[Senate Hearing 113-137]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office]
S. Hrg. 113-137
INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT PRIORITIES
IN THE FISCAL YEAR 2014 BUDGET
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
APRIL 24, 2013
__________
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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey, Chairman
BARBARA BOXER, California BOB CORKER, Tennessee
BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho
ROBERT P. CASEY, Jr., Pennsylvania MARCO RUBIO, Florida
JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin
CHRISTOPHER A. COONS, Delaware JEFF FLAKE, Arizona
RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois JOHN McCAIN, Arizona
TOM UDALL, New Mexico JOHN BARRASSO, Wyoming
CHRISTOPHER MURPHY, Connecticut RAND PAUL, Kentucky
TIM KAINE, Virginia
Daniel E. O'Brien, Staff Director
Lester E. Munson III, Republican Staff Director
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Corker, Hon. Bob, U.S. Senator from Tennessee, opening statement. 3
Menendez, Hon. Robert, U.S. Senator from New Jersey, opening
statement...................................................... 1
Prepared statement........................................... 2
Shah, Hon. Rajiv, Administrator, U.S. Agency for International
Development, Washington, DC.................................... 4
Prepared statement........................................... 7
Responses to questions submitted for the record by the
following Senators:
Robert Menendez.......................................... 41
Bob Corker............................................... 57
Barbara Boxer............................................ 69
Ron Johnson.............................................. 72
Christopher A. Coons..................................... 75
Jeff Flake............................................... 77
(iii)
INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT PRIORITIES IN THE FISCAL YEAR 2014 BUDGET
----------
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 24, 2013
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Foreign Relations,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:01 a.m., in
room SD-419, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Robert
Menendez (chairman of the committee) presiding.
Present: Senators Menendez, Cardin, Casey, Coons, Udall,
Murphy, Kaine, Corker, and Rubio.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. ROBERT MENENDEZ,
U.S. SENATOR FROM NEW JERSEY
The Chairman. Good morning. This hearing of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee will come to order.
Today we welcome Administrator Shah of the USAID before the
committee. We look forward to your perspective on making
certain that U.S. development assistance is carefully
calibrated with our overall U.S. foreign policy priorities.
We all know the rapidly evolving landscape in the Middle
East and Africa and the Asia-Pacific region demands that we
continue to invest in programs and relationships that advance
our strategic interests and basic values. Even in this age of
fiscal austerity with the significant budgetary limitations we
face, it is my view that the benefits of such investments far
outweigh the costs, and it is the men and women at USAID who
see the results of those investments firsthand every day.
In 2011, you described ``having seen famine for the first
time in the world's largest refugee camp 50 miles from the
Somali border after the worst drought in 60 years,'' as you
described, ``had thrown 13.3 million people into crisis and
bought more than 750,000 people, mostly women and children, to
the brink of starvation.''
You mentioned meeting mothers who had carried their
children for weeks across famine-stricken and terrorist-held
lands, and a young Somali mother named Habida who walked 100
kilometers to the nearest camp and had to decide which of her
two children she would leave behind because she could not carry
both, a heartbreaking image that leaves no one unmoved by the
suffering. And we commend you and all the men and women at AID
for working very hard every day around the world to end it.
Today I hope to hear from you about how we can do even more
with the limited funds we have to maximize the effectiveness of
development aid and what more we can do to reform programs that
enhance relationships that will advance U.S. interests and
values around the world.
Your creativity and energy has been essential to the reform
process, but it is also important, however, that Congress
remain a working partner with you to establish our
international development priorities and ensure that all
reforms focus on best practices and results as well, that they
be well crafted, and will have the hoped-for effects.
I am looking forward to an ongoing conversation with you
about how to get the best results for USAID for our foreign
assistance, for donors, for NGOs, and for the taxpayers.
USAID Forward is an example of a reform that has achieved
results. It aligns resources with priorities, builds capacity
through sustainable development, and identifies new innovations
to help meet the President's goal of ending poverty in the next
two decades. I applaud the progress USAID Forward is making,
but more needs to be done to institutionalize reforms in
cooperation with the Congress to make certain they reflect our
overall foreign policy, our international development
priorities, and pay dividends around the world in every region.
And so I look forward to your testimony. I will have the
rest of my statement entered into the record.
Having said all of those great, positive things, I do not
want you to believe that there are not some issues that I have
some concerns about, as I expressed to you. But certainly the
work at AID has been exceptional, and we applaud your for it.
[The prepared statement of Chairman Robert Menendez
follows:]
Prepared Statement of Senator Robert Menendez
introduction--praise for the work of usaid
Thank you, Administrator Shah, for coming before the committee. We
look forward to your perspective on making certain that U.S.
development assistance is carefully calibrated with our overall U.S.
foreign policy priorities.
We all know that the rapidly evolving landscape in the Middle East,
Africa, and the Asia-Pacific demands that we continue to invest in
programs and relationships that advance our strategic interests and
basic values.
Even in this age of fiscal austerity--with the significant
budgetary limitations we face--it is my view, that the benefits of such
investments far outweigh the costs . . . and it is the men and women at
USAID who see the results of those investments firsthand, every day.
In 2011, you described ``having seen famine for the first time at
the world's largest refugee camp--50 miles from the Somali border--
after the worst drought in 60 years had . . .''--as you described--``.
. . thrown 13.3 million people into crisis and brought more than
750,000 people--mostly women and children--to the brink of
starvation.''
You mentioned meeting ``mothers who had carried their children for
weeks across famine-stricken and terrorist-held lands . . .'' and a
young Somali mother named Habiba who walked 100 kilometers to the
nearest camp and had to decide which of her two children she would
leave behind because she could not carry both.
A heartbreaking image that leaves no one unmoved by the suffering--
and we commend you and all of the men and women at USAID for working
hard every day--round the world--to end it.
Today, I hope to hear from you how we can do even more--with the
limited funds we have--to maximize the effectiveness of development aid
and what more we can do to reform programs and enhance relationships
that will advance U.S. interests and values around the world.
usaid reforms
Your creativity and energy has been essential to the reform process
. . . but it is also important that Congress remain a working partner
with you to establish our international development priorities and
assure that all reforms focus on best practices and results, are well-
crafted, and will have the hoped-for effects.
I look forward to an ongoing conversation with you about how to get
the best results for USAID, for our foreign assistance, for donors, for
NGOs, and for the taxpayer.
USAID Forward is an example of a reform that has gotten results--it
aligns resources with priorities, builds capacity through sustainable
development, and identifies new innovations to help meet the
President's goal of ending poverty in the next two decades.
I applaud the progress USAID Forward is making, but more needs to
be done to institutionalize reforms--in cooperation with Congress--to
make certain they reflect our overall foreign policy, our international
development priorities, and pay dividends around the world--in every
region.
conclusion--we can do more
In my view, even within the confines of our budgetary limitations,
we can do more in Syria--though we're already the world's largest donor
nation--to increase the level of humanitarian support because--
clearly--we have to do more to address the world's most pressing
humanitarian crisis--with 4 million displaced and 700,000 dead.
We can do more in the Sahel to mitigate the suffering . . . more to
alleviate horrific conditions in the long-suffering communities of
Somali refugees, displaced Congolese . . . more to combat AIDS,
tuberculosis, polio, and malaria . . . more to provide simple tools
that can prevent millions of childhood deaths . . . critical to our
global health strategy . . . more to help others take the reigns of
leadership in their own countries . . . And--I believe--we can reach 2
to 4 million more hungry people if we maximize efficiency in how we
provide food aid.
It seems to me that a common sense, achievable approach to Food Aid
Reform is to work with U.S. farmers, labor, and experts in the field to
improve not only how we deliver resources in times of crisis, but how
we promote food security and resilience in mitigating emergencies.
Again, let me commend the men and women at USAID for their service
to the Nation and for meeting our international development priorities
by doing so much for so many around the world.
Thank you, Administrator Shah.
The Chairman. Let me turn to the ranking member, Senator
Corker, for his comments.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. BOB CORKER,
U.S. SENATOR FROM TENNESSEE
Senator Corker. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thanks for
having the hearing. Mr. Shah, thank you for being here and for
your openness in dealing with our office and others.
In this fiscal environment, obviously looking at how we
deliver aid is very important, and I know you have done so.
And I appreciate the time, again, that your staff has spent
with ours.
I do applaud you, as the chairman just did, on your
movements in the food assistance areas. It looks like, if I
read correctly, about 55 percent of our programs are being
transferred over to this new approach. I would love to see you
go to 100 when it is appropriate. I know you have political
considerations back home relative to that, but I do applaud
those efforts.
And I will say that at the same for decades, we have been
providing food assistance, and we still are in the mode of, you
know, day-to-day assistance. And so I do hope either today or
over time you will cause us to explain why after so many
decades of doing what we are doing we are still in the
situation in so many countries where, you know, we are still
having to provide day-to-day assistance, and they do not have
the capacity themselves to do what needs to be done there.
But again, I think you have taken a very positive step.
I thank you for that and looking forward to working with
you toward that end.
Another area we have talked with you and your staff about
is just development, which takes place in areas which are not
secure. I know we had a huge amount of problems in Iraq. We are
going to have probably even greater problems once people get
through looking at what we did in Afghanistan. And I know that
it is very difficult for civilians to be out with development
projects in areas that are not secure. We understand that.
My sense is that we are going to be very soon at some point
dealing with the same kind of issues in Syria, and I do hope
that we will continue discussions about the best way to make
sure that those kinds of development programs are monitored
properly when it is so difficult for your outstanding staff to
be able to get in and deal with that. So a big issue.
I also welcome the fact that your agency talked about most
Caribbean and Latin American countries graduating from aid by
the year 2030. I do hope that that is not just a rhetorical
statement, but there is a plan to make that happen. And again,
I thank you for having that type of goal, but we would like to
see the backup and the vision that is going to cause that to
occur.
And then I will close with this, which is the same thing we
talked to Secretary Kerry about. Look, a lot of money is going
out of USAID. I know compared to our overall budget, it is not
as much as people in our country think. But we need a permanent
inspector general, OK? I do expect you very soon to send up a
highly qualified, capable inspector general. Acting inspectors
general do not have the clout that permanent inspectors general
do, and it is just not responsible. So I hope very soon that
the status on this will change.
Again, thank you for being here, and thank you for your
service to our country.
The Chairman. With that, Administrator, we welcome your
remarks.
STATEMENT OF HON. RAJIV SHAH, ADMINISTRATOR, U.S. AGENCY FOR
INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, WASHINGTON, DC
Dr. Shah. Thank you, Chairman Menendez, and thank you,
Ranking Member Corker. I am personally very appreciative for
the opportunity to be here to discuss the President's fiscal
year 2014 budget. And I am very grateful for the counsel,
guidance, and oversight that you have offered and continue to
offer on a personal basis, and from your team and your staff.
So I appreciate this unique opportunity.
I would ask that my formal remarks are entered for the
record, and will just briefly summarize a few topline points.
This is an important moment for development, and I was
eager to hear in both of your statements that basic reflection
as we draw down from a decade of war. We are rethinking how we
project power and American values around the world in a manner
that keeps us safe and improves our own domestic and economic
opportunities.
President Obama and Secretary Kerry, like Secretary Clinton
before him, have talked about elevating development as part of
our national security and foreign policy strategy, including
with a real focus on America's economic competitiveness over
time.
I was grateful, Senator Menendez, for your mention of the
reference and the visit to the Somalia refugee camp. That was
an eye-opening experience and one that I will never forget. I
was a few months ago back in Somalia, and this time instead of
seeing the devastating human consequences of a famine with
children literally dying in front of our eyes, we saw a much
more hopeful picture. We saw American investments in a new
government and a new flourishing civil society start to yield
some results as street lights came on in Mogadishu for the
first time in several decades and citizens celebrated
peacefully for the first time that most could remember.
We noted that we were helping more than 400 local
communities improve their agriculture and helping people leave
the displacement camps that were formed around Mogadishu during
the famine, to go back to their communities, start growing
their own food, and start rebuilding their own lives, because
the purpose of our partnership should not be to perpetuate
dependence, but to build self-sufficiency and human dignity.
We are helping in more than 40 small-scale fishing ports to
replace piracy with transparent and legal small-scale fishing
activity. And those are the types of partnerships that will
help establish stability, security, and peace in that critical
region.
Those examples are emblematic of what we believe is an
approach that focuses on ensuring that development builds self-
sufficiency and dignity and replaces dependency. It is an
approach that we believe is delivering real results. Our Feed
the Future Program and partnership involved us making tough
decisions. We cut agricultural programs in 23 countries in
order to focus in 19 that were willing to make reforms and
expand their own investment.
We are now beginning to see the results. In those 19
countries, poverty has been reduced by 5.6 percent on an annual
basis. Seven million farm households directly benefit from
American investments in their agriculture, science, and
technology. More than $3\1/2\ billion have been committed to
invest in a subset of these countries so that private and
commercial interests can help transform and end hunger in those
settings. And all of this has been coupled with real policy
reforms that require our country partners to invest more
resources to fight corruption and to establish policies that
are friendly to business investment.
We are seeing similar results in our efforts to end
preventable child death. Again, we made tough decisions to cut
22 country programs in global health in order to focus in those
countries that have the greatest burden of disease. This effort
is seeing a real reduction in the rate of child death as it is
reduced from 7.6 million kids under the age of 5 to 6.9 million
today. We believe we can end preventable child deaths within
two decades, and are committed to that model.
We are also seeing that effort take hold in our citizen
security efforts in our own hemisphere. In El Salvador, we
recently launched the largest public-private partnership in the
region where we made a $20 million investment, but that
unlocked more than $22 million of investment from local
foundations and local businesses because it is those local
institutions that believe that addressing citizen security is
the key to unlocking greater business investment and growth in
that critical part of the world.
These new efforts have been possible because of your
support; your support for USAID Forward and a new model of
partnering with local partners, a new model of innovating with
scientists and technologists who can help bring the costs down
and help us aspire to achieve bigger outcomes, and your
partnership in measuring and reporting on results.
I am pleased to note that today the United States has
joined the International Aid Transparency Initiative and our
aid data is increasingly transparent and accessible to
everyone. You can go to the App store and download an
application that has much of our evaluation data, easily
accessible and unadulterated, so we can all learn together from
an evidence base that defines what works and what does not as
we make these critical investments abroad.
As part of this transition, this year's budget includes an
important proposal to reform the way we provide food assistance
around the world. The President's proposal is designed to help
us reach 4 million additional hungry children with basic
nutrition interventions, and to target those feeding programs
to those kids when they need it most and when it can have the
most impact on improving their ability to grow and thrive.
The approach will expand the flexibility we need to meet
needs in a changing world, a world where increasingly
humanitarian catastrophes happen alongside security challenges,
whether it is in opposition controlled parts of Syria or al-
Shabaab controlled parts of Somalia. And it is an approach that
maintains and, in fact, renews a partnership, an important
partnership, with American agriculture that will allow us to
refocus on creating new high nutrition and modern agricultural
products and foods that can be targeted to kids in a way that
saves their lives. We thank you for your reflections on this
proposal and your consideration.
Finally, I would like to thank our staff. Around the world
we now have 9,600 staff, many of which carry different types of
acronyms or hiring authorities, but all of whom bring passion
and a commitment to this incredible mission; a mission of
representing our country around the world and working to end
extreme poverty and to protect those who are most vulnerable.
In this past year, cognizant of the risks that many of our
staff do take, as Senator Corker highlighted, we lost one of
our own, Ragaei Abdelfattah, in Afghanistan. And one of our
toughest moments as an agency was getting through that very
trying period, and we reflect on and thank Ragaei and his
family for their service.
At a time when cuts across our Government are significant
and having real impacts, the fiscal year 2014 request reflects
a 6-percent decrease compared to the fiscal year 2012 enacted
budget. We are making very tough tradeoffs around the world in
order to focus on delivering results and are cognizant of the
economic and budget times that we live in.
But we are also focused on doing things differently, on
demanding more of others, and on partnering better to achieve
better results. And it is our belief that with this new
approach taking hold, we can still have big aspirations, and
that is why the President highlighted our capacity to help end
extreme poverty in two decades. It is why we believe by
projecting American values effectively around the world we can
support transitions in the Middle East, help bring our troops
home from Afghanistan, help improve trade and economic ties in
Latin America, and help expand on our engagements in Africa,
including connecting American businesses to real growth
opportunities there, while simultaneously working to do things
like ending preventable child deaths.
I thank you and look forward to your questions, comments,
and thoughts as we go forward. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Shah follows:]
Prepared Statement of Dr. Rajiv Shah
Thank you, Chairman Menendez, Ranking Member Corker, and members of
the committee. I am pleased to join you to discuss the President's
fiscal year 2014 budget request for USAID.
In his State of the Union Address, President Obama called upon our
Nation to join with the world in ending extreme poverty in the next two
decades. Today, we have new tools that enable us to achieve a goal that
was simply unimaginable in the past: the eradication of extreme poverty
and its most devastating corollaries, including widespread hunger and
preventable child and maternal deaths.
The President's fiscal year 2014 budget request responds to this
call and the most critical development challenges of our time. It
supports important global partnerships, including the New Alliance for
Food Security and Nutrition and the Child Survival Call to Action, by
increasing and focusing investments in food security and maternal and
child health. It builds resilience in areas besieged by recurrent
crisis and natural disaster, with a focus on the Horn of Africa and
Sahel regions. And it advances a comprehensive food aid reform package
that will enable us to feed 2 to 4 million additional people each year.
The President's request enables USAID to strategically advance our
national security priorities by implementing critical economic growth,
democracy, human rights, and governance programs in the Middle East and
North Africa, as well as in support of the administration's Asia-
Pacific Rebalance. It also focuses activities in Afghanistan, Pakistan,
and Iraq at an appropriate level to sustain the gains we have made in
those countries over the last decade. And it strengthens economic
prosperity, both at home and abroad.
The President's request also makes important investments in Latin
America by expanding economic opportunity and social equity and
strengthening citizen security by promoting effective judicial systems
and investing in communities and at-risk youth to address the root
causes of crime. Some of USAID's most exciting examples of fostering
innovation are in this region, where, through groundbreaking public-
private partnerships, we have broadened local investment for
development.
I want to highlight how the investments we make in foreign
assistance, which represents just 1 percent of the Federal budget, help
our country respond to the global challenges we face and how we have
modernized our Agency to deliver results that shape a safer and more
prosperous future.
a new model for development: partnerships, innovation, and results
The FY 2014 request for USAID managed, or partially managed,
accounts is $20.4 billion, 6 percent below the total enacted funding
for FY 2012. In this tough budget environment, USAID is committed to
maximizing the value of every dollar. We have made tough choices so
that we are working where we will have greatest impact, and shifting
personnel and funding resources toward programs that will achieve the
most meaningful results. Since 2010, regional program areas have been
reduced by 29 percent, Feed the Future agriculture programs have been
phased out of 22 countries, and USAID global health program areas have
been phased out of 23 countries.
The President's FY 2014 request continues to build on gains we have
made over the past year to work smarter and more effectively through a
suite of ambitious reforms called USAID Forward. Through USAID Forward,
the Agency has fostered new partnerships, placing a greater emphasis on
innovation, and a relentless focus on results. These reforms have
formed the foundation of a new model for development that continues to
define the way we work around the world.
The FY 2014 budget provides funding to mobilize a new generation of
innovators and scientists. Through our Development Innovations
Ventures, we invite problem-solvers everywhere to contribute a cost-
effective and cutting-edge idea that could scale to reach millions.
It provides funding for Grand Challenges for Development,
capitalizing on the success of previous challenges to accelerate
reductions in maternal and child mortality, promote childhood literacy,
power agriculture through clean energy, and raise the voices of all
citizens through technology. We have received more than 500
applications per challenge, with almost 50 percent of innovations
coming from developing and emerging economies. For example, through
``All Children Reading: A Grand Challenge for Development,'' nearly
three dozen organizations--half of them local--are pioneering a range
of novel approaches to education, from helping children in India learn
to read with same language subtitling on movies and TV to bringing
fully stocked e-readers to rural Ghana.
The request accelerates advances of USAID's Higher Education
Solutions Network, a constellation of seven development innovation labs
on university campuses that work with a global network of partners to
provide solutions for key development challenges, leveraging tens of
millions of dollars of university and private-sector financing.
The 2014 request also allows us to work more effectively with a
range of partners, from faith-based organizations to private sector
companies. A new focus on leveraging private sector resources has
enabled us to dramatically expand our Development Credit Authority--
unlocking a record $524 million in FY 2012 in commercial capital to
empower entrepreneurs around the world. Last year alone, we increased
our contributions to public-private partnerships by almost 40 percent,
leveraging an additional $383 million.
This funding also allows us to rigorously measure and evaluate our
work so we know which of our development efforts are effective and
which we need to scale back or modify. Since the launch of our
evaluation policy, 186 high-quality evaluations have been completed and
are available on our Web site or through a mobile ``app'' that is
easily downloaded. Half of these evaluations have led to mid-course
corrections and one-third has led to budget changes.
A new emphasis on supporting local solutions has enabled us to
shift $745 million in funding to local institutions, firms, and
organizations in the last year alone--helping replace aid with self-
sufficiency. When we partner with developing country institutions, we
use sophisticated tools to assess their financial management capacity
and safeguard U.S. resources.
As part of our new model, we're insisting our partners make policy
reforms and fight corruption in order to meet the conditions of our
assistance. Through new models of partnership that demand mutual
accountability--including the New Alliance for Food Security and
Nutrition and the Tokyo Mutual Accountability Framework for
Afghanistan--we are creating incentives for governments to strengthen
their own institutions.
Across our work, we are moving from a traditional approach of top-
down development to a new model that engages talent and innovation
everywhere to achieve extraordinary goals. In education, a core
development objective, we are harnessing this new approach to help
close the gaps in access and quality of education. We know that
globally 171 million people could be lifted out of poverty if all
students in low-income countries gained basic literacy. Our strategy
for basic education is focused on improving reading skills for 100
million children in primary grades by 2015 and increasing equitable
access to education in crisis and conflict environments for 15 million
learners by 2015.
food aid reform
At its foundation, our new model of development shares the bedrock
principles of effectiveness and efficiency that serve as the clarion
call for government today.
