan may be the tipping point.

Or not.

It remains to be seen if a new surge of efforts — a letter of protest from leading public health experts, a petition — asking the Obama Administration to prohibit spies from pretending to be overseas aid and health workers will force a change in policy.

Such protests didn’t even garner an official response the last time.

When it was learned in mid-2011 that the CIA had conducted a fake vaccination scheme in Pakistan aimed at gathering evidence to locate the then still-alive-and-in-hiding Osama Bin Laden, many in the global health and humanitarian community (including Humanosphere) cried foul and predicted a lot of collateral damage.

The problem, said 200-plus aid groups in a letter of protest sent by Interaction, was not just that this would undermine international vaccination projects in Pakistan, which it arguably did in this nation with one of the world’s highest rates of polio and other infectious diseases.

Many experts said it would more broadly undermine trust and credibility for all humanitarian work – and likely endanger aid workers. Many of these tragic predictions have since come true, prompting many in the global health, aid and development community to push again for policy prohibitions against such schemes.

“Public health programs overseas offer a very special opportunity … as a bridge to creating peace and mutual understanding,” said Howard Frumkin, dean of the University of Washington’s School of Public Health and a signatory to the letter of protest sent by leading health academics to President Obama. Unlike many other kinds of aid and assistance programs with inherent political or economic complications, Frumkin said, health initiatives done correctly overseas can forge intimate bonds of trust and respect for life that transcend politics.

“This is why it’s so important not to subvert the credibility and integrity of these kind of health programs,” he said. “The recent killings in Pakistan only underline the importance of keeping our intelligence activities separate from our health aid and assistance work.”

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Basics, Brett Keller, Charles Kenny, CIA, foreign aid, Howard Frumkin, humanitarian, Obama Administration, Pakistan, public health, vaccination

November 7, 2012 | 2:55 PM | By Tom Paulson |

Five (or 20) foreign aid tasks for next Obama Administration |

Okay, Mr. President. You’ve won re-election and are promising hope and change again. New hope. New change. This is a democracy so we all are entitled to provide our advice, or set of demands, to you — the guy who, when first elected, was described by The Onion’s fake news site in a story entitled Black Man Given Nation’s Worst Job.

Here are a few lists of interest to Humanosphere that came out the day after your landslide electoral victory:

ONE’s campaign to fight malnutrition and Feed the Future (and buy the author’s book)
Three top foreign policy needs from UN Dispatch
Top five global health priorities from the Center for Global Development
Ten (somewhat broad and ambitious) requests from World Vision, including making poverty history
Finally, figure out to avoid falling off the Climate Cliff while not tumbling over the Fiscal Cliff

But are these wish lists just wishful thinking with this master of hope and change ceremonies?

As Tom Bollyky of the Council on Foreign Relations notes, the only area of bipartisan agreement out there seems to have been to cut foreign aid.

Foreign relief needs have been increasing globally and yet our nation (the “wealthiest nation on Earth” the president said last night in his victory speech) still devotes less than one percent of the federal budget to aid. And much of what we categorize as foreign aid is arguably aiding us more than the needy.

Neither the late Mitt Romney (politically speaking) or Barack Obama have said much of anything about foreign aid and development during this campaign.

The final presidential debate, on foreign policy, was mostly about saber-rattling at our enemies and economic security. I think the only single word that could qualify as being about foreign aid came from Romney, but I forgot what it was ….

The biggest change and sign of hope for the aid and development community would be if the Obama Administration starts making foreign aid a priority — or at least as big a priority as it was for George W. Bush.

FILED UNDER: Politics, foreign aid, Obama Administration, policy

October 25, 2012 | 11:52 AM | By Jessica Mack |

Rhetoric versus reality on Obama Administration’s AIDS policies overseas |

Jessica Mack

This is a guest post by Jessica Mack

Jessica Mack is a global gender specialist and freelance writer. She is currently based in Bangkok, Thailand where she works on issues of violence against women and girls in the Asia Pacific region. More at www.jessmack.com. You can also follow her on Twitter @fleetwoodjmack

The Obama Administration talks a lot about integrating and coordinating our various global health projects, and also about how important it is to empower women. That’s the rhetoric. Here’s one womens health advocate’s view of the reality.

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Preventing the spread of HIV and AIDS has a lot to do with promoting safe sex.