There is perhaps no better example of this fundamental imperative
than the food aid reform package proposed in this year's budget
request, which would enable us to feed 2 to 4 million more hungry men,
women and children every year with the same resources, while
maintaining the valuable contribution of American agriculture to this
mission.
Through P.L. 480 Title II, or Food for Peace, America's
agricultural bounty and generosity have fed well over a billion people
in more than 150 countries since 1954. But while the world has changed
significantly since Title II was created, our hallmark food assistance
program has not. The current program limits our ability to use the
appropriate tools for each humanitarian situation--tools we know will
help people faster and at a lesser cost.
Buying food locally can speed the arrival of aid by as many as 14
weeks--making up precious time when every day can mean the difference
between life and death. It can also cost much less--as much as 50
percent less for cereals alone. In complex environments such as Syria
and Somalia, which are increasingly the kind of crises where we need to
provide assistance, these more flexible tools are invaluable.
The more agile, flexible, and modern approach laid out in the
President's budget request pairs the continued purchase of the best of
American agriculture with greater flexibility around interventions such
as local procurement, cash transfers, and electronic vouchers. The
President's proposal maintains the majority of our emergency food aid
funds--55 percent in 2014--for the purchase and transport of American
commodities. That means we're going to keep working with soy, wheat,
pulse, and rice farmers and processors across America who help feed
hungry children from Bangladesh to the Sahel--often in the form of
specialized high nutrition products.
At a time of urgent human need and budget constraints, we can save
more lives without asking for more money.
The proposal also reaffirms our commitment to development partners
who receive Title II funding, enabling them to provide the same types
of development programs at a lower cost. These programs strengthen our
ability to reduce chronic poverty, build resilience, and help prevent
future crises.
feed the future
Ending hunger and creating a food secure world are vital components
of the fight to end extreme poverty. Launched in 2009 by President
Obama, Feed the Future is unlocking agricultural growth, helping
transform developing economies and ending the cycle of food crises and
emergency food aid. Although the initiative is still in its early days,
we are beginning to see significant results.
In Rwanda, we have reached 1.6 million children under 5 with
nutrition programs that reduced anemia, supported community gardens,
and treated acute malnutrition. In Bangladesh, we helped more than
400,000 rice farmers increase yields by 15 percent through the more
efficient use of fertilizer, which led to the first-ever rice surplus
in the country's poorest state. In FY 2012, we helped more than 7
million farmers across the world apply these kinds of new technologies
and practices, four times the number we reached the previous year.
The FY 2014 request provides $269 million for the President's G8
commitment to the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, which
aims to lift 50 million people in sub-Saharan Africa out of poverty in
the next decade. Since its inception at last year's G8 summit, we have
helped leverage more than $3.75 billion in commitments from more than
70 global and local companies. In Tanzania, Yara International is
constructing a fertilizer terminal at the nation's largest port, and,
in Ethiopia, DuPont is expanding seed distribution to reach 35,000
smallholder maize farmers and increase productivity by 50 percent.
At the same time, participating African governments have committed
to serious market-oriented reforms. Tanzania has removed its export ban
on staple commodities, Mozambique eliminated permit requirements for
interdistrict trade, and Ethiopia no longer imposes export quotas on
commercial farm outputs and processed goods.
global health
Thanks to strong bipartisan support we are on track to provide
life-saving health assistance to more people than ever before. The FY
2014 Global Health request supports our goals of creating an AIDS-free
generation, ending preventable child and maternal death, and protecting
communities from infectious diseases.
Across our global health portfolio, we are aligning our budgets to
the areas of greatest need. Now, 90 percent of USAID bilateral maternal
and child health funding is in the 24 USAID priority countries that
account for three-quarters of maternal and child deaths.
The request supports the continuation and scale-up of high-impact
HIV/AIDS prevention, care, and treatment tools in pursuit of an AIDS-
free generation. The request also provides $1.65 billion under PEPFAR
for the U.S. contribution to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS,
Tuberculosis, and Malaria.
In June, USAID cohosted a Call to Action to accelerate progress and
end preventable child death. A powerful example of how our new model of
development can rally diverse partners behind ambitious but achievable
goals, the Call to Action has encouraged more than 170 countries, 200
civil society organizations, and 220 faith-based organizations to sign
a pledge to help reduce child mortality. This global effort builds on
an 8-percent reduction we have seen from 2008 to 2011 in child
mortality in countries where the U.S. Government provides assistance.
We will continue to fund critical efforts in voluntary family
planning, immunizations, nutrition, malaria, tuberculosis, and
neglected tropical diseases--cost-effective interventions that save
lives, while preventing the spread of disease.
supporting strategic priorities and strengthening national security
Across the world, we are strengthening democracy, human rights, and
governance, with a special emphasis on marginalized populations,
including women and youth. Support for democratic and economic
transitions enables the rise of capable new players who can help solve
regional challenges and advance U.S. national security.
Since January 2011, the State Department and USAID have allocated
more than $1.8 billion to support democratic transitions in the Middle
East and North Africa and respond to emerging crisis needs in the
region. The President's Request of $580 million for the Middle East and
North Africa Incentive Fund provides support to citizen demands for
change, improves our ability to respond adroitly to new challenges and
opportunities, and begins to address the imbalance between our security
and economic assistance in the region.
The budget request supports our humanitarian assistance work around
the globe in places where the need is greatest. This is particularly
true in Syria, where at least 4 million people are in need of
humanitarian assistance and 2 million are displaced. To date, State and
USAID have provided nearly $385 million in humanitarian relief to the
Syrian people.
In Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, USAID continues to work closely
with interagency partners including the State and Defense Departments,
to move toward long-term stability, promote economic growth, and
support democratic reforms, including the rights of women. Despite the
challenges, we have seen a number of positive gains. For example, over
the past decade in Afghanistan, we have increased access to education,
resulting in dramatic increases in primary school enrollment from
900,000 boys in 2002 to 8 million students in 2012, 37 percent of whom
are girls. In Iraq, USAID-funded legal clinics have supported over
1,700 legal cases on behalf of vulnerable individuals, including
internally displaced persons and ethnic and religious minorities.
The President's budget request supports the administration's Asia-
Pacific Rebalance by increasing funding for the region to address
critical gaps in core programs to renew U.S. leadership, deepen
economic ties, promote democratic and universal values, and strengthen
diplomatic engagement. In addition, we are seizing new opportunities
for partnership in Asia, including in Burma, a nation undertaking
political and economic reform.
global climate change and building resilience
As a result of global climate change, natural disasters are
becoming more frequent and more severe. With a new emphasis on helping
vulnerable communities build resilience to disasters, the Global
Climate Change Presidential Initiative invests in developing countries
to accelerate transitions to climate-resilient, low-emission economic
growth, while incentivizing private sector investment to scale impact
and sustain progress. For example, we are partnering with the Consumer
Goods Forum--which represents about 400 companies and $3 trillion in
market value--to reduce tropical deforestation from key commodities,
like palm oil and timber.
Drawing on lessons learned during last year's food crisis in the
Horn of Africa--as well as decades of experience responding to
disasters--USAID is pioneering a fundamental new approach to help
communities strengthen their resilience in the face of crises. In
Ethiopia, for instance, we're working with international firms like
Swiss Re and local businesses to develop index-based livestock
insurance--a new product that uses satellite data to protect
pastoralists from drought-related losses.
conclusion
When people around the globe cannot feed their families, when young
adults find themselves without education or a source of income, and
when parents watch their children die of preventable illnesses, the
world is inherently less secure. The FY 2014 budget request will
continue our work to combat these causes of instability and end extreme
poverty.
These investments aren't just from the American people; they're for
the American people. By promoting sustainable growth in the developing
world, we spur new markets abroad and energize our economy here at
home. By driving innovations in agriculture, education, and global
health, we strengthen global stability and advance our national
security. And by delivering aid in the wake of natural disasters and
humanitarian crises, we express the generosity and goodwill that unite
us as a people.
The Chairman. Thank you, Administrator, and your full
statement will be entered into the record.
Let me start off. You know, I took my first trip as
chairman to Afghanistan and Pakistan because I believe it is
still obviously a vital national security interest to the
United States. And the region is in the midst of economic
security and political transition. And during our trip there, I
spent time with our aid missions and conducted a couple of
field visits to visit some of our programs. And I am incredibly
impressed with the dedication and drive of our teams there.
But I also have concerns as to how we conduct oversight in
the field given the security conditions, so my questions are in
this regard. Are we right sizing our aid presence in both
countries to reflect our diminishing footprint or our security
concerns and implementation challenges? And specifically, what
steps are taken to ensure that our aid is necessary,
achievable, and sustainable, which are steps that this
committee called for in its June 2011 oversight report?
Dr. Shah. Thank you, Senator, and I want to thank you
personally for your leadership on this issue and for taking the
time to meet with our staff when you were there. That meant a
lot to them and was very encouraging for them to personally get
the chance to meet with you.
As you note, the gains in Afghanistan that we believe have
resulted from our collective international investments have
been real and significant, and now create the opportunity for
some degree of stability as our troops start to come home. We
have seen 9 percent annualized growth rates year on year for
the past decade. The largest increases in human longevity and
reductions in child and maternal mortality anywhere in the
world have been experienced in Afghanistan in part due to our
investments in health.
We have 8 million kids in school, nearly 35 percent of whom
are girls compared to no girls in school under the previous
Taliban regime. And energy access has more than tripled as a
result of collective investments we have made, and we have put
down more than 1,900 kilometers of new road in partnership with
the people and businesses and governments of Afghanistan.
But it has taken a lot to make sure that this program has
become more accountable and more transparent in the last few
years. When we took office, we launched an effort called the A-
3 Initiative, Accountable Assistance for Afghanistan, which
included a full partner vetting of all of our partners and
subcontractors. It included getting eyes and third-party
monitors on most major programs and investments. It included a
local cost auditing system that allowed us to understand where
resources were going and how performance was improving.
We believe that some of those efforts will be at risk as we
see a transition that will limit, to some degree, our capacity
to be physically present and out in all parts of Afghanistan,
seeing and engaging on these projects and programs. I spoke to
General Dunford earlier this week by videoconference, and it is
part of our coordinated civilian military plan to make sure
that we have a capacity to continue to oversee these programs
effectively. But we know we will be doing it with some degree
of reduced staffing, with more local staff, with more support
from the Afghan Public Protection Force, and with other forms
of ensuring accountability for our resources.
So I thank you for asking that question. It is something
that we are working on aggressively right now.
The Chairman. So do you believe that the programs moving
forward in that region will continue to be able to follow those
three criteria that the committee set, particularly
sustainability?
Dr. Shah. Absolutely, and, in fact, those criteria become
more important, not less important, going forward. If programs
cannot sustain themselves anymore, they are really not worth
doing because we know that we are not going to be there
endlessly.
We did, in fact, pull together the international community
in Tokyo last year, and we got the international community to
commit $16 billion of development investment for Afghanistan
over the next 4 to 5 years. As part of that, we introduced a
mutual accountability framework with the Government of
Afghanistan, and so they have to show real progress on
corruption, on asset recoveries from Kabul Bank, on pursuing
with clarity and transparency fair and free elections in order
for those resources to take hold and for those pledges to be
met.
We are doing that not unilaterally, but in concert with 20
other international partners. And we believe that sort of
approach--real mutual accountability on behalf of ourselves and
our Afghan partners--will be critical if we are going to
effectively over time replace aid and assistance with business
and investment.
The Chairman. Which brings me to the question of
capability--USAID went through, in my view, a 20-year decline
in personnel and dispersion of development responsibilities to
other entities, such as the Millennium Challenge Corporation,
the State Department AID's coordinator, and in 2006, the loss
of budgeting and policy capabilities. How would you assess your
agency's progress in restoring its capacities under USAID
Forward and the development and leadership initiative? And, you
know, describe for me your goals--the end goals of these
efforts as you move forward, because one of the things I want
to understand I have been an advocate of is making sure that
USAID has the wherewithal, and the ability, and the personnel
to carry out its mission. And I think the dispersal that we
have seen, particularly including Defense Department engagement
in what, in essence, was development activities, undermine the
capacity.
Dr. Shah. Thank you, Senator, and thank you for your
personal advocacy on behalf of those objectives.
Our end goal very clearly is to be the world's premiere
development enterprise, and I believe we are well on the way to
accomplishing that. Our focus on public-private partnerships
has been unique and extraordinarily effective in many parts of
the world.
We have been able to rebuild our budget authority, our
policy capacity. We have hired 1,100 new staff because of the
Development Leadership Initiative on which you commented. And
we believe these investments, deployed accurately, particularly
on contract oversight and accountability, are saving taxpayer
dollars on the program side of our budget.
So we believe these are important investments that need to
continue to be made. They are put at real risk and threatened
by current sequestration realities. The fiscal year 2014 budget
includes an investment in our operating expenses that will
allow us to continue on this path of rebuilding this agency.
But we have had real success in the last 3 years with strong
support from President Obama and Secretary Clinton, and now
Secretary Kerry.
The Chairman. All right. I will come back to some of my
concerns in the next round.
Senator.
Senator Corker. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Again, Mr. Shah,
thank you for being here and for your work in bringing some of
the private sector, Gates Foundation, thinking to USAID. It is
much appreciated.
Will you go ahead and tell me what you plan to do on the
inspector general? I would imagine in the next 2 weeks you plan
to send up a permanent nominee.
Dr. Shah. Well, we have had a very good working
relationship with our acting inspector general, and the White
House, of course, has responsibility for putting forward a
Presidential nomination. We know that that process is, and has
been, well under way, and do expect very soon for the White
House to make that nomination.
Senator Corker. I noticed you and the administration have
decided that 55 percent of our food aid is going to be spent
here in the United States. How did you decide on that number?
Dr. Shah. Well, first, thank you for your leadership and
comments on food aid specifically.
As we look around the world, we note that over the last few
years, the program has had essentially about 81 percent of the
program tied to the purchase and distribution on U.S.-flag
vessels of American commodities, which gives us a little bit of
flexibility, about 19 percent, every year. That flexibility has
been deployed in different places.
This year, with the challenges of providing humanitarian
assistance in and around Syria, that flexibility is being
absorbed almost completely in that setting and in that region.
As a result, there are a number of other countries--the
Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, and Pakistan--where we
actually have to take children off of nutrition support, often
in post-famine or post-hunger situations, because we are
reverting from a more efficient locally procured program to the
more traditional U.S.-based program. And there are 155,000 kids
in Somalia that this year will be subject to that.
So we basically looked at how do we avoid that outcome, how
can we build maximum flexibility and efficiency? And we want to
also have a renewed partnership with American agriculture, a
partnership that prioritizes high nutrition food products that
America ought to have the scientific and technical lead in
producing, a partnership that is flexible and efficient in how
we get those products to people quickly in times of great need,
and a partnership that continues to benefit from the engagement
from the agricultural communities in this country that sustain
this effort over time.
So that is how we ended up with the proposal we have. We
believe the proposal will allow in the first year to reach 4
million additional children.
Senator Corker. And so your goal, though, still over time
is self-sufficiency. Is that correct?
Dr. Shah. Absolutely. The goal--as the President has said
over and over since 2009 when he first launched Feed the
Future, our goal is to move people from food aid to self-
sufficiency so they can be trading and commercial partners with
us. As we have seen, our largest recipient of American food aid
in the 1960s and 1970s was South Korea, and today they are
obviously a major trading partner.
Senator Corker. Do you plan on working with this committee
to get the reforms you are putting in place into code, or are
you just going to do the easy route of going and talking with
an appropriator and getting it done in that manner?
Dr. Shah. Absolutely, sir; we would be eager to work with
this committee to have as much structure and longevity and
commitment to this renewed vision of an efficient, effective,
and more high-impact results-oriented program.
Senator Corker. Really the only way to lock in the reforms
is to get us to get it into code, right? And you know that it
is going to be there when you go off to do other things, some
other place?
Dr. Shah. Yes, sir.
Senator Corker. Let me talk to you a little bit about
Syria. I wrote an op-ed this morning that was about our role in
Syria. And obviously there are multiple things that need to be
done there to change the balance of power. What do you think,
briefly, USAID can do to change the balance right now to favor
the more moderate secular opposition groups that are inside
Syria?
Dr. Shah. Well, thank you, Senator, for your leadership on
Syria and articulating that as the central challenge. I think
Secretary Kerry also has acknowledged that that is our goal.
And I would point out that with 4\1/2\ million internally
displaced and 1\1/2\ million refugees already, that we have a
major humanitarian and political crisis on our hands.
In terms of your specific question of how can we tip the
balance toward what we think of more moderate and more
responsible within the framework of the opposition, Secretary
Kerry announced this past weekend a doubling of our aid and
assistance to the Syrian Opposition Council. As part of that
commitment to them, which is now up to $250 million, we will
request from them, and they have already made public assurances
of their commitments to protect human rights, to protect the
rights of women in both transitional and security challenged
environments and over the long term, and their openness to
working with the international community on a range of issues
like that.
We believe this effort, which we support through a number
of our partners and through the Office of Transition
Initiatives, will be a critical part of helping the Syrian
Opposition Council provide services in opposition controlled
areas. A large part of this effort is already taking place.
There is tight coordination through an organization called the
Assistance Coordination Unit of the SOC. And we recognize that
our own people and our partners are taking real risks, but are
providing significant support in many different ways,
specifically in opposition controlled areas.
Senator Corker. You know, the special investigator
inspector that we had in Iraq talked about just recently that
he does not see us as any more prepared to do development in
similar circumstances today than we were in 2003. That has not
worked so well for us. And I wonder if you would just briefly--
I want to get on--I know there are other folks who have
questions, and I do want to talk to you about USAID Forward and
how that affects us dealing with other countries and some of
the problems that may exist. I want to talk to you a little bit
about some of the trade issues to help countries toward self-
sufficiency.
But could you briefly talk to us and give us some assurance
that something is different as it relates to how we deliver
assistance in places like Syria that are very troubled and
obviously have security problems?
Dr. Shah. Absolutely, Senator. I believe there has been a
significant shift in how we do this work. If you look even just
in Afghanistan over the last 3 or 4 years, we have more than
tripled our civilian presence across the State Department,
USAID, and a number of other partners. We have implemented data
systems and accountability processes, vetting systems, that
have not only established a program to audit 100 percent of
locally incurred costs, but with a real rejection rate for, I
believe, 21 projects or programs, contracts that were cancelled
or not awarded because they failed to pass the vetting system,
that is, positives, or hits, that came through the vetting
system.
Those are mechanisms that simply did not exist before. They
do exist now, and they are highly effective at allowing us to
have tighter coordination with our military colleagues, more
eyes on effectiveness in our programs, and a more results
oriented orientation.
We are seeing the benefits of that today in opposition
controlled parts of Syria where more than 65 percent of our
humanitarian support goes into those areas through a broad
range of partners, and where we are now the primary partner of
the Syrian Opposition Council in trying to get everything from
generators and fuel to hospitals and facilities, all the way to
some form of media and communication and ability for that
organization to communicate with its population.
These are capabilities that we have built over the last
several years that we did not previously have when the 2003
situation was made reference to.
Senator Corker. Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Senator Cardin.
Senator Cardin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Administrator
Shah, first of all, thank you for your leadership. It has been
very, very effective in bringing together international
development assistance in our security budget, recognizing the
returns that we get in our involvement in other countries on
our national security front.
I also want to thank you for your commitment to
transparency, to gender equity, to dealing with good
governance, and dealing with corruption issues to make sure
that our aid is actually furthering the stability of a country
and not adding to the corruption of certain officials. We have
talked about all these issues, and I very much applaud the
manner in which you have moved forward in these areas.
Senator Corker has talked about the changes in our Food for
Peace Programs. We have a lot of programs that deal with
nutrition and food, but perhaps the No. 1 initiative that the
Obama administration moved forward with was Feed the Future. So
can you just quickly tell us how the reforms that you see in
the Food for Peace Program works with the other programs we
have, particularly Feed for the Future?
Dr. Shah. Absolutely. Thank you, Senator, and thank you for
your extra investment of time on issues ranging from gender to
science, technology, and innovation as we have tried to focus
on and accelerate those as core parts of our portfolio. We are
very appreciative of that.
With respect to Feed the Future, as I noted, that is
intended to be a model program that focuses in 19 countries,
many in sub-Saharan Africa, some in Latin America, and south
Asia, that are making their own commitments to reform their
policies, increase their investments, and move people from a
condition of hunger and ongoing need for social support and
protection to self-sufficiency and ultimately commercial market
success by building their agricultural capabilities.
We have seen incredible success stories from Bangladesh, to
Tanzania, to Guatemala, and often those success stories are
tied to either new technologies, like deep fertilizer placement
in Bangladesh, which has transformed an entire state in that
country, to our partnership with Wal-Mart in Guatemala, which
is helping tens of thousands of farm households connect to
modern international supply chains and improve their
livelihoods. That to us is the vision of success.
I visited Guatemala and had a chance to see in the same
community where we had a Feed the Future Program, farmers
connecting to Wal-Mart and doubling or tripling their incomes.
There had been a 35-year Food for Peace Program that provided
food to those communities.
What we have been trying to do with that program is shift
from giving them bulk grains to giving them high-nutrition
foods focusing particularly when kids are in the first 2 years
of life where we know nutrition intervention at that point in
time has the biggest difference in terms of their livelihoods
and their ability to learn and thrive over time. And then
connecting those families to these Feed the Future efforts that
help them transition from requiring that kind of assistance to
being self-sufficient because they are part of a larger effort.
What was tremendous about the Wal-Mart partnership was in
that setting, when I asked those families what do you need
next--and I thought they would say a new form of agricultural
technology or farm implements. Instead, they all said they want
schools because now that kids are not working on the farm and
they are earning more income, they want to send their kids to
school. And that is the path to sustained development that we
believe is taking hold in parts of western Guatemala, or
southern Tanzania, or eastern Bangladesh, and it is making a
huge difference.
Senator Cardin. Thank you. You mentioned the Office of
Science and Technology. You have requested additional funding,
for a total of $85 million. Could you just briefly tell us what
those additional funds would be used for if it is appropriated
by Congress?
Dr. Shah. Yes, sir. If appropriated, we believe that these
investments will help engage our American universities and
American businesses and entrepreneurs in helping to bring new
scientific and technical breakthroughs to our mission around
the world.
This past year, we created what we call the Higher
Education Solutions Network with seven universities in the
United States. They include development innovation
laboratories, such as one at University of California,
Berkeley, where students have developed, for example, what they
call a cell scope that is an iPhone that connects to a
microscope that takes a photo of a blood smear, and can
automatically diagnose malaria and potentially TB without
requiring going back to a laboratory.
Those kinds of breakthroughs can tremendously change the
cost structure of the global health programs that we implement
around the world, allowing us to eliminate or eradicate
diseases at lower cost. And that is what we are going for. And
American technological breakthroughs have been at the core of
many of our biggest successes in development around the world.
Senator Cardin. I think it is very exciting, and I want to
just underscore what Senator Corker said. It would be helpful
if we had the statutory authority to make sure that, in fact,
is done the way that you are suggesting it rather than just
rely upon the appropriation process. I think it would be
helpful for this committee to weigh in on that initiative,
because engaging our private universities, being
transformational, and reducing the number of countries
requiring direct assistance is exactly what our international
development assistance program should do.
One last point on transparency, we have talked about that
frequently. And Senator Corker raises the issues of Syria and
whether the significant investment that we are making in Syria
will get to its intended recipients, and whether the United
States will get the benefits of that aid directly as it relates
to our security concerns.
There is concern here because we do not control all the
terrain on which this aid is going, so I really would
appreciate you keeping this committee closely advised as to the
accountability and transparency issues as it relates to the
funds going into Syria and the help going into Syria so that we
have confidence that the significant investments we are making
there are fulfilling their purpose.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Shah. Thank you, Senator.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Senator Rubio.
Senator Rubio. Thank you, and thank you for being here
today and for your service to our country.
I wanted to ask you about a program that I think enjoys
incredible bipartisan support and has been incredibly
effective, and that is PEPFAR, the President's Plan for AIDS
Relief. And I am sure you have heard this; I have, from many
advocates who are concerned about ongoing cuts to the program
that have been phased in over the last few years.
I understand the concept that some of the funds have been
moved to the Global Fund and so forth to fight AIDS, and that
is worthy as well. But these two programs are synergistic.
I wanted to get your take on truly what is going to be the
impact of this continuing reduction of spending on this
program, and what it would mean to undermining the goal that
the President himself has stated of an AIDS free generation?
Dr. Shah. Thank you, Senator. The President is very
committed to the goal of an AIDS-free generation, and I
appreciate your advocacy and leadership on this issue as well.
America has played a unique role in starting and helping to
accelerate the fight against HIV/AIDS, and today the United
States spends more than $8 billion a year in global health, the
majority of which is focused on our efforts to control and
reverse the trends around HIV/AIDS. It is by far the largest
category of our foreign assistance and the largest single item
within the entire 150 Account budget.
With respect to PEPFAR specifically, the President's fiscal
year 2014 request includes $1.65 billion for the Global Fund.
This is an important year. The Global Fund has been through a
tremendous restructuring, and through that restructuring, they
are going to be working very closely with our bilateral
program. And we see the Global Fund as a mechanism to
accelerate other donors' commitments to maintain and accelerate
this fight.
I would say with respect, I think in the countries where we
work, we are seeing more, not less, resources go to HIV/AIDS
control and treatment. In South Africa, as we modulate our own
investment, the government is more than making up for gaps,
and, in fact, that transition is one that has been carefully
negotiated with them and one they are eager to pursue. So they
have ownership and responsibility for what I believe is the
more than 4 million South African AIDS patients, some of which
I have had a chance to meet and that are partners, and we
proudly work to serve.
So our goal is to reach 15 million global AIDS patients on
treatment. That is a global number that we have all agreed to.
I believe the current global effort is at 8 billion. And the
way we believe we will get there is by crowding in investments
from, first, the countries in which we work, second, other
donors and other partners, and, third, by maintaining very
strong American budgets for global health and HIV/AIDS.
Senator Rubio. So just the takeaway then is that even
though our investment into PEPFAR particularly has eroded over
the last few years, the difference is being made up by local
countries' own investment in these programs, and that that will
more than adequate to continue to meet the benchmarks that we
have set?
Dr. Shah. Absolutely. In fact, we have accelerated and have
met every benchmark we have set earlier than the time
indicates. And I think that will continue to be the case
through this second term.
Senator Rubio. So you are confident in saying that this
reduction in spending on PEPFAR will not lead to erosion in the
gains that have been made and in the progress that is being
made?
Dr. Shah. Absolutely not. In fact, I am confident that our
approach of bringing together our global health investments
around the world and bringing other partners to do more will
actually accelerate impacts. We genuinely believe we will see
twice as many AIDs patients, supported by the global
partnership, not just the United States. And we are absolutely
committed to and very confident that we will achieve an AIDS-
free generation largely by targeting pregnant women with
antiretroviral therapy, early testing, and diagnostics.
Senator Rubio. OK. Just to another part of the world
quickly, and it is an article that came out on March 4 and
talked about, ``Dam and Other Afghanistan Projects Being Scaled
Back as United States Picks Up Its Pace of Withdrawal.'' The
concern is that the United States is investing a tremendous
amount of treasure and obviously lives and blood and otherwise
in this region, and scores of people have lost their lives to
secure, for example, this area around Kajaki Dam in southern
Afghanistan so that the USAID could safely manage a major
construction project.
But now it appears that we have decided not to complete the
project, and instead leave it to an Afghan electricity company
that our own special inspector general has criticized for
lacking the necessary expertise.
Obviously the decision to move from Afghanistan is one that
enjoys popular support, and it is a decision that is not in
your agency per se. But can you talk about the impacts of these
projects that we have invested so much money in, that now we
are either turning over to Afghan institutions that are
documented as having very little accountability, unless you
disagree, and then we can talk about that. But more
importantly, there is this notion that these major projects
that we are on the verge of completing or what have you and
have already invested a lot of money in, we are either not
going to complete and turn it to others to do or not do at all
because of the eroding security situation in some of these
regions, and the challenge that that poses.
Dr. Shah. Well, I thank you for the question, and I would
note also that American investment in Afghanistan has already
allowed for a more than tripling of energy access for Afghan
citizens, including in Kandahar City, which is what the Kajaki
Dam is intended to improve upon.
We saw that article, and it inaccurately reflected a sense
that we were cutting back or scaling back our commitments
there. In fact, I just spoke with General Dunford earlier this
week who spoke specifically about his recent visit to Kajaki
where the USAID military partnership to refurbish and expand
its capacity to produce electricity is proceeding at pace. We
think we will be successful.
The partnership is with Black & Veatch/Louis Berger, which
is a firm that has been doing the project. And it is also with
the Afghan Electricity Company. The reason they are part of the
partnership is they have to ultimately collect the revenue to
sustain that effort, and we have been working with them, in
some cases using new technology, like mobile-phone-based
electricity payments, which has allowed them to increase by
more than 300 percent their revenue collection from Afghans who
benefit from this electricity.
And that is what will be required to sustain these efforts
over time, so we do have to work in a responsible, transparent
way with our Afghan partners. I think that is a good example of
how we believe we can be successful. And Kajaki remains a
priority within our shared military-civilian campaign plan
there.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Senator Kaine.
Senator Kaine. Dr. Shah, great to be with you today.
When the President in his State of the Union talked about
the big goal, the eradication of extreme poverty in the world
over two decades, the United States in tandem with others, you
know, I applauded because I love the big goals, and I think we
are sent here to do big things, and we ought to be looking for
the big goals. But at the same time, I find myself wondering a
little bit.
Sometimes there is a hubris that we have if something goes
wrong in Syria or North Korea, and we kind of get into what did
we do wrong, or what is our responsibility. And as I read some
of the development literature about why the bottom billion or
the bottom million, you know, the United States not doing
enough usually is not one of the reasons why cultures or people
get locked into extreme poverty. So clearly, a goal like that
of extreme poverty eradication in two decades is one that has
to be done in partnership, and it also has to be one around
which there are some pretty clear metrics.
I just would like it if we have talked about this in
Senator Cardin's office, a little bit about hunger and
preventable child death. But let us talk sort of about metrics,
and let us talk about partnerships that you intend to leverage,
both NGO partnerships, but also, you know, how are we
incorporating other nations into this goal?
Dr. Shah. Well, thank you, Senator, and thank you for your
extra commitment to this particular issue because I think it is
an issue where real significant political leadership will, in
fact, make a huge difference.
The President claimed and put forward the goal of ending
extreme poverty within two decades because we believe for the
first time in human history that it is achievable. We have seen
between 2005 and 2008, for the very first time in our history,
extreme dollar and a quarter a day poverty fall in every region
of the world for the first time. And we believe we are on that
path today. We know that there are about 1.2 billion people
that live in that sort of excruciatingly difficult situation,
and we know that bringing them into a more connected global
economy will be the path that gets them out of extreme poverty.
So the question then, as you point out, becomes, what are
the right metrics to measure? We believe the dual goals of
ending hunger and ending preventable child death are the areas
where America can make the biggest contribution toward that
outcome specifically. We measure our efforts in food and hunger
by looking at incomes of farm households, by looking at the
number of farm households we reach, by looking at agricultural
development and agricultural GDP growth specifically in
countries where we focus, and then by correlating that to
reductions in extreme poverty.
We know agricultural GDP growth is three to six times more
likely to reduce extreme poverty, and we have seen that trend
play out in the 19 Feed the Future countries that have had on
average a 5.6-percent annualized reduction since joining the
program.
On child death and on global health in particular, we can
measure a number of specific things, but under-5 child
mortality is the core measure of how many children are dying.
And it is actually a pretty good correlate for other morbidity
related measures about disease and loss of productivity related
to child death, meaning if a lot of kids die, then a lot of
kids are also getting sick and not going to school and other
negative consequences.
So those are the two things. We measure them. You can
actually download an iPhone app that we have that shows you the
health statistics and under-5 mortality statistics elsewhere.
Going forward, as part of achieving this goal, we will also
expand our efforts in energy access because that is such an
important driver of helping families move out of poverty, and
believe it is possible to double energy access in sub-Saharan
Africa from 30 to roughly 60 percent, and to achieve that in a
very highly leveraged way with strong partnerships with
American businesses that help bring energy to many parts of the
world.
So we believe that these objectives are possible, but they
are only possible with setting a big goal, bringing other
countries and international institutions to bear. The United
Nations will in the next 18 months identify a new set of global
millennium development goals, and John Podesta is our
representative to that process and has also advocated for
setting the goal of ending extreme poverty within two decades.
And quite frankly, the United States makes outsized and
critically important investments in those places where extreme
poverty will be concentrated 4 or 5, 6 years from now, places
like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, and with a results-
oriented public-private partnership approach, we believe it is
achievable.
Senator Kaine. The public-private partnership approach, the
data I see suggests now, you know, foreign aid dollars, if you
look at a public-private, 10 to 15 percent is public, and 80 to
85 percent is private--philanthropic, NGO. Talk a little bit
about the leveraging you do in tackling a big challenge like
this with the NGO community.
Dr. Shah. Absolutely, and, in fact, that is the exact
opposite from 40 years ago. Forty years ago, flows into these
countries were largely public investments, and private
investments were the 15 percent. Now that has been flipped on
its head, and that is why we have pursued USAID Forward as a
reform agenda that allows us to partner differently with
companies all around the world. When we engage, for example, in
ending preventable child death in India, we are not spending
more money in India by any stretch, but we are working with
Unilever and other partners that can get improved technologies
and start businesses that reach some communities that can be
profitable businesses, and also can work toward the objective
of saving children's lives and ending extreme poverty.
And that increasingly is defining a broad range of
partnerships. USAID has been recognized by its peers as leading
in this area, and we have now completed almost 1,100 of these
public-private partnerships around the world, many of which I
think are a genuine model of how we can achieve the end of
extreme poverty.
Senator Kaine. Great. Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Administrator, let me just follow up a moment on Syria
before I go to one area of concern that I have in the budget.
Have you been approached or has there been any discussion in
any interagency process about the need to achieve credit with
the Syrian people for our assistance, balancing obviously
protecting our aid provided by not marking everything so that
it says U.S.--delivered by the people of the United States, but
still trying to develop some foundation of having them
understand who is being supportive here.
Has there been any talk about changing the current
approach, going primarily through the United Nations and
possibly filtering some of this assistance through the
opposition that we have vetted as opposition that we believe
share our values?
Dr. Shah. Yes, Senator; there have been precisely those
conversations. I would note that of the $385 million of
humanitarian assistance that we provide, we use the United
Nations as core partners in delivering that assistance, but
also a sizable proportion goes to NGOs and other private
organizations that are able to sometimes more effectively and
with U.S. branding reach opposition controlled areas and
settings. And we believe more than 60 to 65 percent of our aid
and assistance actually goes into opposition controlled areas
and targets specifically those communities. And we make every
effort to not only brand and publicize when we can and when
that is safe, but we also have in parallel, TV and media
efforts to try to communicate what the United States is doing.
In addition to that, on the services side, we are working
directly with the Syrian Opposition Council to help them
provide that support and do this together, and that was the
additional $250 million that Secretary Kerry announced this
weekend that is separate and apart from the basic humanitarian
aid, but often will provide water services, or diesel
generators and fuel, or other things that are critically needed
essential services, as an economy is going through that very
difficult time.
I would say one last thing about this, sir, is the extent
to which we believe there has been specific targeting by the
Assad regime of our humanitarian partners. We know there have
been 143 deaths of doctors and nurses and other medical
personnel that have worked with and at our various supported
field hospitals or hospital sites. We know that more than eight
U.N. international staff have been killed as part of efforts to
provide services. We have very clear data that bakeries and
hospitals are preferentially targeted by regime forces in
opposition controlled areas, for example, in parts of Aleppo.
The safety and security concerns are very real, and we do
respect our partners, some of whom are working with Syrian-
American doctors, for example, that do some extraordinarily
courageous things, but they do it with a real concern for their
own safety.
The Chairman. Well, I am not surprised about Assad, and I
am concerned, having seen the most recent reports about
chemical weapon usage, if that is verified, it makes all the
more case that we have to change our dynamics there and the
tipping point.
Let me go to an area of the world that I am confounded by
the administration as well as previous administrations' views.
We have seen a continuing significant decline in our assistance
to the Western Hemisphere, particularly to Latin America and
the Caribbean. And I am amazed because all the things that we
debate here in the--or many of the things, I should say, not
all the things, but many of the things we debate here in the
Congress are, in fact, emanating in our front yard.
If I do not want to see undocumented immigration in this
country, there are push factors--people leave their countries
for only two reasons: civil unrest or dire economic
circumstances. Otherwise they would stay. So it is in our
interest through our development programs to try create greater
economic growth in our own hemisphere.
If we want to help governments stop transnational crime and
narcotics trafficking, you have to give poor growers who have
to sustain their families, alternative crops so that they are
not growing coca at the end of the day. That is in our national
interest because the last thing we want to see is those
narcotics end up in the streets of our cities.
If you want to open up greater markets for U.S. products
and services for which there is an affinity by Latin Americans
to U.S. products and services, you want to create economies
that are ultimately going to buy more U.S. products and
services. If you want to look at some of the incredibly
important biodiversity issues that affect us collectively, you
want to think about how you change the dynamics of eviscerating
a rain forest. If you want to stop some of the diseases that
had been largely eradicated and now begin to rise again, such
as tuberculosis, they know no boundaries.
So I am amazed that with all of those realities and with
the unrest and the movement away from democracy in the region
toward dictatorships and totalitarianism, that we continue to
cut--this is like a 6-percent cut, but if you compound it over
the last several years, you are looking at a very enormous cut.
And we just finished talking about poverty. Well, about 30
percent of all of the region's population is below the poverty
level, and of those, 66 million are in extreme poverty. This is
in our own neighborhood.
So I do not understand the cuts that we are seeing. I know
that we are going through programmatic changes with Mexico and
Colombia. We are moving away from hardware to institution-
building. But when I look at the totality of these cuts, I just
do not get it, and that is why we create a void in which people
like Chavez when he was alive ultimately filled the void, where
the Chinese are coming in our own hemisphere, where the
Iranians have been promoting diplomacy in the hemisphere. I
just do not get it.
So I look at that. I look at in another context--a cut on
Cuba's democracy program at a time in which, in fact, we had
6,000 arrests and detentions last year. We had the Ladies in
White, a group of women whose husbands or sons sit in Castro's
jail simply because they sought peaceful change in their
country, get attacked brutally every week. We saw Oswaldo Paya
assassinated, one of the leading human rights individuals
inside of Cuba. His daughter was here not too long ago and made
it very clear to us, from all the information, that he was
assassinated. And yet we see a cut in that program.
So I look at the totality of this, and it certainly does
not make public policy sense to me. So I am going to be looking
to try to change this because I just think we have created--and
it is not until we have a major problem in the hemisphere that
everybody will run, and we will spend a fortune instead of
doing the right thing now that can ultimately create the seeds
of democracy in open markets within the hemisphere.
If there is one bright spot here, it is CARSI, which
obviously is one of my critical concerns, and I will be
traveling on the break to this region, in terms of preventing
violence, combating narcotics trafficking, increasing citizen
security. And I look forward to hearing how you are going to
use the funding for 2014 there, as well as how do we create in
these countries fiscal and policy reforms that can sustain us
moving forward.
So, I have gone over my time, but this is one of my
passions and no one else seems to have a greater passion for
it. But it just does not make a lot of sense in my mind in
terms of the national interests and security of the United
States.
Dr. Shah. Thank you, Senator. We had the chance to discuss
this, and I very much appreciate and recognize your strong and
consistent leadership here. We, too, believe the region is
critical and important. We have had to present a budget that
conforms to an overall 6-percent reduction, which has forced a
lot of difficult tradeoffs at a time when the actual number of
humanitarian disasters around the world is doubling what we
need to respond to in terms of case loads.
There have been, as you point out, some critical areas,
like CARSI, where we are presenting in this budget a 23-percent
increase in our investment and our focus on that critical
security program for the Northern Triangle. We know that our
efforts have been delivering real results. In Mexico, where we
have worked on prosecution-related partnerships, we have seen
the rates in participating cities go up significantly and
delays go down significantly. We built a new partnership with
Los Angeles to bring some of the crime control measures that
have been effective and proven in that setting to other
countries in the region. We know that the alternative crop
program, to which you made reference, in Peru has been
successful there and a model for work in other parts of the
world.
And we also see across regions--Latin America has been by
far the most successful with public-private partnerships. For
every dollar we put into a public-private partnership in that
region, we are able to attract $2.53 dollars from private
sector, local partners. And we believe that that serves as an
engine of sustaining significant development, investment, and
partnership.
But we recognize that this is a very important region, and
we have had to make tough tradeoffs in a budget that we
certainly wish was larger.
The Chairman. I will just close on this, Administrator. For
several years now, whether you were the Administrator or
previous ones, I have heard that there are always tough
tradeoffs. And where the tough tradeoff goes always is Latin
America and the Caribbean. That is always where it ends up
being cut. And I just think that that is foolish at the end of
the day. We are going to have a problem, and then when we have
the problem, we will spend a fortune.
We did the same thing with Central American wars, and then
after we spent a fortune in Central America providing
democracy, we got out, and we did not lay the foundation of the
seeds that would have provided long-term growth and prosperity.
Senator Corker.
Senator Corker. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am glad to hear
you talk about a topic you care deeply about. Thank you.
Mr. Administrator, I want to talk to you this round of
questions about USAID Forward. And, again, I want to say I
really appreciate the thrust that you have had toward self-
sufficiency. I know what you are trying to do is move away from
NGOs that are not necessarily based in the area or based in the
country, and try to build capacity with governments that are
there.
And obviously, you know, foreign aid is under criticism
right now. A lot of people here in our country see needs here
and wonder why we are doing things in other places, and so I do
think that the move toward self-sufficiency is a good one. On
the other hand, dealing in that manner can create a lot of
political risk. You end up dealing with governments that
sometimes commit fraud and are involved in corruption. It does
mean probably that we move toward more direct involvement with
them.
And I just wondered if you might talk a little bit about
your concerns there and your plans to alleviate those, and also
comment on whether--if you were moving ahead with this effort,
which I hope you will, if you see countries where corruption
and other kinds of things are taking place--you will withdraw
due to their lack of accountability and responsibility.
Dr. Shah. Thank you, Senator, and I appreciate the
opportunity to discuss with you USAID Forward. This has been
our signature agency reform effort and has covered three major
areas of transformation. One is how we partner around the world
to which you have asked that question.
But there have been other areas of focus within USAID
Forward as well, a real focus on science, technology, and
innovation, and making sure we bring the best of what America
has to offer to our work has been a core element, as well as an
absolute focus on measurement, results, evaluation, and
transparency, which has been an important part of this.
But going to your question specifically, a core part of our
thinking is using and partnering with those who represent real
local solutions. We can bring the cost structure of our work
down and create the kind of institutional strength that can
sustain these efforts and activities after American aid and
assistance goes away. And that is the basic theory.
Nearly every one of our peer countries spends somewhere
between 60 and 80 percent of their total budget on these types
of local institutions. When I started at USAID, we spent 9
percent in that space. So we have had a focused effort to
increase that percentage to something that we think is
responsible, and we have asked every mission to identify what
that responsible level might be, taking in account for all
kinds of considerations, including corruption and weak
institutions locally.
The result of this has been a process where we have moved
more resources to local partners. But in all of those cases, we
have conducted careful and rigorous country assessments. If we
are going to work with a local government, we assess their
capacity to be transparent. If they are not, we say, sorry, we
cannot work with you. And in some cases, they will come back
and say, OK, well, what can we do differently as they have in
Malawi and Liberia, where, as a result of receiving our
assessments, they said, OK, we will embed an international
auditing operation within our Ministry of Finance, or we will
build a strong public financial management system that gives
you the confidence. And then, by the way, you can work with us,
and then other partners can also work with us because we are
committed to fighting corruption as best we can with your
partnership.
So I believe this effort has really transformed our
capabilities. Our staff is out and about working with partners.