That may sound obvious, but it seems to remain a mystery to those in the U.S. Government who set our AIDS prevention policies overseas. Stemming the spread of HIV has as much to do with family planning and enabling safe sex as it does with ensuring access to affordable drugs, accurate education, or changing norms and mindsets at the community level.

So it would make a hell of a lot of sense if all money for HIV/AIDS prevention efforts also included money for family planning. But alas.

Though the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) has been touted as one of our nation’s most successful initiatives in global health (and certainly one of President George W. Bush’s most positive legacies) it continues to miss the mark on this important point.

Oddly, PEPFAR will allow funds to be used for condoms — but only if they are promoted for protection against HIV as opposed to pregnancy.

PEPFAR recently released its 2013 country operational plan (COP), the framework for how its funding should be used by developing countries. This included what activities should and should not be supported – with one big bolded addition.

Under the section titled “Family Planning” – which extolls the importance of family planning as an effective means for reducing HIV/AIDS – is added this sentence: “PEPFAR funds may not be used to purchase family planning commodities.”

Um, come again?

This bizarre prohibition has had and will continue to have the effect of systematically cleaving contraceptive services from HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention services, oftentimes quite literally into different clinic sites and distinct service providers.

It doesn’t make sense, and it’s dangerous.

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Health, Justice, Politics, family planning. sex, Global Health Initiative, HIV-AIDS, Jessica Mack, Obama Administration, Pepfar, prevention, women's health

July 16, 2012 | 11:15 AM | By Tom Paulson |

Op-Ed: The (significance of) Global Health Initiative’s death is greatly exaggerated |

On the He althy Lives blog, a leading global health advocate contends that all the complaints surrounding the Obama Administration’s recent announcement of its plan to shutter the Global Health Initiative (GHI) are missing the real point.

Karl Hofmann, CEO of PSI (which used to stand for Population Services International but now wants to be just PSI because the organization today does much more than reproductive health) argues that closing down the GHI doesn’t matter. Hofmann contends the goal of the GHI is to better coordinate global health projects, to foster ‘country ownership’ and that it is funding, which has remained stable, that matters more than bureaucratic structure.

I’m not sure I agree, but it’s an interesting perspective and a quick read. Here it is re-posted.

By PSI CEO Karl Hofmann

Karl Hofmann

The announcement Friday before the July 4 weekend that the Administration’s signature Global Health Initiative (GHI) was being replaced by a new Office of Global Health Diplomacy at State was greeted with withering criticism from many in the global health community.

Here’s why this change matters less than one might first think.

GHI was meant to bring coordination and integration to the USG’s vast global health bureaucracy, and particularly to drive more integrated health programming in the GHI focus countries. The aim to achieve greater integration of Washington agencies and their individual health appropriations was never as likely nor frankly important as the aim to achieve more integrated health programming at country level. The former is Washington’s favorite contact sport, with endless periods on the field and no permanent winners — it’s sensible for the Administration to stop beating its head against this goal post. The latter probably has much more significance to the intended beneficiaries of US global health assistance, and here there has indeed been some country-level progress.

What matters more than org charts is of course appropriations. In truth, the Administration and Congress have done rather well by global health, given our fiscal realities.

As a former US ambassador, I know the challenges of trying to get interagency coordination in Washington. In fact, it’s often easier to get on-the-ground coordination in a particular embassy country team than it ever is to get agencies’ Washington headquarters to even talk to each other. Putting more emphasis on making global health integration a programmatic reality at the country level is probably the right way for the Administration to bring GHI principles to life.

FILED UNDER: Health, Politics, Global Health Initiative, Karl Hofmann, Obama Administration

May 25, 2012 | 1:46 PM | By Tom Paulson |

Obama Admin opposes making other nations share cost of drugs |

Flickr, by Rodrigo Senna

Fake drugs on the rise

On the face of it, this might sound a bit odd.

But then, that’s the way politics and foreign policy often sound. Odd.

The U.S., which pays for something like 70 percent of the costs of researching and developing new drugs, this week at the World Health Assembly meeting in Geneva opposed creating a mechanism requiring other nations to pay more — a fair share.

In short, the Obama Administration opposed a plan to reduce our disproportionate spending on drug development.

Huh?

Continue reading →