We are able to find and support local entrepreneurs. We have
offered credit guarantees to dozens of local banks that have
increased their lending to small and medium enterprises in
Africa, for example, by $530 million last year, at almost no
expense to us because those credit guarantees do not get called
down because the people tend to be good for the loans.
And we have seen external validation from nearly every
major development entity and expert organization in this town,
ranging from AEI and Heritage to the Center for American
Progress and OXFAM.
So, I know that this is tough. I know in places like
Afghanistan where corruption can be a very significant endemic
challenge we have a different approach.
In that setting, most of our ``on budget assistance'' goes
to an entity called the Afghan Reconstruction Trust Fund, which
is managed and operated by the World Bank. And while that is
not quite what we meant by local solutions, it protects and
safeguards very significant American investment in that
country's future, and we will not take undue risks in that
context.
Senator Corker. Well, again, I like the thrust that you
have with ag. I like the thrust that you have with USAID
Forward. I think the movement toward self-sufficiency and
dealing with people in their own countries is a great--I like
the way you are levering PEPFAR, the way you discussed with
Senator Rubio.
One area that I think we are not doing a good job in
leveraging is in trade. In other words, if we want some of
these developing countries to really move toward self-
sufficiency, something we can do well is really increase the
ability of those countries to trade internationally and to
trade with us. And yet if we look at the efforts, there is
really not a coordinated effort. GAO says there is 18 different
agencies that focus on trade. We understand when the report
comes out each year to focus on how much effort toward trade is
taking place, people just start lumping in things: a roadway in
Afghanistan, something else.
I am wondering if you might consider putting some effort
into a coordinated trade effort so that we can help leverage
many of the self-sufficiencies you are talking about and move
away from the day-to-day assistance effort that we continue to
be involved in.
Dr. Shah. Well, thank you, Senator. The short answer, sir,
is absolutely we will. And I believe in this second term, in
particular, this will be an increased focus, specifically with
respect to some of our efforts in Africa, but also in context
ranging from Jordan to Afghanistan to Haiti. In fact, in
Afghanistan, one of the most important things we can do is help
clean up the process by which customs are collected and
revenues are generated and then actually sent back to the
government. And by cleaning up that process, we think they can
significantly improve their domestic revenue collection, which
will be critical to smoothing the reality of less international
expenditure in that country.
In Jordan, we have seen a 250-percent improvement in
customs collections because of our partnerships with them.
Sometimes it is bringing technology to border posts. Sometimes
it is just bringing transparency to those settings and helping
to improve transparent customs collection.
In parts of east Africa, as coordinated with our Feed the
Future effort, we are actively expanding the focus on regional
trade. In Tanzania, for example, as a precondition for being
part of our partnership, we asked the Tanzanians to forgo the
export bans they have put on Tanzanian agriculture. Every time
food prices go up or there is a regional shortage, they use
those export bans. And that, of course, creates a strong
disincentive for investment. So they have made that commitment,
and now we are working with them to clean up the kind of
checkpoint process as roads cross from one country into
neighboring countries. The same is true of South Sudan and its
neighbors.
So these types of efforts, while they do not get a lot of
publicity and do not tug at the heartstrings in the same way,
they do, in fact, improve domestic revenue collection speed,
local and regional trade and investment, and are often very
high on the list of what local businesses will ask us to
advocate for and prioritize. And you are absolutely right, and
we should do more, and we will try to.
The Chairman. Senator Casey. On the second round, I go to
members who have not had an opportunity.
Senator Casey. I am very happy about that. [Laughter.]
Mr. Chairman, we often say thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want
to say it loud and clear. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We know of
the seniority rule.
I wanted to, first, by way of commendation for the work
that you have done. We appreciate that. You have been stellar
in a very difficult environment and in a very tough position.
I wanted to direct your attention to two areas. One is the
question of food aid. Too often around here, and I point a
finger of blame at myself and probably could extend that to
others as well. But we do not talk enough about the impact of
the international affairs budget on our States and on the
country, in addition to making the argument about security and
the important necessity of food aid and aid like that.
Interestly, in Pennsylvania, three numbers: 3, 223, and
112. Just looking at these numbers today, and we should have
them--
I should have them memorized by now. The U.S. Export-Import
Bank financed over $3 billion in exports from 223 companies in
112 communities in Pennsylvania. We do not say that enough. We
do not often make that very important and substantial and
measurable nexus between that support and what happens in a
State like Pennsylvania.
We have more than 30,000 international students studying in
Pennsylvania in 2011, and they brought over $950 million into
the State's economy. So all these subjects we are talking about
when it comes to this budget are significant for our States and
for the country.
First of all, with regard to food aid, I was struck by--and
I am sorry I missed your testimony and your personal testimony,
or the testimony you gave today. But I was noting in your
prepared testimony, and you may have gotten to this already,
but I think it bears repeating, that you assert on page 4 that
pursuant to this year's budget request, it would ``enable us to
feed 2 to 4 million more hungry men, women, and children every
year with the same resources.'' You go on to talk about buying
food locally can speed the arrival of aid by as much as 14
weeks.
It can also cost much less. And you go on from there to
make the case on flexibility.
I guess I would focus the first question on how do you make
that happen? How do you ensure that the potential recipients of
this aid get not just get the kind of food, but in particular,
the nutritious foods that they need, even if they cannot be
bought in local markets?
Dr. Shah. Well, thank you, Senator, and thank you for your
unique leadership on food and hunger issues at home and around
the world. The legislation that you have worked on is often
referenced appropriately as the underpinning of our Feed the
Future initiative and program. And your leadership on thinking
through food aid is very important to our aspiration to get
this done.
Senator Casey. Thank you.
Dr. Shah. The reality is that over the last 3 years we have
an actual database driven by the fact that we have had in the
international disaster assistance account about $300 million a
year for a program called Local and Regional Procurement. That
program provides us with real data about where we have been
buying food, how long it takes us to take regionally procured
food to children and women in needy situations.
It has shown us that we can use new and different kinds of
tools ranging from local foods and new food formulations to
vouchers and other card-based systems that empower people in
settings where we cannot physically reach them with food
convoys for security reasons. And it has given us the
confidence that we can use the teams and the organizations we
have in place to implement this approach in a way that delivers
real measurable results.
And I would also add that through that effort, we know that
when we buy food locally, we put it in a bag that says ``USAID
from the American People,'' and it has the same brand value as
anything else. In fact, I have actually been in settings where
we are feeding children with high nutrition pastes and things
like that. And I can assure you they are well aware because
each packet is individually wrapped and labeled and branded,
that those benefits accrue to them because of American
commitment, generosity, and humanitarian support.
So we have a strong database that indicates that this kind
of flexibility will reach the 4 million additional children.
And we know that, frankly, this year, the Syria crisis is so
dramatic and significant that all of our flexibility will be
absorbed in that setting, requiring us to move children in
Somalia, DRC, and Pakistan from the LRP program to the Title II
program. And because of the efficiency differences, we will end
up moving hundreds of thousands of kids off the support
programs as we make that transition if we do not do this
reform.
Senator Casey. I appreciate that, and I have limited time,
but I will just raise one more question. You can amplify the
answer in written form as well. But on Syria, I know you have
been asked a number of questions today, and I am sorry I was
not here for that.
But I think we are still struggling with the best approach,
and I think it is both a bipartisan struggle, but also a
bipartisan effort that is being undertaken. Senator Rubio and I
have legislation. Senator Coons and several others are working
with us on it. But we are trying to move forward in a way that
would be constructive and effective in bringing the conflict to
an end and to be able to deal with the aftermath.
And I know this may be by way of reiteration, but just
maybe a couple of words about how you are going to continue to
make sure that the food aid gets to folks either on the Syrian
side or the refugee side in places like Turkey?
Dr. Shah. Well, thank you. On the humanitarian side, we
have provided at this point nearly $400 million of humanitarian
support. We know that we are reaching 2.4 million Syrians
inside of Syria with everything from food to clean water to
earlier in the season winterization kits and blankets for their
homes and their living situations. And we know that we are
providing through a range of partners support to the 1\1/2\
million refugees with a real focus on those in Jordan and
Turkey.
In addition, we have also provided actual direct support to
Jordan to help them absorb what is essentially 42,000 children
who are now joining the Jordanian public school system in the
neighborhoods along the Syrian border and placing extraordinary
strains on their domestic situation. It has been difficult.
Access inside Syria is the biggest challenge, but we work with
a range of partners, including NGOs, that can focus and work in
opposition controlled areas.
In addition to that, Secretary Kerry this past weekend
noted an additional $250 million commitment specifically to the
Syrian Opposition Council to support services and governance
efforts in opposition controlled areas. And we are coordinating
an international effort to bolster the SOCs capacity to provide
real services and governance in certain parts of opposition
controlled Syria. And as Secretary Kerry noted, in making that
announcement the Syrian opposition has worked with us to also
make commitments to respect women's rights, gender
considerations, and to promote openness in their approach to
governance as this gets off the ground.
So we are doing everything we can. It is a very difficult
operating environment as, of course, you are well aware. And
our people take real risks to do this, but it is in our
national security interests to be actively engaged here.
Senator Casey. Thanks very much.
The Chairman. Senator Rubio.
Senator Rubio. Thank you. And the chairman brought this up
earlier, but I wanted to close the loop and just add my own
thoughts on the Cuban democracy programming. And he may have
made this point, and so I apologize. I was in the back for a
few moments.
But my understanding is that your core budget at USAID has
taken about a 10-percent reduction, is that correct? But the
Cuban democracy programs have taken a 25-percent reduction,
which seems way out of proportion to the general reduction for
a program of this small scale.
And a couple of points come to mind. No. 1 is, every time
some of our colleagues or others visit Cuba, one of the first
things they get complaints about from the Castro government is
the democracy programs. They absolutely hate it. That is No. 1.
And there is a reason for that, because not only are they
antidemocratic, but apparently they felt these programs in the
past have been quite effective.
The second problem then is, over the last few years, and
this is documented. I am not making this up. Some of our
colleagues, including the former chairman of this committee
through staff, held this program up with endless questions
about it. And so I do not think it is a coincidence that this
reduced so completely out of proportion from the size and scope
of the program. And I just hope that this will be reversed
because I think it is a terrible precedent and a terrible idea.
Beyond that, I do have concerns that I hope will be
addressed when the funding does come out, and hopefully it will
be at a higher level once it goes through this process, that it
is truly being purposed for democracy purposes. And I have no
problem, and obviously I do not have anything here to say today
about the people who are currently receiving the funds and how
they are using it. I just think it is important that we be
clear, this is a democracy program, and there are actually
provisions in law--the Cuban Democracy Act, the Lever Debt
Act--that actually condition what it can be spent on and what
it cannot be spent on.
So I am not claiming that it is being spent on things that
it should not be. I think it is very important that we be clear
that this money is being spent on the promotion of democracy,
not on the creation of grassroots community organizations that
specialize in, you know, better sewage treatment programs or
what have you. This is about democracy. That is what this
program is about. And I hope we will be vigilant in that
regard.
And I also think it is important to ask ourselves--and by
the way, this is not a 1-year cut. My understanding, Mr.
Chairman, is this has been a steady erosion of this program
over the last few years. But a 25-percent cut on such a small
program, combined with we have seen some of the political
resistance to it over the last few years. I personally do not
believe it is a coincidence, and I hope that this can be
reversed.
On a broader point about foreign aid in particular, in
general, and I would use Egypt as an example, in particular.
I am a believer in foreign aid. I think it is an important
part of our foreign policy. It gives us influence. It allows us
to impact events around the world. I think it is an important
tool in furthering our national interest. And I am sure you
agree--I know you agree--that the primary purpose of foreign
aid is to further our national interests.
Americans are concerned, however, when they see foreign aid
going into places--and I would just use Egypt as an example--
where you have government leaders and others in that society
that are participating not just antidemocratic things, but just
systematically violating the rights of religious minorities and
others. And I think my question is on a broader scale--I am a
firm believer, and I want to get your thoughts--that our
foreign aid should be conditioned, and increasingly
conditioned, on our national interests and on our values,
particularly when it comes to foreign aid along the lines of
supporting governments and their economic programs.
And I just think it is critically important that our
foreign aid come with strings--quite frankly, not with strings,
with ropes attached, that ensure that the money is being used
to further our national interests. It is not a charity. It is
not paying tribute to a foreign government the way one leading
cleric in Egypt classified it as. It is something that is
designed to further our national interests and our values.
And I just want your general thoughts about what we can do
to improve on that front. What can we do to ensure that our
foreign aid is a carrot, and, quite frankly, an incentive for
governments to move their societies and their economy in a
direction that is good for them, but ultimately is really good
for us because it is our money.
Dr. Shah. Well, thank you, Senator. On both points, I can
assure you on Cuba, your point is well taken, and we will make
sure as we have done that the focus of this program sticks to
the letter of the law and is focused on democracy and civil
society. And per the recent GAO report, I think those third
party assessments show that, in fact, that has been how we have
managed to implement this effort.
With respect to the general point about foreign aid, I am
in complete agreement that our foreign assistance advances our
national interests. Sometimes it advances our national
interests by seeking and achieving commitments to certain types
of reforms that can range from sectorial policy reforms to
larger scale commitments to protect the rights of women and
minorities in certain situations.
We would be eager to work with you to articulate different
forms of conditionality, but Egypt is a good example because
over the last year and a half, as we have reshaped the program
in Egypt, we have essentially focused on a handful of
priorities. The first is the macroeconomic situation, and we
have, in fact, conditioned our cash transfers and loan
guarantee support efforts to Egyptian participation and
negotiations in the IMF program, because that is what is
required for them to be successful.
Second, we focus very much on youth employment. As
Secretary Kerry recently said, that is the core challenge, and
we know that our efforts help open up the economy, have led to
3,700 small business starts; 7.9 million loans to local small-
scale businesses that create jobs for young people in those
settings.
Third, we focus very much on women and minorities. We
specifically support the Coptic Evangelical Organization for
social services, and a range of other minority rights
organizations, and have conditioned as part of our diplomatic
dialogue this assistance on ensuring space remains open for
those civil organizations in respect of those rights.
Senator Rubio. I am sorry, when you say ``diplomatic
dialogue,'' we have told them we want you to protect the Coptic
Christians, or we have actually said----
Dr. Shah. In every conversation, absolutely.
Senator Rubio. All right.
Dr. Shah. And, we do not link everything to precise
conditionality, but the basic themes of supporting the
macropackage with the IMF, supporting women and minorities,
ensuring rights and open space for civil society, and allowing
private enterprise to flourish and create jobs in areas where
there is a lot of young unemployment have been the drivers of
our dialogue and are the basic conditions for this program
being in place.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Senator Coons.
Senator Coons. Thank you. I want to thank Senator Menendez
for convening this critically important hearing.
And I want to applaud you, Administrator Shah, for your
determination, your vision, your leadership, and your deep
commitment to development issues. I share the views expressed
by several of my colleagues that development is absolutely
essential to America's national interests, and I intend to
continue to work with you to ensure strong support for the
appropriate balance between diplomacy, defense, and
development.
But in order for me to be true to the concerns of my home
State, we also need to continue to pursue efficiencies to make
sure that funds that are being spent on foreign assistance are
spent wisely and well. And I have been impressed with your
innovative approach to furthering our development goals, to
insisting on accountability and to transparency. And so let me
dive into a couple of things around it if I might.
I also want to commend the work of this committee in
partnership with USAID on Syria and Syrian relief, and I
commend Secretary Kerry's significant increase and support
through the SOC, something we have discussed before and you
know I have pressed for.
Africa trade hubs, if I might first. I have been impressed
with the work of USAID's regional trade hubs that help build
regional capacity in Africa and create economic opportunity for
Americans and Africans. How can they be expanded to promote and
further interregional trade, and what ways do you think USAID
can contribute to expanded opportunities for trade investment
in Africa?
Dr. Shah. Well, thank you, Senator, and thank you for your
ongoing support of this agenda and your tremendous personal
experience and guidance on a range of issues as we go forward.
Specifically with respect to the African trade hubs, I
would point out that in both west Africa, eastern Africa, and
southern Africa, we have had independent evaluations that
demonstrate that over the period of 7 to 10 years, these trade
hubs have significantly improved interregional trade, that
countries depend on them for having clear and transparent
custom systems and the ability to move goods across borders.
We are implementing reforms as we speak. We are tying these
very closely to our agricultural programs and agricultural
trade efforts, and that has already borne quite a lot of fruit.
The second way we are informing them by is linking these to
some of the efforts to fight corruption and improve
transparency with customs, collection, and informal collections
of tariffs at border posts. And a third has been tying the
trade hubs to our efforts to expand access to energy in the
region. Many of these settings--energy, trade--will be one of
the next big areas of regional trade and expansion.
So we are pursuing all of those with respect to these trade
hubs and obviously maintaining the budget support for these
efforts has been a challenge, but we think there is strong
external validation for the effectiveness of these efforts.
Senator Coons. Well, they are a modest investment that I
think has seen some real outcomes. I look forward to working
with you on those. There are so many other things I would like
to talk about: the Higher Education Solutions Network, which I
think is a tremendous idea, your, I think, bold reform, USAID
Forward.
But let me also talk about food aid reform, which is a
significant proposal in this year's budget. If you would,
please discuss the reforms to the Food for Peace Program that
were included in the Senate version of last year's farm bill,
what benefits they would bring to the program, and what the
proposals are in the administration's budget, and how that
would deal with inefficiencies in the current system. As I
know, it has already been discussed, but continue to protect
the vital interests of American farmers and shippers as well.
How does it strike the right balance?
Dr. Shah. Well, thank you. We believe this proposal does,
in fact, strike the right balance. It incorporates many of the
components of what the Senate bill was moving toward, which is
giving us more flexibility to use and purchase food locally and
to do that when it is cheaper, more effective, it does not
compete with American-produced commodities, and it can help
save lives in emergency settings.
And we have a strong database over the last several years
of examples where we have done precisely that. And we also have
a strong database that shows that recipients of that type of
aid and assistance have the same appreciation of it as coming
from the United States and being branded as such as in the
traditional programs.
I would add that this proposal includes a commitment to
continue to buy the majority of food from American producers
and shipped on American-flag vessels. But we want to do that in
a more modern and science-based way. The science tells us that
traditional commodity gifts are less useful at saving
children's lives at times of crisis than high nutrition,
micronutrient enhanced, prepackaged foods that are now being
developed in Europe and elsewhere in the world. We think they
should be developed in the United States. We have the best
agricultural system and the best agricultural companies on the
planet, and we should be at the forefront of that.
So our team has created a pipeline of 10 to 12 new products
and technologies that will be emerging with those types of
products. We think that is very much the future of a science-
based aid program that can save the most lives at times of
crises, and we think that will be very effective.
Finally, I will just say with respect to shipping that we
have looked very carefully at this and provided a support
program expansion for the Department of Transportation. We
believe that most--in fact, there is quite a lot of
concentration in this industry with our use of a few firms
really being at issue here, and we have designed that to be
able to ensure that those partners have a transition path in
which they receive support and can maintain American jobs. And
that was the purpose of that part of the proposal.
Senator Coons. I look forward to working with you on a
number of these different great challenges of development. I
have additional questions I would love to ask on Kenya and the
Democratic Republic of the Congo that I will submit for the
record.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the chance to question today.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Coons.
Senator Murphy.
Senator Murphy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Welcome,
Administrator Shah. Thank you very much for joining us. Let me
just associate myself with the comments of Senator Coons and
others. We are so appreciative of your work, and I think we
understand now more than ever that this Nation does not remain
secure unless we have a commitment to foreign aid and an
understanding that the only way to win the argument as we have
been talking about on this committee week after week and month
after month is to make sure that we are a true partner for
development.
Administrator Shah, I wanted to talk about recent events in
Russia for a few moments. I do not know if that has come up
yet, but we certainly were very disappointed to see the new
Russian disposition not only on USAID, but also on other
American NGOs that have been very good work there.
And it is an open-ended question for you to just give the
committee an update as to our strategy vis-a-vis Russia going
forward. To the extent that we do not have a physical presence
there of USAID, can we still accomplish with respect to our
development goals there from outside the country, and what do
you see as our future disposition toward that nation, and is
there anything left that we can continue to do without a
presence there?
Dr. Shah. Thank you, Senator, and thanks for raising that
particular issue. It has not yet come up.
Over 20 years of history, the United States development
partnership with Russia had evolved to be very focused on
specifically maintaining space for civil society organizations
and supporting those organizations, primarily Russian-led
organizations that sought to advance the principles of freedom
of speech, freedom of civil society, openness, transparency,
and government and public administration.
Obviously that specific space has been aggressively
targeted with those organizations, whether they are USAID
partners or otherwise, having been the subject of visits and
raids and document requests and other things that have made it
very hard for those organizations to continue their mission.
That said, our Ambassador in Russia and our State
Department team in Russia is very focused on this element of
the partnership and dialogue with that country. And, in fact,
there are a range of mechanisms they can use to continue to
provide support through international organizations and others
to advance civil society causes. But at the end of the day, we
are very concerned and worried about the continued restrictions
on these organizations.
By the time what happened last year happened, USAID was a
very small partner with these organizations that had become
almost entirely supported through a diversity of sources of
support, most of which were Russian. So it is not so much a
targeting of USAID that we are concerned about. It is the space
and the ability of partners, like GOLOS, to be effective
operators.
Senator Murphy. So without the mission presence, will there
be any presence of USAID dollars in Russia moving forward?
Dr. Shah. Well, the State Department will continue to
provide engagement and support in a range of ways to partners.
USAID will not be part of that.
Senator Murphy. Just turning quickly to Afghanistan, I want
to just raise a very specific point. On one of my recent visits
there, we were taking a look at some, you know, very productive
programs that you had funded to try to build the agricultural
sector. And we continued to hear about a persistent problem of
transport that, though we were doing a better job of getting
resources to producers and they were producing new crops that
were not poppy, increasingly they just could not come up with
an economic rationale to get them out of the country to buyers
because on average the transport was being stopped 24 different
times, legally and illegally, by people who required them to
pay fees. And by the time they got it to a port, it just did
not make any sense to sell it any longer.
Can you talk a little bit about this specific problem in
Afghanistan and how that potentially gets better or worse as we
decrease our military presence there? We are doing a lot of
good work with farmers, but it does not do much good if they
cannot get their product to market because of the difficulty of
transportation.
Dr. Shah. Well, thank you for asking about agriculture in
Afghanistan. I think over the next 5 to 7 years, until some of
the mining resources come online, that will be the core driver
of growth and development and employment for the bulk of the
people of Afghanistan.
The reality is the central challenge for Afghanistan in
this setting is sustaining the huge gains that have already
been made, and ultimately replacing international support and
military contracting with private activity and private
investment. And private investment simply cannot thrive in an
environment that, as you described, has so many erratic points
of engagement from officials, or otherwise, who effectively
create a difficult and sometimes corrupt operating environment.
So we have worked in a number of ways to address that.
First we have created something called the Tokyo Mutual
Accountability Framework by which future aid commitments will
be conditioned on Afghans themselves achieving certain
benchmarks, one of which is specifically fighting corruption
and improving the collection of domestic revenue from customs
and reducing transport bottlenecks.
Second, we work with them across the board on trying to, in
a more specific way, implement programs that address these
things. Things as technical as using mobile-phone-based payment
systems have been found to be effective at essentially cutting
out the various layers of middlemen who can sometimes cause
these types of respective corruption problems that limit
private activity and investment.
The third is we are in the process of making sustainable
agricultural investments and often doing it through local
Afghan private enterprises, and we think that is going to be a
very important part of that sector succeeding.
Senator Murphy. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr.
Chairman.
The Chairman. Senator Cardin.
Senator Cardin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Administrator Shah, I want to spend a little bit of time
allowing you to respond to how the President's budget fits into
the Rebalance to Asia policies that the administration has
announced and is moving forward on so many different fronts. So
I am interested as to how your budget will complement the
President's initiative on the Rebalance to Asia. First, I want
to ask about two specific countries, and then I will be glad to
get a general response if the time remains.
In Burma, the President has made this a personal priority.
You opened an office in August of last year, if I am correct.
Can you just update us as to the progress being made in that
country? We have gotten mixed reports as to how things are
going.
Dr. Shah. Yes, thank you. I will say just in general while
we have a 6-percent overall reduction in our budget, the fiscal
year 2014 request reflects a 7-percent increase for Asia to
capture this Presidential priority of a pivot to a
prioritization of our Asia partnerships.
In Burma specifically, when the President was there, he
both opened the USAID mission and launched a partnership that
was, in fact, conditional. It delineates the conditions under
which we are expanding our efforts on a range of fronts. And
some of those conditions have to do with government
transparency and openness and continuing on their path of
reform. And some of them have to do with how they are
addressing the peace process with ethnic minorities in certain
border areas.
We believe there has been effective and significant
progress in the first area, and we know there are processes in
place to address the second. But as we have all seen more
recently in the press, that it is not on the same trajectory as
the first.
That said, our efforts are focused on a few things. First,
we are focused on improving the economic climate, opening up
the economy, and supporting the kinds of public-private
partnerships that we launched on a recent visit that I made
there with a range of American technology companies creating
higher education partnerships and opportunities for business
starts in Burma.
A second is a real focus on health, education, and
agriculture, which are by indicators some of the lowest in the
region by far on all of those fronts, and they have a lot of
potential. But we will have to implement those programs
effectively and with far more domestic investment alongside our
commitments and capabilities.
And then the third is we are active participants in the
peace process and in the humanitarian services needs that exist
in areas where there has been ethnic conflict. And so we are
actively doing that as well.
Senator Cardin. I would suggest there is no bigger
spotlight than the President when he visits, but you need to
keep the spotlight on Burma. Clearly the progress has been
inconsistent and there is great opportunity there.
I want you to comment on Vietnam for one moment, and let me
put this in context. It is one of the PEPFAR countries, and I
am a strong supporter of PEPFAR. I think it has been incredibly
successful. But in Vietnam, PEPFAR makes up more than half the
aid programs we have there, totaling roughly $70 million
dollars if I am correct. And that is a significant amount of
money for that one country.
I believe that the HIV/AIDS rate in Vietnam is less than
.05 percent. So the question is, Is that the best use of our
foreign aid resources in a country that has a relatively low
rate of infection, where the other needs are so great? That
money, perhaps, could be used for other purposes to advance
U.S. goals. Your comments.
Dr. Shah. Well first, thank you for asking the question. I
think the President's budget, especially in fiscal year 2014,
reflects some of those tough tradeoffs. While we remain very
committed to the PEPFAR control effort in Vietnam, the actual
budget committed to that will decrease significantly by 20
percent, because of increased domestic investment and
responsibility for seeing through the ongoing treatment needs
for Vietnamese patients, but also because we wanted to increase
resources in a few other areas of investment in order to
capture opportunities on poverty reduction, and maintain civil
society rights, and support democratic governance.
Senator Cardin. You are usually very responsive to my
questions. I did not find that particularly responsive. We have
a limited amount of money, and it is wonderful their country is
making progress on HIV/AIDS, but, are there higher priorities
that we should be investing in in Vietnam?
Dr. Shah. Well, let me address it a slightly different way
by saying I think one of the top priorities we do want to
capture is Vietnamese participation in the TPP, the trade
partnership. And we are increasing our investment to encourage
that participation, and the budget reflects that in that it
reflects an increase in our economic support resources, but a
decrease in some of the core global health investments.
There are other programs we are seeing through, like dioxin
remediation and support for overall economic governance. But I
think the direct answer to your question is, yes, we believe
that there are other priorities that we should be supporting,
and we are trying to prioritize that within a difficult budget.
Senator Cardin. And there is strong support for PEPFAR, and
I think it has been remarkably successful. My point is that if
there are higher leverage programs available in a country, we
should be able to talk about that and look at it. Vietnam has
been in the spotlight a lot for United States relations, and it
is a country that we have made a lot of progress with,
including on security issues. I think many of us thought that
is amazing.
So we have made progress on all fronts of Vietnam, and we
have to look at our resources and see if we are using them most
effectively.
I will get your response to the other parts of Asia later,
but thank you very much for your commitment.
The Chairman. Senator Kaine.
Senator Kaine. Thank you again, Dr. Shah. I just want to
follow up on comments that the chairman made about the
Americas. Senator Rubio made some comments as well. And, you
know, just to say that any time somebody from USAID or the
State Department is here before this committee, I think you are
going to hear a lot of questions about this from, I think, a
lot of different angles because it is of grave concern.
I lived in Honduras in 1980 and 1981 when it was a military
dictatorship. And in that period of time, labor activists,
human rights activists, clergy were being persecuted, even
losing their lives. There were civil wars in Guatemala and El
Salvador that were sending refugees by the tens of thousands
over the border. The United States was building a military
presence in Honduras to use as a staging area for a fight
against Nicaragua.
It is not a military dictatorship today. It is a democracy
today, and it is less safe. The people that I lived with then
in a very oppressive time are less safe in their communities
today in Honduras, and not just in Honduras, than they were. At
that point, Honduras, who has been just a spectacular ally of
the United States--if there is a more pro-U.S. Government in
Central America than Honduras, I do not know what it is over
time.
We pulled the Peace Corps out of Honduras because it has
the highest murder rate in the world. And so when we see
budgets that are declining in this part of the world, it is not
only--all the issues that the chairman mentioned are true. So
many of the issues that we are wrestling with, they are right
in our own front yard in the Americas. But we also have a
little bit to do with this.
I met with the Honduran Ambassador to the United States
yesterday. In terms of their internal security situation, you
know, perceptible reductions in U.S. consumers' demand for
drugs is the thing that would make them the safest. If we had a
plant that was on the border of the United States that was
spewing airborne toxins over Central America and killing
people, we would do something about it. We would be demanded to
do something about it. Our committees would demand that we do
something about it.
But it is U.S. demand for drugs that is hugely a part of
the security situation, especially in Central America. So
whether it is CARSI, whether it is your rule of law, project to
help Mexico and criminal justice issues, whether it is this
Partnership for Growth pilot that you are working on in El
Salvador, and that is something where there is a budgetary
plus. I was glad to see that, El Salvador and other countries.
I just think before this committee and before the
International Development Subcommittee, you know, I think you
are going to hear a lot of questions about the Americas.
We may be rebalancing toward Asia because of China. China
is rebalancing toward the Americas, as you know, with their
work in resource contracts and so much of what they are doing
in the Americas. You know, they see it as an opportunity area.
They see it as an area where they should be more deeply
involved.
I would venture to say, you know, it is probably hard to
get transparent Chinese budgetary figures, but they have a
development philosophy, too. And I would venture to say that
their development philosophy, they see the Americas as a growth
area for the Chinese development philosophy, and it is an area
of decline for us. And I just think that it is something that
we need to be very, very concerned about.
And I suspect that there will be an awful lot of questions
about that any time State, USAID, other agencies are before
this committee.
Dr. Shah. Thank you. I appreciate those comments. I know
they echo those of the chairman.
The Chairman. And the chair is happy to have an ally in
this. [Laughter.]
Dr. Shah. I will say in this context, we have worked very
hard to have a dramatic investment in the CARSI Program to
expand the Partnership for Growth to that region, and to
enhance the public-private partnerships specifically for El
Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, and even to establish this
new program with the city of Los Angeles where we are not just
taking the kind of technical strategies that have worked in
that setting at crime reduction, but actually asking the
specific individuals who worked to counter those specific gang
organizations to go to Central America and work with
counterparts that are facing, in some settings, the same gang
organization.
You are absolutely right that there is a very close and
compelling tie to what happens in this country and citizen
security in that region. It is also very clear that the
fundamental outcome of the Partnership for Growth is that the
No. 1 constraint to growth is citizen security. That is far and
away No. 1, and that is why we are trying to do everything we
can against those challenges. And we have also expanded our
efforts to do this in a coordinated way with the military and
with the mapping exercises that SOUTHCOM has really taken
leadership on.
We appreciate those comments, and I hear you, and I
certainly hear the chairman as well.
The Chairman. Thank you. Let me just piggyback a moment so
we can close the loop on this. I gave it to you in a long list
of things, so I just want to mention specifically--on CARSI,
how are you intending to use the additional funding for 2014?
And in addition to what specifically are you using the
additional funding for, what are we doing about helping or
engaging the Central American governments in their fiscal and
policy reforms that would be necessary to sustain these types
of programs that were supported by AID?
Dr. Shah. Well, thank you, Senator. I have had the chance
to visit and see some of these efforts in practice, and our
funding goes to specific elements of CARSI. CARSI obviously
also includes core State investments. But some of the things we
have supported include mapping, community crime--mapping using
new technologies and identification of crime rates, areas, hot
spots, community crime prevention strategies that have borne
out with real data that they have been far more effective than
what those communities were trying before.
We have been the lead partner within that program for some
of the youth programs that reach at-risk youth and have engaged
some American partners to help advance those efforts as well.
And then we work in partnership to track both the international
gang relationships and otherwise to be able to provide data and
information to our partners in the region. Those are just some
of the things that CARSI does overall, and we have one part of
that program in terms of our responsibility.
On the very good question of what are we doing on the
fiscal policy side, while I know there are some activities to
support that, I would rather get the right answer for you and
send that out.
The Chairman. I will look for that answer. So basically, is
your answer that you are just plussing up the activities you
are already pursuing under CARSI, or is there something new
that you are doing with the additional money?
Dr. Shah. No. Well, I think the things that we believe have
the most evidence of being really effective are the areas where
we will focus the increased resources. And this mapping effort
that has offered a lot of data and information has been very
closely correlated to improving outcomes is one of the examples
of that.
The Chairman. Senator Murphy.
Senator Murphy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. One additional
question. I wanted to bring you back to Russia's zone of
influence again, talk about the Ukraine for a moment.
You know, obviously a pivotal moment right now in the
Ukraine as they are making some fundamental decision as to
which they orient. It is not a choice for them necessarily, but
there is certainly a lot of leverage that we have at our
disposal to try to make their turn to the West slightly more
attractive than a turn to the east. The Peace Corps, for
instance, has one of its largest presence in the world in the
Ukraine. We have had enormous success there.
Can you just talk for a moment about the tools at our
disposal at USAID over the next several years as we talk with
Yanukovych and others about their opportunity to orient
themselves toward Europe, to have greater partnership with the
United States amidst obviously growing pressure Russia to look
in a different direction.
What are the tools that we have at our disposal to try to
help them make that decision?
Dr. Shah. I think we have a few. We have helped to expand
the Peace Corps presence as one example. We have supported
democratic governance and civil society programming and have
been probably the lead international supporter, and thereby
have some very longstanding relationships and partnerships with
organizations in that community. And many of them have
matriculated into government and have taken with them a
capacity to work with us and partner with us.
Traditionally, we have had a larger health investment in
the Ukraine. Part of that was focused on the control of TB and
helping them manage, in particular, multidrug resistant
tuberculosis, which was more challenging. And more recently we
are focused on establishing partnerships that can attract more
private investment.
We do not have the kind of resourcing to allow for sort of
large sale infrastructure, but we also do not think that is
what is required given their economic standing. It is more
helping them with policy reforms, domestic administration, and
attracting private investment through our partners, including
OPIC and Ex-Im and some of the other U.S. agencies that can
bring resources to bear.
Senator Murphy. Well, as you know, we are at a critical
moment in terms of the decisions that are being made there, and
I think you are right. At this point they are looking for
opportunities for the United States to allow them to attract
some private money that they right now do not have an
availability to other than through partnerships with Russian
industry. And I think you are along the right track.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you. Well, Mr. Administrator, thank
you. You have exhibited a breadth and depth and scope of
knowledge of your agency, and that is tremendously reassuring
to the committee. We look forward to working with you on some
of these issues that we think we can enhance. And as I visit
abroad, I always like to stop by AID projects and see our men
and women in action, and always impressed by them.
With the thanks of the committee, the record will be remain
open until Friday.
The Chairman. And this hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:58 a.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
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Additional Questions and Answers Submitted for the Record
Responses of Administrator Rajiv Shah to Questions Submitted
by Senator Robert Menendez
syria
I understand that the United States has been the largest provider
of humanitarian aid to Syria and I commend the administration on all it
has done on this front. But given the scale and scope of the crisis and
the exponential growth in the number of refugees, I believe we should
be doing more and we should also be ensuring that we receive credit for
the contributions we are making.
Question. Do you expect a dramatic increase in the level of support
for Syrian humanitarian assistance over the next few months?
Answer. For the past 2 years, the U.S. Government has continuously
programmed humanitarian funds in Syria and the neighboring countries to
respond to evolving needs on the ground, targeting any available
opportunities to get assistance to people in need. Given the protracted
conflict and continuously growing needs, the Syria response will remain
one of the USG's highest humanitarian priorities. USAID anticipates
that emergency food requirements in Syria and neighboring countries
will double by October, requiring a commensurate increase in support
from the USG and other donors. For example, the U.N. World Food
Programme (WFP) is currently reaching approximately 2 million people in
Syria with emergency food assistance, with plans to expand
distributions to 4 million people. USAID and the U.S. Department of
State's Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (State/PRM) are
in the process of programming additional funds, which will be announced
be in the coming months.
Question. How can we ensure that we receive credit for all the
contributions we are making? How do we balance the need to receive
credit from the Syrian people, with the imperative of protecting aid
providers by not labeling everything as ``made in the USA?''
Answer. Though recognition of U.S. humanitarian efforts inside
Syria are severely constrained by safety and security concerns we are
working to make our aid more visible. The U.S. Government requires NGO
partners to brand our assistance unless doing so would imperil the
lives of aid recipients and the humanitarian workers delivering
assistance. In the majority of Syria it remains too dangerous for wide-
scale branding activities. In areas where it is safe to do so,
including opposition held areas in the north, we are able to inform
local leaders and recipients about where the aid is coming from.
We work with international organization partners to highlight U.S.
Government support wherever possible. For example, nearly all of the
bakeries receiving U.S. Government flour in Aleppo governorate are
informed that it is U.S.-donated flour. A USG partner recently
delivered heavy-duty plastic sheeting branded with the USAID logo to
Atmeh camp in Idlib governorate. The plastic sheeting will be used to
construct community structures in the camp, which houses more than
26,500 IDPs. The USG continues to work with partners to evaluate
appropriate opportunities to increase the visibility of USG assistance
without endangering the lives of both partners and beneficiaries.
Because wide-scale branding is not an option at this time, we are
seeking to get the word out in other ways that do not undermine the
operation: U.S. Government staff in D.C. regularly meet with the Syrian
diaspora community to utilize its connections inside Syria and spread
the message of USG support. We also continue to heavily engage with
local, regional, and international media, both traditional and digital,
to illustrate the extent to which USG humanitarian assistance is
reaching a wide range of areas inside Syria.
U.S. Government officials use every public opportunity to highlight
our humanitarian assistance to the region, including speaking
engagements, social media, and regional, national, and international
media interviews.
Question. Should we be providing more of the humanitarian aid
through the Syrian opposition as some have suggested? Or are you
satisfied with the current approach of going primarily through the
United Nations?
Answer. As policy, the USG does not channel humanitarian assistance
through political organizations and institutions, such as the Syrian
Coalition or the Syrian Arab Republic Government (SARG). To reach all
populations in need, the USG and all other humanitarian donors must
work with relief organizations that strictly adhere to the humanitarian
principles of neutrality and impartiality of aid. This is particularly
essential in a war zone, to ensure access to beneficiaries as well as
the safety of beneficiaries and the relief workers who are delivering
the aid.
The USG continues to closely work with the Syrian Coalitions'
Assistance Coordination Unit (ACU) on humanitarian activities and is
currently funding a humanitarian advisor for 3 months to improve the
ACU's capacity to better coordinate and manage the humanitarian
response in Syria.
While the USG is delivering approximately 56 percent of its
assistance in Syria through U.N. agencies, the USG also provides a
significant portion of funding to international NGOs that are
delivering assistance through networks of local NGOs. The USG's
strategy is based on the ability of relief organizations, whether U.N.
agency or NGO, to respond to needs quickly and effectively.
To date, USG humanitarian assistance has reached all 14
governorates, including contested and opposition-controlled areas. The
World Food Programme (WFP), which receives significant support from the
USG, is working in coordination with the Syrian Arab Red Crescent and
its vast network of volunteers, as well as NGOs, to reach nearly 2
million people during each distribution cycle. In addition, USG support
through international NGOs has reached more than 1 million people in
some of the hardest hit areas of Syria. The USG will continue its
funding strategy, while also working to identify potential new partners
that can reach underassisted areas or respond to unmet needs.
latin america general
Our international affairs budget should more accurately reflect the
importance of relationships, opportunities, and challenges in our own
hemisphere. Latin American and Caribbean nations are our neighbors, and
our actions in the hemisphere have a direct, often magnified, impact at
home.
Question. What are USAID's objectives for foreign assistance in the
region? How will reductions in funding affect USAID's ability to
achieve those objectives?
Answer. Impressive progress in the Latin America and Caribbean
(LAC) region in the past several decades has enabled USAID to adjust
its mission in the region away from providing direct assistance--like
vaccinations and food aid--and toward strengthening the capacity of LAC
governments, the private sector and civil society to propel their own
development.
We are prioritizing investments in four areas: (1) rebuilding Haiti
through investments in agriculture, infrastructure, energy, health and
economic growth; (2) reducing crime and violence--particularly among
youth in Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean--and reducing drug
production in Colombia and Peru; (3) promoting democracy and protecting
fundamental freedoms in Cuba and other countries where restrictions on
press and civil society and flawed electoral processes continue, and in
some cases worsen; and (4) reducing greenhouse gas emissions and
adapting to the impacts of global climate change.
To accelerate progress in these areas, we are embracing a new way
of doing business by: (1) channeling more resources through local
entities; (2) testing novel ways to help local governments generate
revenues for development; (3) partnering with private companies (U.S.,
multinational, and local) to supplement our assistance, create durable
local enterprises and deliver long-term development dividends; (4)
opening USAID to innovators from LAC and the world in search of the
most effective and efficient development solutions; and (5) tapping
into the home-grown development expertise of LAC leaders like Brazil,
Chile, Colombia, and Mexico.
cuba
I have long-supported a strong budget allocation for U.S. democracy
promotion funding in Cuba. Our efforts on this score provide critical
support to Cuba's civil society such as access to communication
technology, humanitarian assistance for the families of political
prisoners, and training for independent journalists. It is essential
that we uphold the historical funding level of $20 million to
demonstrate our strong support in Cuba for democracy, freedom of
expression and assembly, and human rights. This year's request is only
$15 million.
Question. What are the reasons for these cuts?
Answer. The U.S. commitment to human rights and democracy in Cuba
remains strong. We will continue our robust program providing
humanitarian support to political prisoners and their families,
building civil society and expanding democratic space, and facilitating
the information flow in, out, and within the island.
The FY14 request for $15M is based on our assessment of needs on
the ground, and on-island and off-island capacity to carry out
programs. In addition, the combined pipeline (FY09 to FY12) for
Department of State and USAID implementers is about $44 million,
sufficient funding ($74 million total) to carry out the purposes of the
program over the next 3 years.
mexico
I understand that the nature of our assistance delivery to Mexico
has changed. Whereas in the early stages of the Merida Initiative, we
delivered a good deal of expensive equipment, we are now working to
support the Mexican Government's efforts to strengthen institutions.
However, I want to make certain that--as we reduce our assistance
budget to Mexico by almost 40 percent--we are not constraining our
ability to flexibly respond to any strategy shifts that may come down
under the new Mexican administration.
Question. Do we have the flexibility to respond to policy shifts
that may emerge under President Pena Nieto? USAID is also supporting
municipal level crime prevention programs in Mexico for the first time.
What lessons can be learned from similar efforts that have been going
on in Central America for several years?
Answer. Yes, USAID has the flexibility to respond to potential
policy shifts from the new Pena Nieto administration. In fact, the Pena
Nieto administration expressed support for USAID's primary areas of
Merida Initiative programming--criminal justice reform, crime and
violence prevention, and human rights. Closely aligned with the
priorities of the new administration, USAID continues to emphasize
crime prevention and community resiliency under Pillar IV of the Merida
Initiative. While the geographic and technical focus may change as the
Government of Mexico (GOM) develops its new approach to crime
prevention, USAID and our counterparts are currently working together
to align strategic priorities and activities.
USAID has incorporated lessons learned from crime prevention
programs in Central America to its programming in Mexico, where USAID
supports the GOM and local communities to plan and implement community
development strategies aimed at reducing crime and violence and
providing youth with alternatives to crime. The Pillar IV strategy and
current programs relied heavily on lessons learned from Central
America, in particular the need to improve coordination and planning at
the local level through the development of municipal crime prevention
committees and plans. USAID is also incorporating experience in crime
data collection and analyses, as well as in establishing alliances with
the private sector to reduce crime and violence.
colombia
Colombia is working toward implementation of some ambitious but
necessary reforms and I am glad that USAID is supporting them in these
efforts. The Land Restitution and Victims Law, in particular, is
essential for sustainable peace in Colombia. Colombia is taking on a
greater share of the counternarcotics burden. I am happy to see that. I
understand, also, that Colombia is increasingly involved in training
and assistance delivery elsewhere in Latin America. Years of U.S.
training has prepared Colombian security officials for the task of
assisting their neighbors--a sound U.S. investment. Colombia and the
FARC are in the middle of a peace process right now. We all long to see
lasting peace in Colombia and are hopeful for an accord.
Question. Will this budget request allow us to respond if the
Colombians call on us for assistance? For help implementing a peace
accord?
Answer. USAID is supporting many Government of Colombia (GOC)
efforts that lay the groundwork for peace. Our current programs are
focused on bringing state presence and services to marginalized, high-
conflict areas of the country; supporting victims and land restitution;
and promoting access to justice. Many of these programs directly
support GOC initiatives related to the five agenda items (rural
development, guarantee of functional political opposition and civic
participation, end of conflict, drug trafficking, and rights of
victims) to be negotiated by the FARC and Colombian Government as part
of a possible peace accord.
Without knowing what the GOC may or may not request in terms of
additional or modified support in light of a possible peace agreement,
we have worked to increase flexibility in our programs in order to
quickly adjust our assistance if need be.
central america
CARSI is a top priority. I am glad to see the President's request
includes an addition $27 million for security in Central America.
However, I believe our efforts in this region could benefit from more
robust assistance levels. Central American nations face grave
challenges--Honduras' homicide rate is among the highest in the world.
The U.S. Government is partnering with governments in Central America
to prevent violence, strengthen state institutions, combat narcotics
trafficking, and increase citizen security. Failure to adequately fund
these efforts will result in continued high levels of crime and
violence, and an inability to dismantle criminal organizations. U.S.
investments in the region expand markets for American businesses and
connect high quality Latin American goods to the U.S. market. Stable
Central American countries diminish the push factors for illegal
immigration.
Question. To what extent are the governments of Central America
implementing fiscal and policy reforms necessary to sustain and
replicate programs currently supported by USAID? How does USAID intend
to use the additional CARSI funding requested for FY 2014? Is the
additional funding sufficient to meet the challenges we face in Central
America?
Answer. Central American nations are making progress toward raising
more of their own resources to improve the rule of law and address the
root causes of crime and insecurity in their countries.
For example, El Salvador has improved its tax collection system,
which should generate additional funding for citizen safety
initiatives. Similarly, Honduras passed an emergency ``security tax''
measure in June 2012 that established a temporary levy on a range of
financial transactions with the proceeds set to support security sector
needs.
In addition to continuing to implement programs for at-risk youth,
municipal crime prevention, and rule of law, USAID intends to use
additional FY14 CARSI funding to further target the most vulnerable,
at-risk populations.
For example, USAID is partnering with the city of Los Angeles to
adapt a tool designed to identify those youth most at risk of joining a
gang. Using this tool, USAID will provide mentoring and family support
services on those most vulnerable to joining gangs and criminal
activity.
Further, USAID will continue to pursue public-private partnerships
on social prevention to engage local actors and maximize private sector
contributions. For example, USAID recently signed a partnership with
five Salvadorian foundations to combat citizen insecurity and
strengthen municipal responses to crime and violence in 50 dangerous
communities in El Salvador.
Finally, USAID works actively to incorporate best practices and
lessons learned in other parts of the region and world into our citizen
security portfolio. FY14 funding will help USAID develop and nurture
best practices among citizen security technical experts and
practitioners from various cities across the Western Hemisphere.
CARSI assistance is meant to supplement--not supplant--the need for
host nations to develop, fund, and implement national strategies to
reverse their deteriorating citizen safety environments.
USAID has effectively coordinated our programming with other donors
and multilateral and international financial institutions to reduce
duplicative programs and identify leveraging opportunities to enhance
the impact of our funding. Together with other donors and the host
country governments, the nearly $132 million appropriated for USAID-
specific CARSI programs in Central America from FY08 through FY12 has
been able to achieve results in targeted municipalities and provide the
host countries with blueprints for successful interventions to address
the underlying drivers of crime and violence.
caribbean
The Caribbean is a transshipment point for drugs en route to the
United States. The Caribbean Basin Security Initiative aims to improve
local capacity to combat the flow of illicit drugs. However, I worry
that we are not doing enough. The sequester is reducing our military's
presence in the Caribbean, certain interagency interdiction programs
were grounded for off the coast of Central America for other reasons,
and this budget request, instead of compensating for these losses,
decreases funding for Caribbean security.
Question. Are our development and crime prevention activities in
the hemisphere well-coordinated, strategic, and forward-looking?
Answer. Since 2010, various USG agencies, including USAID and the
State Department, have been jointly implementing Caribbean Basin
Security Initiative (CBSI) programs to reduce illicit trafficking,
increase citizen security and address the causes of crime and violence.
In an interagency effort, we have drawn on each other's comparative
advantage to provide assistance on maritime and aerial security
cooperation, law enforcement capacity building, border and port
security and firearms interdiction, justice sector reform, and crime
prevention and at-risk youth. In addition, the Department of State
convenes an Inter-Agency Working Group including representatives from
USAID, DHS, DOJ, ATF, DEA, OSD, SOUTHCOM, NORTHCOM, and USCG to discuss
CBSI programs and related strategies.
USAID has taken a strategic and coordinated approach to addressing
the security and development needs in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The CBSI programs complement the Central America Regional Security
Initiative (CARSI) and the Merida Initiative in Mexico. As trafficking
activities are being prevented in one area, traffickers seek
alternative routes, so there is a need to preemptively deter
trafficking activities from taking root in other areas. One mechanism
to help ensure that these initiatives are effectively coordinated is
the Executive Committee for citizen security in the Western Hemisphere.
This interagency group includes key interagency stakeholders in each of
the initiatives and brings them together periodically to discuss
lessons learned, opportunities for enhanced implementation, and
opportunities for coordination across the initiatives.
USAID missions in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, the
Dominican Republic, and Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean are
developing strategies that include citizen security as a key focal
point for the planning of long-term development activities. The idea of
cross-sectoral responses to the security environment is woven
throughout and integrated into these programs with the goal of
improving citizen security. For example, at-risk youth who participate
in USAID's workforce development programs benefit from life skills and
vocational training that are interconnected with broader health
programs. All of these activities work in concert to ensure that youth
who are at risk of engaging in criminal activities are receiving
critical services and have opportunities to engage productively in
society.
afghanistan/pakistan
Question. I took my first trip as chairman to Afghanistan and
Pakistan because I believe this region remains critical to our national
security interests. The region is in the midst of an economic,
security, and political transition. During my trip there, I spent time
with our USAID missions and conducted field visits to review some of
our aid programs. I came away impressed with the dedication and drive
of our USAID teams there. But I also had concerns about how well we can
conduct oversight in the field, given the security conditions.
How are we right-sizing our aid presence in both countries
to reflect our diminishing footprint, security concerns, and
implementation challenges we face? What steps are we taking to
ensure that our aid is ``necessary, achievable, and
sustainable,'' steps this committee called for in its June 2011
oversight report?
Our relationship with Pakistan has been rocky these past couple of
years, despite efforts to build a strategic partnership based on mutual
interests and trust. Efforts such as the historic Kerry-Lugar-Berman
aid legislation have faced an array of political and implementation
problems.
What is your vision for improving this relationship, and
how can Congress best support this effort given all the
challenges we face?
Answer. Afghanistan: USAID has identified three priority areas for
continued investment leading up to and beyond transition: sustainable,
inclusive economic growth; credible, effective, and legitimate
governance; and consolidation of gains, particularly in health,
education, and women's rights. All programming will reflect the four
principles of Results, Partnership, Sustainability, and Accountability,
and USAID has adjusted its operating model to facilitate an Afghan-led
and hence, more sustainable transition:
First, USAID has increased the percentage of our programming
provided on-budget to the Afghan Government, with an emphasis
on building Afghan capacity to effectively manage and oversee
this assistance. We will also continue to employ multilateral
funds like the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund to
consolidate programming and share monitoring responsibilities
with other donors and the Afghan Government.
Second, USAID is focusing more of its assistance on Regional
Economic Zones (REZs) that cover major population centers and
are linked with regional trade routes to generate more
investment opportunities.
Third, USAID is expanding the number and type of tools in
our monitoring capacity to ensure we have access to all
appropriate techniques necessary to provide continued oversight
of our projects in the field, even as we decrease field staff
and have potentially less direct hire access to project sites.
This remote monitoring program will employ a number of methods
in a multilayered approach to obtaining necessary information,
including expanded partner reporting, remote sensing with
aerial and satellite imagery where applicable, third-party
monitors, community-based reporting, and collection/sharing of
data gathered by other donors.
Finally, in keeping with the principles of Busan, the New
Deal for Fragile States, and the Tokyo Mutual Accountability
Framework, USAID is transforming its investment approach in
Afghanistan to one of mutual accountability, working in close
partnership with the Afghan Government and its people and
closely monitoring progress on reform. In July, we announced
the creation of an incentive mechanism that will provide up to
$175 million of current funding for the achievement of specific
economic and democratic reforms before those funds are made
available to the Afghan Government.
In addition to adjustments in USAID's operating model in
preparation for transition, USAID has incorporated sustainability
analysis into its project design process as part of the Administrator's
Sustainability Guidance issued in 2011. Each project must develop a
thorough sustainability plan during the design phase. To ensure that
current and planned projects are consistent with the Sustainability
Guidance, USAID also conducts internal portfolio reviews twice a year
and once a year with the Afghan Government.
Answer. Pakistan: USAID agrees that programs in Pakistan must have
the ownership of the Pakistanis to be fully successful and sustainable.
USAID constantly monitors and evaluates our activities in Pakistan to
ensure resources are used strategically and appropriately to achieve
program goals and sustainability.
In 2011, USAID and the State Department jointly reviewed the
program portfolio, streamlined the number of programs, and narrowed the
focus to five priority sectors that represent mutual U.S. Government
and Government of Pakistan priorities: energy, economic growth and
agriculture, stabilization, education, and health. This more-focused
portfolio of activities ensures that our investment:
Advances U.S. foreign policy objectives;
Defines ambitious, measurable, and achievable results and
manages to these results;
Builds local capacity in Pakistani governmental and
nongovernmental organizations;
Creates a network of public-private partnerships that makes
gain sustainable;
Safeguards U.S. Government resources; and,
Communicates impact to a broad Pakistani audience to ensure
visibility and awareness of our efforts.
USAID takes a multilayered approach to monitoring and evaluation in
Pakistan, to include a missionwide third party contract for evaluations
to ensure robust program management. Also, the number of locally
employed staff has increased over the past year, although challenges
continue. For example, earlier this year, USAID made the decision to
relocate local staff operating out of our Peshawar office to Islamabad
in response to the deteriorating security situation in Peshawar.
Nevertheless, we believe we are able to continue effective monitoring
of our projects in FATA using third parties, aerial and satellite
imagery, and other methods.
usaid reform
USAID Reform USAID went through a period of 20 years of decline in
personnel, dispersion of development responsibilities to other agencies
such as the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) and the State
Department AIDS Coordinator's office, and in 2006, a loss of budgeting
and policy capabilities.
Question. How would you assess your agency's progress in restoring
its capacities under USAID Forward and the Development Leadership
Initiative? What further reforms are you planning on making? What is
the end goal of these efforts?
Answer. USAID Forward: USAID Forward, initiated in 2009, is
designed to change the way the Agency does business--with new
partnerships, an emphasis on innovation, and a clear focus on results.
The USAID Forward reform agenda identifies seven areas of
concentration. They are: (1) implementation and procurement reform; (2)
talent management; (3) rebuilding policy capacity; (4) strengthening
monitoring and evaluation; (5) rebuilding budget management; (6)
science and technology; and (7) innovation.
With these areas of priorities foremost, USAID established the
Bureau of Policy, Planning and Learning to drive policy, and to restore
and deepen the discipline of development across the Agency.
Concurrently, USAID reestablished Agency-level budget and resource
planning capability with the creation of the Office of Budget and
Resource Management (BRM). USAID is responsible for the development and
humanitarian assistance budget for USAID-managed programs, which is
annually reviewed by the State Department and OMB. BRM has been
instrumental in USAID's efforts to focus and concentrate development
and humanitarian assistance in a difficult budget environment and
strengthen budget capacity within all levels of USAID.
A cornerstone of USAID Forward has been the reestablishment of
USAID strategic planning, including 5-year, country/regional based
strategic plans, and project design capabilities. Under USAID Forward,
the Agency established seven policies (ranging from education to gender
equality to resilience) to support an evidence-based reform process and
tighten and align Agency planning, budgeting, and reporting around the
globe.
To date, USAID has conducted 21 design and 18 strategic planning
workshops in the field. USAID missions are carrying out intensive and
data-driven strategic planning. By the end of 2012, 20 USAID missions
have approved strategic plans, Country Regional Development Cooperation
Strategies. A total of 70 USAID missions are scheduled to complete
their strategic plans by the end of the 2014. To better measure the
effectiveness of programs and help to inform the next phase of
programming, USAID field missions completed 186 quality program
evaluations. These are driving USAID's evidence-based decisions.
The Agency has built several global platforms to capture results
and leverage this knowledge so that it is shared transparently to
further support and catalyze Agencywide learning capacities. Last,
USAID has put in place structures to foster innovative development
solutions (e.g., Grand Challenges, competitions, university
partnerships) that create opportunities to connect staff to leading
innovators in the private sector and academia. This will fortify new,
effective partnerships across the globe to transform our collective
efforts and help solve the most difficult development issues of today.
Taken together, these reforms are forming the foundation of a new
model for development and will continue to define the way we work. It
is a model that recognizes that the problems we face are solvable, but
that solving them requires continued commitment and partnerships across
the private sector, with NGOs, governants, universities, and others.
Our ultimate goal remains to work ourselves out of business and replace
our efforts with those of responsible institutions, vibrant private
sectors, and thriving civil societies.
The Development Leadership Initiative: The Development Leadership
Initiative (DLI) program was launched to increase USAID's total Foreign
Service staffing by 1,200 with particular emphasis on rebuilding the
technical cadre of agriculture, education, engineers, and economists,
and expanding language capabilities and USAID's overseas presence.
USAID's on-board Foreign Service Officer (FSO) career staff at the
beginning of FY08 was 1,029, with about 640 of these deployed overseas.
Cumulatively, with DLI funding from FY08 to FY10, USAID hired 720 new
FSOs over attrition, averaging one new group of FSOs approximately
every 8 weeks. FY11 funding supported an additional 100 new FSOs,
bringing the total DLI hiring to 820 since its inception. No funds were
appropriated for additional increases in FSO staff in FY12.
Recruitment and Hiring: DLI hiring is designed to rebuild USAID's
technical capabilities as well as provide resources to enhance the
Agency's stewardship functions. USAID has had a broad and rich
applicant pool since its inception. Between 2008 and 2011, USAID
received over 35,000 applications. The selection process is rigorous
and highly competitive and approximately 15 percent of basically
qualified applicants are invited for the three-stage interview process.
Approximately 4 percent of applicants receive offers. While not
required for all positions, most require a master's degree as a minimum
qualification. On average, selected applicants have 5 to 7 years of
prior international experience before joining USAID; most speak at
least one other language; and about 28 percent are former Peace Corps
Volunteers or staff.
Individuals hired through the DLI program now constitute 45 percent
of the USAID Foreign Service. With a current cadre of 1,790 career
FSOs, USAID has now reached almost 70 percent of its original hiring
target.
Continued reform efforts are planned to build the capacity among
the staff hired under the DLI program. These officers will need to have
a strong foundation in core technical competencies relevant to their
functions in the Agency to implement effective projects and to elevate
development as an evidence-based discipline. Efforts are also underway
to strengthen the alignment of staff globally with mission needs to
advance USAID Forward reforms.
global health programs
U.S. global health programs are literally saving millions of lives.
Over 5 million people with HIV are on treatment. We are well on the way
to cutting malaria deaths in half in Africa by 2015. And USAID is
rightly focused on preventing the preventable, namely helping countries
save many of the nearly 7 million children under 5 who die every year,
over 40 percent within that first vulnerable month of life. But, as
effective as these programs are, efforts like the Global Health
Initiative have struggled with interagency differences and tensions.
Question. Please explain to us the current status of the Global
Health Initiative. How can USAID, CDC, and PEPFAR most effectively work
together while each brings their comparative advantage to bear on some
of the world's most pressing problems?
Answer. Leadership of USAID, CDC, and the Office of the Global AIDS
Coordinator continue to meet on a regular basis to discuss policy
issues related to our collective work in the field. In addition, there
are technical committees that address cross-cutting issues, such as
monitoring and evaluation, which are structured around the comparative
advantages of the three agencies to produce the greatest results. Over
40 USG-supported countries have written strategies for operationalizing
the Global Health Initiative and in-country teams work together to
achieve the goals outlined in these strategies.
food aid reform and food security
The administration has proposed some dramatic changes to the way we
provide emergency food assistance.
Question. While there are many reforms proposed for food aid, the
budget still continues to draw a pretty bright line between emergency
assistance and programs to relieve chronic food insecurity. Is this
something of a false dichotomy? Could we do more to promote resilience
while helping address emergencies?
Answer. Emergency food assistance is provided first and foremost to
save lives. Emergency resources can play a significant role in laying
the foundation for greater resilience. The flexibility provided by
having a range of tools for emergency response (cash, vouchers, or in-
kind) greatly increases our ability to reach people before their
ability to recover has been eroded. If a household receives assistance
before losing all productive assets (thereby losing any source of
future income), it is much more likely to be able to recover and move
forward.
Emergency assistance is rarely enough to ensure the future
resilience of vulnerable households. By layering, sequencing, and
integrating our programming to build resilience, relieve chronic food
insecurity, and help vulnerable populations recover from recurrent
shocks and stresses. USAID's Annual Program Statement amendment issued
at the height of the Sahel food crisis last year reflects just that--by
focusing on resilience building across the Sahel, giving priority to
emergency food assistance applications that supported recovery
activities targeting the most vulnerable populations.
The emergence of resilience as an organizing concept helps bridge
the historical divide between humanitarian and development programming.
Emergency assistance, including both relief and recovery programs,
provides a foundation upon which resilience and development investments
can build, particularly in places such as Northern Kenya where
emergency and recovery assistance is required year after year. There,
new resilience programs have been designed to anticipate and
incorporate emergency resources as a proactive way of protecting social
and economic gains in in the face of inevitable droughts and other
shocks in the future. Over time, these programs aim to sustainably
reduce humanitarian assistance needs--building community, local and
national capacities to manage through drought without humanitarian
crisis.
The goal of all USAID food assistance programming is to eventually
eliminate the need for food assistance. USAID expects that its funds,
whether emergency or development, will be used in complementary ways.
There is inherent complementarity between title II nonemergency
programs--which aim to provide a ``hand-up'' to particularly vulnerable
households and communities, and Feed the Future's (FTF) agriculture
programs--which help countries and communities use agriculture to
``move out'' of poverty. Real progress is being made to fully leverage
this complementarity. For example, in Bangladesh and Guatemala, new FTF
projects are completely or partially colocated with title II
nonemergency programs that are targeting the more vulnerable in the
region with foundational support to improve their health and food
security. In some cases, FTF is using the same international and local
partners as Food for Peace (FFP). In these cases title II programs now
can aim to ``graduate'' vulnerable but viable households who can
benefit from value chain interventions being implemented by FTF. In
several other countries, USAID has taken a ``division of labor''
approach, targeting agriculture development assistance resources in
higher productivity areas, and title II development programs in more
food insecure, disaster-prone areas (e.g., Haiti and Uganda). The aim
in these countries is to ramp up agricultural productivity where
potential is greatest, while building resilience and increasing
economic opportunity in crisis-prone areas to lay the foundations for
sustainable growth.
Question. Under your leadership, USAID has emphasized its identity
as a learning organization. You have worked on the challenges of food
security for a number of years. What have you learned from Feed the
Future (FTF) and from your efforts to promote food aid reform? What has
surprised you?
Answer. FTF and Food Aid Reform are both examples of the integrated
and innovative approaches that USAID and the U.S. Government as a whole
employ to address the complex challenges facing the world. Natural
disasters are becoming more frequent, resulting in greater shocks and
threats to food security worldwide.
USAID has seen firsthand how greater flexibility in food assistance
programming can help us save lives in places where traditional food aid
cannot go. Our FFP teams have put together smart, creative solutions to
meet urgent needs in some of the toughest emergencies globally, and
with greater flexibility, they can do even more.
This year, in particular, we have committed a large portion of our
funding available for flexible use to respond to the crisis in Syria.
That means we do not have the flexibility to reach tens of thousands of
children in places like Somalia, Kenya, Pakistan, and the Democratic
Republic of Congo.
FTF coordinates closely with FFP. In general, FFP food aid programs
are community-based programs targeted to very poor or extremely poor
households--``the poorest of the poor.'' Many of these households
depend on agriculture for livelihoods--either from farming their own
land or working on someone else's land. We have learned that many of
these households are often unable to meet their family's basic food and
nonfood needs for 12 months of the year. Constraints, such as limited
land size and labor availability, reliance on less productive
technologies and practices, and poor access to markets and inputs, make
it very difficult for these communities and households to break out of
poverty. FFP programs work at a local level, providing a safety net for
these extremely vulnerable households and have a proven success record
in many underserved communities around the world. Meanwhile, many FTF
programs focus on value chains and aim to address constraints to
agricultural productivity both within targeted geographic areas and, in
terms of policy, at a national level. For example, if a lack of access
to fertilizer and improved seed is a significant constraint to
productivity, FTF engages the host government and other interested
partners to identify key challenges and develop solutions.
As a result, FTF and FFP have learned to work in tandem to allow
for an expanded focus on the resilience of vulnerable communities to
the shocks that exacerbate food insecurity. For example, in order to
combat the recent crises in the Horn of Africa and the Sahel, FTF
programs include both longer term investments like increasing the
commercial availability of climate-resilient crops and reducing trade
and transport barriers, as well as Community Development Funds (CDF).
CDF plays a catalytic role in bridging humanitarian and development
assistance. CDF investments fund community-based interventions aimed at
increasing the economic and nutritional resilience of the rural poor
and accelerating their participation in economic growth. These programs
bridge humanitarian and development objectives through expanded support
for productive rural safety nets, livelihood diversification,
microfinance and savings, and other programs that reduce vulnerability
to short-term production, income, and market disruptions.
violent extremism
Question. In 2011, USAID came out with a policy regarding the
development response to violent extremism and insurgency.
To what extent are you now able to measure the
effectiveness of programming that targets drivers of violent
extremism?
What are some successful examples of USAID's work in
countering violent extremism and what have been some key
lessons learned?
Answer. To support our monitoring and evaluation (M&E) learning for
countering violent extremism (CVE), USAID commissioned a review of
program monitoring and reporting systems that track progress in
addressing violent extremism and insurgency (VE/I). The report, which
reviewed M&E systems across a number of countries including Iraq,
Kenya, the Sahel, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen, provided a series
of recommendations for the Agency's VE/I Steering Committee as part of
a larger endeavor to produce an operational guide and/or field handbook
to assist USAID practitioners. The report concluded that indicators
developed for USAID CVE programs have shown steady improvement and
increasing sophistication over the period 2006 to 2012. Though
measuring the effectiveness of programming in insecure environments is
often costly and burdensome, USAID's experience and expertise in this
area has improved dramatically. Our impact evaluation techniques now
include randomized control trials, baseline surveys, household surveys,
mobile technology, and focus group discussions among others. In global
forums, USAID has been identified as an early leader in developing
approaches for CVE program measurement.
Evidence shows that drivers of extremism are generally related to
the enabling environment (e.g., poorly governed areas and weak security
services), pull factors (i.e., social networks, group dynamics, and
existence of radical institutions), and push factors (i.e., societal
discrimination, economic exclusion, and frustrated expectations). USAID
CVE programming is designed to mitigate those factors. Therefore,
measuring the effectiveness of our programming often involves measuring
the change in community perceptions vis-a-vis those drivers. In this
way, programs are developing more systematic approaches to credibly
document progress and impact, beyond just anecdotal evidence.
Typical CVE programming focuses on livelihoods, governance and
civic participation, functioning state services, government legitimacy,
security, youth engagement, attitudes of tolerance and moderation,
among others. Each of those programs will have tailored indicators to
measure if they reached the desired impact and, by proxy, mitigated the
drivers to radicalization and violence.
Investments in M&E at USAID have increased significantly, and
indicators of progress have shifted toward more complex, abstract, and
meaningful concepts like youth empowerment, community outlook for the
future, attitudes toward violence, and stabilization. Indicator sets
are more likely to capture citizen experience, behavior, and perception
as well as on-the-ground reality. There is a recognition that citizen
perception can be volatile in uncertain, high-risk environments and
that much-surveyed populations are likely to deliver set responses to
frequently asked questions. Much more effort is being invested in
trying to capture concepts that are difficult to measure and may have
indirect causal links with preventing extremist recruitment, such as
the provision of justice (believed to be a vital factor in stability
and resiliency in Pakistan and Afghanistan). In these M&E efforts,
USAID collaborates with other agencies, such as the Department of
Defense, in sharing indicators and data.
USAID programs incorporate a mixed-methods approach to data
collection, which allows M&E specialists to validate or cross-check the
reliability of data from any given source and which also affords richer
and more nuanced information for learning than reliance on any one
quantitative or qualitative method.
In Pakistan, USAID's Karachi Youth Initiative and Youth in Southern
Punjab programs were developed in 2012 to enable the U.S. Government to
respond to the massive amounts of at-risk youth in areas vulnerable to
recruitment by violent extremist groups. Covering specific geographic
neighborhoods and regions, USAID's Office of Transition Initiatives in
the Bureau for Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance is
developing an innovative system to measure whether the desired outcomes
of each activity are achieved. Utilizing its independent monitoring
unit (IMU), USAID is surveying the participants of each activity using
relevant portions of a standardized ``question bank.'' Comparing before
and after responses, USAID aims to determine whether participants'
perceptions, attitudes, and beliefs have changed during the course of
the activity, as well as whether any intended developmental outcomes
were achieved. By using a standardized set of questions, USAID will be
able to determine which types of activities are more effective at
yielding the desired outcomes. In addition, participants will be
interviewed 6 and 12 months following project completion to determine
whether there are any long lasting effects to activities there.
In Karachi and southern Punjab USAID has helped lead interagency
efforts to pilot small activities at the community level in order to
test out a variety of ways to target neighborhoods and communities.
Some of these activities support vocational training, youth clubs,
leadership conferences, sport tournaments, schools. All activities seek
opportunities for ways to disseminate ideas of peace, tolerance, and
positive relations within the community. In both Karachi and southern
Punjab, the drivers of violent extremism are manifold and vary widely.
In Karachi, the neighborhood of Lyari is plagued with gang violence
whereas violence in the Sultanabad neighborhood adjacent to the U.S.
consulate is driven primarily by religious extremism. There is no ``one
size fits all'' approach that would be effective across the country so
interventions must continually adapt to the changing local dynamics.
USAID's Kenya Transition Initiative in Eastleigh (KTI-E) was
established in August 2011 to enable at-risk youth to reject extremism,
which has become a growing threat to Kenya's stability. The Partner
Performance Management Plan (PPMP) was developed to clarify
expectations, ensure alignment with program goals and effectively use
current program information. Indicators of the PPMP were selected based
on KTI-E's overall strategic approach while assessing the main
activities of the project. By assigning indicators at each level of the
Results Framework, KTI-E is able to monitor whether the developmental
hypothesis is being achieved. Each of KTI-E's activities is assessed
and analyzed at multiple stages including at the concept phase, during
implementation, and at activity closeout.
KTI-E has focused on supporting moderate views and nonviolence
amongst youth. Areas of action have included sponsoring public debates
on issues related to extremism, interfaith dialogue, training for youth
in financial literacy and entrepreneurship, support for local
government townhall style meetings, and support to the Ministry of
Youth to bridge the gaps in services for Somali youth.
One set of activities supported ``Weekly Youth Debates''
implemented by the Nabad Doon (Peace Seeking) Youth Alliance. The
grantee held weekly debates among Somali youth in which participants
discussed issues related to extremism facing youth in Eastleigh. This
created a constructive and peaceful environment for youth to express
themselves on sensitive topics. Each debate had between 180 to 200
attendees and one debate was televised on the ``Somali'' television
channel. Building on the success of the first two debate activities,
KTI-E supported a grantee to expand an existing Web site to carry out
an enhanced interactive platform engaging youth in positive online
activities that reject extremism. Through these activities, KTI-E has
found that participants involved with the youth debates have been
highly engaged in their communities, particularly with advocating
against violent extremism.
sudan
Question. Sudan today is at a crossroads, not so much in terms of
its relationship with South Sudan but in terms of its own future. Its
economy is in dire straits. It is waging war in South Kordofan, Blue
Nile, and Darfur. And, as in many countries, its youth are increasingly
willing to take to the streets to announce that the status quo is no
longer acceptable. There are those who look at the operating
environment in Sudan and argue that we should not have a full USAID
mission until we can have full-scale development programs. I look at
Sudan and think the opposite, as long as security assessments permit.
We have massive humanitarian programs there that demand oversight. We
want to find ways to help the Sudanese people have free and fair
elections and hold their government accountable. We want to find ways
to help bring peace to Sudan and promote good economic as well as
political relations with Sudan.
What is your vision for the USAID mission in Khartoum,
including plans for staffing and how to pursue democracy and
governance goals?
Answer. USAID is committed to a partnership with the Sudanese
people and to ongoing development programming and humanitarian
assistance for conflict-affected communities. We are working to
increase the engagement and participation of citizens in Sudan's
governance and vision for its future, and to prevent the escalation of
local conflicts in flashpoint areas, strengthen the foundations for
peace in Darfur, and enhance Sudan-South Sudan cross-border dialogue.
USAID operates under multiple layers of executive and legislative
restrictions that limit the extent of our engagement.
Since the period leading up to the historic January 2011 referendum
on self-determination for southern Sudan and the subsequent
independence of South Sudan, the international community, including the
United States, has seen an increasingly restrictive and difficult
operating environment in Sudan. The scope of USAID's programs has
diminished since the Sudan mission reopened in 2006 to support
implementation of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA).
Despite this challenge, USAID is supporting efforts among the
Sudanese people to raise their voices in the public sphere and engage
with the government in constructive ways. For example, USAID supports
civic participation through consultations in Khartoum on the
development and adoption of a permanent constitution, which was
mandated by the CPA and committed to by President Bashir. Though the
process has been slow and our assistance has been limited in scope,
USAID has partnered with respected Sudanese partners, such as Ahfad
University for Women, to conduct open discussions about constitutional
issues.
Sudan is still plagued by internal conflict of varying severity
throughout the country's peripheral areas, as well as simmering
tensions between Sudan and South Sudan that have continued since the
independence of South Sudan. In response, USAID is helping to
strengthen Sudanese NGO and civil society capacity to address the
causes and consequences of political conflict, violence, and
instability. In addition, recognizing the importance of women and youth
in Sudanese society, USAID consistently looks for ways to increase
their capacity to engage in peace-building and strengthen civil society
at local and national levels. For example, USAID has supported training
for culturally influential women artists (called Hakamat) from Southern
Kordofan and Darfur to become peace activists. A USAID grantee, the
Human Security Initiative (MAMAN), has worked with these female artists
to spread messages of peaceful coexistence and tolerance in their
communities. In addition, USAID is committed to building the capacity
of youth and civil society organizations nationwide to more effectively
represent the interests and preferences of citizens. USAID is also
supporting health clinics, schools, and water yards for livestock in
the disputed Abyei Area to engage all communities in the area and to
help reduce competition and potential conflict over scarce water
sources.
Despite significant humanitarian needs in Sudan, humanitarian space
has also been steadily shrinking further over time, with restrictions
in Darfur broadened to other areas of Sudan, most recently in Blue Nile
State and Southern Kordofan State. The recently issued Sudanese
Directive on Humanitarian Assistance codifies restrictions on access
and operations that USAID and its implementing partners have faced for
many years. These policies and procedures severely constrain USAID's
ability to fund and ensure effective implementation of assistance
programs. Restrictions have been imposed on programs that the
Government has itself repeatedly appealed to donors to support, such as
for early recovery in Darfur. Despite these challenges, USAID continues
to be the largest donor of humanitarian assistance in Sudan, providing
support to those in need through health, nutrition, and water
interventions. Where conditions of access and security permit, USAID
strengthens local markets, livelihoods, and food security through early
recovery initiatives. However, increased fighting throughout Darfur has
undermined opportunities and prospects for sustained early recovery in
many areas and USAID continues its focus on meeting emergency needs as
a result of displacement and violence in Darfur.
Regarding staffing in Sudan, USAID has assigned the next Mission
Director to Khartoum and is in the process of filling other staff
vacancies with U.S. Foreign Service personnel. Unfortunately, as a
result of a 180-day Ordered Departure (OD) from Sudan, which lasted the
maximum limit of 6 months for ODs (from September 2012 until March
2013), a number of American Foreign Service officers based in Khartoum
curtailed their assignments. We are working to recruit experienced U.S.
staff to fill critical positions so that we can move forward with more
effective program implementation and oversight. We also continue to
implement a staffing plan to gradually restructure the Sudan mission as
part of a larger, global effort to consolidate functions that USAID and
State Department share. As part of this process, we continue to
transfer responsibility for some administrative support and financial
functions to the State Department and to other USAID missions in the
region in alignment with the U.S. Government's consolidation process.
USAID looks forward to collaborating with Congress on charting the
way forward for our assistance to Sudan.
tb
Question. Particularly given the rising levels of resistance and
the global threat posed by multi and extensively drug resistant
tuberculosis, please explain the proposed decrease in funding for
bilateral tuberculosis programs and how that reduction would be carried
out in terms of altered activities.
Answer. It is important to clarify that the U.S. Government (USG)
commitment to reducing the burden of tuberculosis (TB) is unwavering.
When taking into consideration the overall FY 2014 funding request for
TB--made up primarily of funding from the U.S. Agency for International
Development (USAID), and supported by the annual contribution to the
Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (Global Fund)--we
can continue to leverage and maximize those investments to achieve
greater impact. The concern in the global health community appears to
center on the structure of the FY 2014 Congressional Budget Request,
which identified the USAID FY 2014 budget request that is a reduction
over FY 2012 but did not fully capture additional investments made
through the Global Fund. The Obama administration has demonstrated its
strong support for the Global Fund with a request for $1.65 billion in
FY 2014, maintaining the same level requested in FY 2013, which is a
$350 million increase over FY 2012.
The USG's important role in TB is maintained within the aggregate
request, as is our longstanding leadership role. The response to global
health problems is a shared responsibility, and USAID is striving to
maintain our leadership while strongly encouraging countries that have
the ability to do more to increase their commitments.
It is also important to point out that we are on track to achieve
the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of halving TB mortality rates by
2015, and USAID is on track to meet the Global Health Initiative TB
goals for reducing TB prevalence and diagnosing and initiating
treatment for 57,000 new multi-drug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) cases. This
outcome is a result of decades of collaboration between the USG,
developing countries, and public and private partners. This achievement
is notable and will be one of the only health-related MDGs met by 2015.
USAID is working diligently with developing countries to increase
the amount of TB funding within their national health budgets. As
examples, the Government of South Africa recently committed to increase
domestic funding for TB and has committed to fully funding the national
scale-up of GeneXpert by investing over $27 million on equipment and
consumables. In addition, the Government of India has expressed
willingness to increase TB funding by over 40 percent over the next 4
years to scale-up case detection and management of MDR-TB. The nature
of our assistance is evolving, and as these countries increase their
resources, USAID resources will direct technical assistance to scaling-
up quality interventions and piloting innovative approaches, while
building national and local capacity in partnership with the ministries
of health.
USAID's leadership in TB has contributed to impressive gains--with
worldwide mortality from TB falling 41 percent since 1990. In
particular, USAID has been instrumental in making available key
innovations, such as GeneXpert, as well as new drug regimens, and
enhanced diagnosis and treatment. For example, USAID is funding
clinical studies to develop shorter TB drug regimens, and if
successful, would reduce the treatment of MDR-TB from 24 months to 9
months, thereby, improving treatment outcomes, and significantly
lowering the cost of treatment. Additionally, USAID is introducing the
newly approved drug Bedaquailine, supporting the development of a
second-line drug market for MDR-TB, and investing in research for new
drug development.
climate change
Question. I was pleased to see that USAID's Climate Change and
Development Strategy includes as the third strategic objective,
strengthening ``development outcomes by integrating climate change in
USAID programming, learning, policy dialogues, and operations.'' This
integration is important to the overall efficiency and success of the
strategy.
Therefore, please provide at least two examples how the
Agency has been integrating the strategy within the following
areas: programming, learning, policy dialogues, and operations.
Answer. One of the ways that climate change is being integrated
into USAID programming is through the strategic planning process; all
USAID missions are required to fully consider climate change as they
develop their 5-year Country Development and Cooperation Strategies
(CDCSs). USAID developed supplemental guidance that provides
information to missions on requirements to integrate climate change
programming into the CDCS planning process. Through this guidance and
additional technical support, missions have been able to successfully
integrate climate change into their CDCSs. The Southern Africa Regional
CDCS, for instance, integrates climate change into policy and
decisionmaking as a part of an objective to increase sustainable
economic growth in targeted areas. As another example, the Bangladesh
CDCS establishes improving responsiveness to climate change as interest
to an overall goal of becoming a knowledge-based, healthy, food secure,
and climate resilient middle-income democracy.
USAID is also working to develop results frameworks and targeted
outcome indicators that measure climate change and development outcomes
for work in sectors throughout the agency, drawing on expertise from
many sectors including energy, water, food security, democracy and
governance, and humanitarian assistance. By tracking these indicators,
we will be able to learn more about the impacts that development
efforts across the agency are having on climate change. In this vein,
USAID is implementing 10 Integration Pilot Projects to examine
innovations on how to integrate climate change mitigation and
adaptation across Agency development priorities. We are now planning
evaluations that will help us draw rigorous lessons learned from those
experiences.
In December, USAID released policy and program guidance on
``Building Resilience to Recurrent Crisis.'' This policy recognizes
that climate change is a critical factor contributing to the shocks and
stresses that can produce recurrent crises and undermine development
gains. Integration of climate change considerations in USAID's
Resilience Policy is just one example of how USAID is integrating
climate change into its policy dialogues.
Question. As the USAID Climate Change and Development Strategy
notes, climate change impacts in the form of rising temperatures and
increasingly variable rainfall (to name just a couple) are likely to
undermine livelihoods and threaten food security in developing
countries, including where USAID operates. At the same time, the U.S.
Government has undertaken a significant global hunger and food security
initiative known as ``Feed the Future.''
Please provide three examples of how USAID has been
integrating climate change into the Feed the Future program and
how this integration promotes their mutual benefit.
Answer. Climate change is inextricably linked to food security
because of its wide-reaching impact on agriculture and landscapes. The
Feed the Future Initiative has integrated indicators related to natural
resources management and climate resilience into its monitoring and
evaluation system so that we can track the effectiveness of our
programs. In addition, many of the USAID staff working on food security
and climate change are colocated in the same field offices and work
together to build sustainable economic growth. Programs are being
designed in partnership in order to build stronger capacity among our
partner countries to address these critical issues. Some specific
examples of how climate change is being integrated into the Feed the
Future program follow.
One key component of building climate change adaptation into food
security and other development efforts is the development of
vulnerability assessments, which assess expected climate impacts
enabling necessary adjustments in development planning and
implementation. The Uganda mission recently completed a comprehensive
climate change vulnerability assessment for the agriculture sector. The
assessment is generating insights for use in food security policy,
programming, and investment decisions. The climate analysis showed
average temperatures have already risen and that they will continue to
rise. The analysis also points to changes in precipitation patterns and
an increase in extreme weather events. Of the eight crops assessed,
coffee, matooke, maize, and beans were determined to be the most
vulnerable. The livelihood analysis found that 73 percent of households
surveyed were highly vulnerable to climate change impacts. The most
vulnerable households are at risk partly because they rely on crops
like coffee, matooke, maize, and beans for income and food security,
and partly because they lack the assets, financial capital, and
nonagricultural sources of income that can help households endure times
of stress. To ensure local decisionmakers are aware of the assessment,
USAID's Uganda mission organized a week of meetings and workshops for
more than 150 government, donor, research, and civil society
stakeholders. A total of 50 stakeholders joined a 1-day Options
Analysis Workshop where cross-sector teams identified specific
adaptation options for the agriculture sector. Within the mission, the
vulnerability assessment is already being used to design programs and
interventions that increase adaptive capacity under the Uganda Feed the
Future Value Chain Project. The assessment is also being used to ensure
existing Feed the Future interventions are planning for potential
climate change impacts.
Another way Feed the Future is supporting the development of
resilient agricultural systems is by helping farmers cope with extreme
weather events. For example, with the help of climate change adaption
techniques taught by Feed the Future, a Cambodian fish farmer was able
to save her pond when record seasonal floods hit in 2011. As the water
levels started rising, aquaculture technicians from Feed the Future
showed her how to install a tall netting fence to keep her fish from
escaping the pond and to keep unwanted predators out. They also advised
her on how to protect the fence so crabs and debris wouldn't cut holes
in it. This farmer is now sharing the techniques she learned with her
neighbors, who lost their ponds during the floods.
The Feed the Future Initiative is investing in multiple safeguards
and adaptation strategies to prepare for and respond to a changing
climate in Ethiopia. Ethiopia, one of the most food insecure countries
in the world, sits in the cross-hairs of climate change patterns, and
is endeavoring to cope with the multiple threats to food security,
access to water, and even certain livelihoods. The productivity--and
soon, even the basic viability--of its long-cycle crops is at risk.
These crops, which provide up to 85 percent of the food grown in
Ethiopia, have already seen 15-percent declines in rainfall, setting up
a potentially dangerous and costly interaction between drought and
declining agricultural capacity. Under the most likely climate change
scenarios, cereal production in Ethiopia--and, indeed, much of east
Africa--may drop 30 percent by 2030. During that period, food aid to
the region would have to triple to make up for the shortfall.
For example, USAID is investing $5 million to carry out global-
level research on making livestock more climate resilient in order to
help people that raise livestock better adapt to climate change
impacts. USAID will support research on the development,
identification, and introduction of livestock that are disease
resistant and heat tolerant, and capable of living on low quality
forages and feeds without experiencing a decrease in meat and milk
production.
Additionally, USAID's Ethiopia Mission's Capacity to Improve
Agriculture and Food Security (CIAFS) program supports Ethiopia's
efforts to transform its agricultural sector and improve food security
for the Ethiopian people by providing targeted training on and raising
awareness of best practices in agricultural development. The project
strives to empower leaders to catalyze change, drive growth, and reduce
poverty. During this reporting period CIAFS organized study tours for
Ethiopians to learn innovative practices and technologies in
agriculture and natural resource management, targeting technologies for
adapting to climate change. CIAFS also promoted peer-to-peer learning
on an organized a study tour to Mali and Niger pastoralist areas for
Ethiopian pastoral stakeholders including representatives of
pastoralist organizations, parliamentarians, and relevant ministry
leadership and staff.
Question. I understand that as part of USAID Climate and
Development Strategy, USAID is helping developing counties move toward
low-carbon emission economic growth by promoting low emission
development strategies (LEDS). As part of LEDS, please describe how
USAID is working to increase access to renewable and sustainable
energy.
Please provide examples of this work in Africa and Asia. In
addition, in cases where energy is considered a constraint to
growth, please describe how is USAID working to promote access
to renewable and sustainable energy?
Answer. A LEDS is a planning and implementation framework that
helps a country achieve its economic and social development objectives
while reducing greenhouse gas emissions and building greater climate
resiliency. USAID'S Enhancing Capacity for LEDS (EC-LEDS) program
integrates economywide analysis and climate change mitigation
considerations into long-term country-level planning and decisionmaking
and assists countries to implement the clean and renewable programs
that are identified as part of these strategies.
In Africa, USAID's LEDS work is just getting started. Negotiations
on government-to-government Memorandum of Understandings (MOUs) have
established jointly agreed work programs under EC-LEDS with Gabon,
Zambia, Malawi, Kenya, and South Africa. As these work programs are
being negotiated, our teams in-country have been working to put in
place the necessary technical assistance mechanisms to provide targeted
assistance to our partner countries in Africa that responds to the
needs and actions outlined in the work programs. Examples of our clean
energy-related work through EC-ELDS in Africa follow.
In Gabon, we are working with the Department of Energy's National
Laboratories to build capacity for carbon footprint analysis of
economic development and infrastructure projects, for public sector
energy efficiency, and for cross-sectoral modeling. These efforts will
enhance capacity for carbon footprint analysis of economic development
and infrastructure and improve investment decisions that provide
economic, social, and environmental value, backed by business cases
that are sustainable, transparent, and accountable to society. This
work will also build capacity to assess energy efficiency opportunities
in the public sector and pilot demonstration projects with the goal of
transferring analysis and implementation capabilities to the Ministry
of Energy.
In South Africa, the principal objective of the EC-LEDS partnership
is to strengthen public sector-related development planning and project
development capacity for low emission projects, including the
mobilization of development finance and private sector participation in
such projects. This collaboration will provide support for the
preparation and development of approximately 20-30 identified projects
over the initial 3-year period. This will enable low emission projects
to leverage potential development financing, cofunding and private
sector participation opportunities that exist or are emerging within
the South African development agenda.
In Kenya, our work is early in the design phase as we work out
concrete details of technical assistance in support of our joint MOU
with the Government of Kenya. Possible work may focus on support for
the development of the renewable energy and energy efficiency master
plan, support for design of policies that encourage adoption of
renewable energy technologies including GOK feed in tariffs,
assessments of grid reliability and ancillary services and requirements
necessary for the Kenyan electricity grid to accept a greater share of
variable renewable energy generation sources, and assistance to reduce
barriers and increase private sector investment in renewable energy
projects.
In Asia, the United States has established joint EC-LEDS work
programs with Vietnam, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Philippines. They are
all in various stages of implementation, but the Philippines program is
especially noteworthy for the speed at which it has advanced and the
explicit links to constraints to economic growth.
The U.S. Government and the Philippines Government have agreed to a
Partnership for Growth, which mobilizes the resources of both
governments to address the most serious constraints to economic growth
and development in the country, including hurdles in the energy and
environment sectors. Building on this partnership, EC-LEDS will address
two fundamental, constraints to growth: a pressing need for improved
land use and resource planning that is integrated with both climate
resiliency and development priorities; and, the lack of a consistent
policy framework and reliable data for accelerating investment in
domestic energy resources to ensure reliable, sustainable, and
affordable energy access nationally.
The U.S. Government trained 29 Filipino technical experts on using
the Long Range Energy Alternatives Planning System (LEAP) model to
identify and prioritize climate change mitigation options. The next
step is to develop and incorporate LEAP scenarios into the 2013 update
of the Philippines Energy Plan. Another 35 transport and fuels analysts
have been trained on tools and databases to analyze sustainable
transport and fuel alternatives. Moving forward, USAID will support the
development of high-quality that is essential to increasing wind
development and private sector investment in utility-scale wind energy.
This effort will benefit local industry, help to meet the country's
clean energy growth target, and leverage 5MW of new RE generation in FY
2013.
USAID will also work to increase investment in wind and other
renewable energy development by joining with the Asian Development Bank
and the wind industry to provide training on overcoming barriers for
wind development. This activity will result in increased investment in
wind and other renewable energy development leading to $16M of new
investment leveraged.
The U.S. Government is also helping the Government of Bangladesh
integrate climate change goals with the country's broader economic
development goals. For example, the USG is capitalizing on the linkages
between climate change programming and the Feed the Future Initiative,
which is promoting climate change adaptation through, for example,
improved seeds and farm diversification, and greenhouse gas mitigation
through techniques like improving fertilizer application techniques to
reduce nitrogen emissions. Through the EC-LEDS program, the United
States and Bangladesh are also partnering to help design and implement
a low emission development strategy for Bangladesh. USAID specifically,
is collecting data on wind energy potential and information on siting
in order to unlock private investment in wind energy. We are also
working with the Government of Bangladesh to build their capacity to
manage and measure their own GHG emissions.
______
Responses of Administrator Rajiv Shah to Questions Submitted
by Senator Bob Corker
food aid reform
Question. Given USAID's statement that food aid reform will save an
estimated $500 million over the next 10 years, are the savings
identified by USAID going toward deficit reduction or toward other
programming?
Answer. The President's proposal would use $500 million in savings
generated from food aid reform to reduce the deficit. The shift of
funding from title II to foreign assistance accounts eliminates
mandatory funding for cargo preference reimbursements to title II,
reducing the deficit by an estimated $50 million per year--$500 million
over the next decade--based on recent data.
Question. How did the administration determine that 55 percent of
the $1.4 billion food aid in guarantees will be spent in the United
States? Why was that the final percentage?
Answer. The administration is committed to continuing a strong
partnership with American farmers through the Food for Peace program.
For that reason, the President's proposal maintains the majority of
U.S. funds--55 percent in 2014--for the purchase, transport, and
related costs of American commodities. This level is also based on our
estimation of need and global market supply, taking into account the
level of procurement local and regional markets can reasonably bear.
That means the United States will keep working with farmers and
processors across America who help feed hungry children from Bangladesh
to the Sahel, where American commodities are the best possible tool.
American farmers are vital to transforming the food aid basket with
ready-to-use therapeutic foods, better fortification of blended foods,
improved micronutrient reformulation for milled grains and vegetable
oil, and emergency food bars and paste.
usaid forward
Question. What controls has USAID established over its direct
funding to local institutions to ensure accountability?
Describe the mechanisms in place to respond to cases of
inappropriate or inefficient use of funds.
Have there been any cases where USAID has had to stop or
pull back funding provided directly to local institutions? If
so, please describe and provide some specific examples.
Are the audit mechanisms and accountability standards for
direct assistance to foreign governments the same as they are
for U.S. recipients and other nongovernmental recipients? If
not, how do they differ?
Answer. USAID is committed to accountability, transparency, and
oversight of USG funding and we have a number of mechanisms for
ensuring that resources are not lost to waste, fraud, or abuse
throughout development assistance implementation, as follows:
Pre-Award: Contracting and Agreements Officers (CO/AO) make
a determination whether a contractor/recipient is sufficiently
responsible in terms of financial capabilities to account for
funding, and have the ability to carry out or perform the work,
under an award. This process is known as ``a pre-award
responsibility determination.'' As part of the Request for
Proposal/Application process, CO/AOs also ensure that
regulatory language enabling oversight and performance
monitoring is included in each award. This language comes from
the Federal Acquisition Regulation, the Office of Management
and Budget (OMB) Circulars and/or Agency operational policy.
Finally, performance indicators and metrics linked to the
desired results are also included in the awards.
Post-Award: During the period of performance for an award,
USAID performs myriad activities to ensure award compliance.
Contracting/Agreement Officer's Representatives COR/AORs review
and approve awardee vouchers for invoices submitted, conduct
site visits, and enable third-party program and project
evaluations. They also monitor performance through reporting,
meetings, and general oversight of the work being performed.
COR/AORs formally document any material deficiencies in
performance. This documentation triggers immediate action by an
Agency CO/AO which may ultimately include recommending that the
vendor not be paid. Additionally, we use financial systems and
controls, as well as internal and independent audits to enable
the Agency to effectively manage, track, and safeguard funds
before they are disbursed.
Award Close-out: Like other federal agencies, USAID uses the
Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting System (CPARS) to
formally record data about contractor performance. CORs are
responsible for compiling and entering past performance data
into CPARS annually. Additional USAID mechanisms are also in
place to evaluate contractor performance including the post-
performance audit process and the Office of the Inspector
General to whom any instances of suspected waste, fraud, or
abuse are promptly referred.
In February 2011, USAID stood up a Compliance Division within the
Bureau for Management's Office of Acquisition and Assistance (M/OAA) to
serve as the central repository for any and all referrals of
administrative actions, including suspension and debarment actions. In
just its first year the Division issued 102 administrative actions and
recovered nearly $1 million. For this achievement the Agency was
recognized by the Office of Management and Budget in 2012 as a success
story:
``The Agency debarred 16 people in 2012 for their
participation in a scheme to submit fraudulent receipts for the
administration of federal foreign assistance to support public
health, food aid, and disaster assistance in Malawi. By working
with its recipient organization to assure that the unlawfully
claimed funds were not reimbursed, USAID was able to avoid
waste and abuse of taxpayer funds designed to provide vital
assistance to a developing country.''--``Taking Contractor
Accountability to the Next Level,'' September 18, 2012 (http://
www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2012/09/18/taking-contractor-
accountability-next-level).
With respect to audit mechanisms and accountability standards,
U.S.-based grantees are subject to OMB Circular A-133 and U.S.
contractors are subject to FAR 52.1215-2 and 52.216-7.
For all foreign-based recipient entity types, including
contractors, grantees, and host government entities, audits are
conducted in accordance with USAID Inspector General (IG) guidelines.
The USAID IG guidelines were derived directly from U.S. Government
auditing standards for implementation in the overseas, developing
country context in which USAID financed performance takes place. The
most notable difference between USAID audits on non-U.S. entities and
U.S. entities is that a lower annual audit threshold is used for non-
U.S. recipient entities--$300,000 in annual expenditures instead of the
$500,000 threshold applicable by OMB to U.S. entities. Also, in most
cases, foreign contractors and grantees and host governments are
audited by independent, private sector auditors using the USAID IG
guidelines. However, pending USAID IG concurrence, audits on host
government implementing entities may also be carried out by host
government Supreme Audit Institutions. Such audits must comply with one
of the following standards: (1) Comptroller General of the United
States; (2) International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions
(INTOSAI); (3) International Auditing Practices Committee of the
International Federation of Accountants (IFAC).
Question. According to the 2013 USAID Forward Progress Report,
USAID increased the percentage of funding provided directly to local
institutions from about 10 percent in FY 2010 [sic] \1\ to about 14
percent in FY 2012, with half going to partner country governments.
Please describe what types of funding are included in this figure. For
example, does the figure include funding provided through all
assistance awards? Subawards?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ USAID has corrected the baseline year from 2012 as stated in
the original QFR sent by Senator Corker, to 2010, to track the baseline
year, FY 2010, established in USAID Forward Progress Report 2013.
Answer. The 14.3 percent figure referenced above (and from page 20
of the USAID Forward Progress report) represents the dollar value of
cumulative mission program allocations\2\ that were obligated through
local systems during fiscal year 2012.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ The term ``annual program allocation'' includes the missions'
new obligating authority (NOA), carry-over funds, and transfers from
other agencies (e.g., PEPFAR funds implemented by the mission;
interagency transfers from State/DRL, State/INL).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The figure includes all obligations at the mission level to partner
country governments for direct implementation of assistance (projects)
that involve direct use of previously assessed\3\ partner country
public financial management (including audit) and partner country
procurement systems.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ USAID's detailed assessment process for consideration of awards
to partner country governments is described in QFRs 3, 5, and 8.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The figure also includes all direct funding through grants,
cooperative agreements, contracts and Development Credit Authority
mechanisms, to local, nongovernmental, nonprofit, educational, and
commercial organizations. It does not include subawards such as
subcontracts or subgrants. Local organizations are defined as entities
organized and having a principal place of business in the recipient
country, and majority owned or controlled by recipient country
citizens, with less than a majority ownership or control by foreign
entities or individuals.
Question. According to the 2013 USAID Forward Progress Report,
USAID uses various tools to assess capacity and weaknesses of partner
country government institutions and, in some cases, provides funding
and assistance to these institutions. How many such assessments have
been completed and in which countries?
Answer. As of March 2013, a total of 35 countries, listed below,
have completed initial (``Stage One'') Public Financial Management Risk
Assessment Framework (PFMRAF) assessments.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Armenia El Salvador Jamaica Moldova Rwanda
Bangladesh Ethiopia Jordan Morocco Senegal
Barbados Georgia Kenya Mozambique Serbia
Benin Ghana Kosovo Nepal South Africa
Colombia Haiti Liberia Paraguay Tanzania
Dominican Honduras Malawi Peru Trinidad and
Republic Tobago
East Timor Indonesia Mali Philippines Zambia
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Question. In how many (and which) countries is USAID providing
funding directly to government institutions?
Answer. USAID is providing Direct Government-to-Government
Assistance to the following 22 countries: Afghanistan, Kosovo, Armenia,
Liberia, Benin, Mozambique, Bolivia, Nepal, Egypt, Pakistan, El
Salvador, Peru, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Ghana, Senegal, Honduras, South
Africa, India, Tanzania, Jordan, and Zambia.
Question. How do these assessments translate into USAID country
assistance strategies and/or activities to build partner countries'
public financial management capacity?
Answer. USAID's Country Development Cooperation Strategies (CDCS)
are based on evidence and analysis, including that provided by the
Public Financial Management Risk Assessment Framework (PFMRAF). At the
strategy stage, the CDCS Guidance requires that the focus and
selectivity principle be applied in selecting institutions and
institutional levels (national, regional, local) which are most
promising. Such a decision would be informed by a PFMRAF or other
preliminary analysis.
After strategy approval, USAID's Project Design guidance requires a
sustainability analysis to be performed. Missions are asked to analyze
key sustainability issues and considerations around a host of issues
including economic, financial, social soundness, cultural,
institutional capacity, political economy, technical/sectoral, and
environmental. Where appropriate, the analysis should discuss generally
how funding local actors and supporting government-to-government
objectives could help achieve sustainability goals. Further follow-on
PFMRAF analysis of specific activities to support building country
public financial management capacity may be conducted based on findings
of the preliminary analysis.
For additional information regarding the Agency's CDCS guidance,
please see: (http://www.usaid.gov/results-and-data/planning/country-
strategies-cdcs).
Question. In 2012, GAO recommended that USAID develop a process to
track assistance provided through local financial systems--in part to
help monitor progress toward providing 30 percent of its assistance
through these systems by 2015. Please update the committee on the
status of USAID's efforts to develop such a process, including any
changes made to USAID's accounting systems to capture this type of
assistance.
Answer. While no changes were necessary to Agency core accounting
or procurement systems, a process was developed by the Agency to track
progress of providing assistance through local systems toward the goal
of 30 percent of all country assistance programs by 2015. The process
was part of a broader effort to track progress of all USAID Forward
components which resulted in the publication of the USAID Forward
Progress Report 2013. Annex 1 of the report, ``Scorecard of
Indicators,'' provides data for each goal reflecting the progress
measure and 2012 milestone achieved. The report may be found at (http:/
/www.usaid.gov/sites/default/files/documents/1868/2013-usaid-forward-
report.pdf). Further, the Agency is working to refine and strengthen
our reporting procedures to better integrate data collection with
Agency standard business practices, improve data quality and more
efficiently utilize existing technology.
Question. How did USAID determine that 30-percent target was a
reasonable near term goal?
Answer. One of the key objectives of the Agency's reform effort,
USAID Forward, is to increase the amount of work we do with more and
varied local partners, so we can create true partnerships; build local,
sustainable capacity; and begin to create the conditions where aid from
the United States is no longer necessary.
The 30-percent ``topline indicator'' is an Agencywide aspirational
target, not a mission-by-mission or country-by-country hard
requirement. Every country in which USAID is operating has different
levels of ministerial and local capacity, governance challenges, civil
society participation and commitment to fight corruption, as well as a
varying commitment to strengthen its systems and provide opportunities
for local NGOs and private businesses.
USAID determined that the 30 percent overall target was a
reasonable near term goal on the basis of USAID mission estimates
(averaged to establish the overall target) of what progress toward
localizing and increasing sustainability of assistance would be
appropriate and prudent given the local context.
The selection of the implementing partner--whether a local
government or nongovernmental organization, U.S. or international
contractor or grantee, or other donors--is driven by country context
and development needs, not by the 30 percent target.
For government-to-government assistance, USAID has an extensive
assessment process in place that analyzes fiduciary risks and technical
capacity, as well as the partner government's democracy, human rights,
and governance record and capacity, before any decision is made to
provide funding. Where manageable risks are identified, USAID
implements a risk mitigation plan. If risk is too great, USAID chooses
another approach.
For awards to local nongovernmental organizations, including local
not-for-profit and commercial organizations, we also have an extensive
process in place before any award to review a potential recipient's
administrative, financial management and technical capacities to manage
USAID funds and deliver results. USAID Agreement and Contracting
officers must make a responsibility determination covering these
factors before we provide funding or other resources.
Further, missions are instructed that partnership with local
government entities or local organizations is not an end in itself.
Rather, such partnerships should be the result of strategic planning,
project design, identification of a development objective, and a
determination of which modality among several--contracts and grants to
U.S. or international organizations included--are the best fit for the
project design and to achieve the development objective.
Whether it is government-to-government assistance or awards to
local nongovernmental organizations, USAID always retains the
unilateral right to suspend or terminate such assistance if any issues
arise, and when necessary, USAID will seek to recover unallowable
costs.
Question. How does USAID plan to measure performance [of awards to
local organizations]? How does this differ from existing performance
evaluation processes?
Answer. USAID has recently revised Agency guidance (the Automated
Directive System) to the chapters covering strategic planning, project
design, performance monitoring, and use of reliable partner government
systems. An important reason for these updates was to ensure that USAID
support for activities undertaken by partner governments or by local
nongovernmental organizations were fully integrated into the Agency's
established procedures for rigorous strategic planning, project design,
and performance monitoring. Hence, awards to local organizations are
subject to the same requirements for good project design and
performance monitoring that applies to other awards that USAID makes.
Good project design for all USAID projects includes development of a
logical framework and associated performance indicators while good
performance monitoring includes establishing a performance monitoring
plan and conducting regular reviews.
Question. In 2012, GAO also recommended that USAID improve
monitoring and evaluation of public financial management assistance
programs. How is USAID monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of
efforts to use local systems, including identifying indicators and
collecting data?
Answer. USAID Forward introduced two complementary reforms to
address GAO's recommendation. The first effort reinvigorates strategy
development and project design into USAID's development assistance
programs. For the design of new projects, Agency requirements now
include detailed preobligation analysis and indicative plans for
monitoring progress and evaluation. This incorporates defining
indicators, collecting baseline data, ensuring reliable results and
planning for independent evaluations. Second, new guidance requires
that final monitoring and evaluation plans include refined indicators
and agreement on independent approaches to evaluation. These reforms
are being incorporated into USAID's policy and directives systems for
continuing use.
An important reason for updating the Agency's guidance is to ensure
that activities undertaken by partner governments or by local
nongovernmental organizations receiving USAID support are fully
integrated into the Agency's established procedures for rigorous
strategic planning, project design, performance monitoring, and
evaluation. As such, all directly funded activities will be subject to
the same requirements for good project design, performance monitoring
and evaluation that apply to any other award that USAID would make.
Good project design for all USAID projects includes development of a
logical framework and associated performance indicators while good
performance monitoring includes establishing a performance monitoring
plan and conducting regular reviews.
Question. How does USAID coordinate its public financial management
assistance activities with other USG agencies? With other donors?
Answer. USAID coordinated with the US. Department of the Treasury,
the Millennium Challenge Corporation, other bilateral and multilateral
donors, and international financial institutions before devising
USAID's Public Financial Management Risk Assessment Framework (PFMRAF)
assessment process. USAID's PFMRAF policy, set forth in our Automated
Directives System Chapter 220, Use of Reliable Partner Country Systems
for Direct Management and Implementation of Assistance, ordains a five
stage assessment process to ensure that partner country government
entities being considered as direct recipients of USAlD funding have
the appropriate financial, administrative, and technical capacities in
place before USAID entrusts U.S. taxpayer funds to them.
USAID conducts these appraisals and assessments in person and in
country, and invites and coordinates the participation of
representatives of other executive branch agencies, other donors, and
where appropriate, the potential partner country government. We also
coordinate the provision of any technical assistance directed at
enhancing public financial management capabilities of the partner
governments via a country level interagency and donor coordination
process. Finally, USAlD has entered into interagency agreements with
the Department of the Treasury and other U.S. Government agencies to
provide technical assistance in the public financial management realm
when these agencies have the resources and comparative advantage to do
so, and when provision of such assistance furthers USAID's development
objectives and project designs.
Question. What plans do you have to make available programmatic and
expenditure data about assistance to host-country grantees and
governments?
Answer. USAID intends to start publishing disaggregated program and
expenditure data, including data fields at implementation level, on the
Foreign Assistance Dashboard (FAD) after the close of the third quarter
of FY 2013. The FAD provides a wide variety of stakeholders, both
internal and external, with the ability to examine, research, and track
U.S. Government foreign assistance investments in an accessible and
easy-to-understand format. The disaggregation will also be applied
retroactively to previously posted FY 2013 Quarters 1 and 2 data. Data
fields that will be displayed include the name of the implementing
agent (i.e., the organization, host country government or other entity
that received the funding) and the implementing agent's country of
origin.
trade capacity
Question. U.S. development assistance should focus on helping
developing nations achieve economic independence and graduate from U.S.
assistance. Helping these countries attract investment and trade with
the world is a critical part of achieving that goal. With respect to
trade capacity-building (TCB), I am interested in (1) the
administration's overall goals on trade capacity-building and (2) the
specific strategy to coordinate the efforts of all the differing
agencies providing trade capacity-building assistance.
(a) What are the administration's top three goals with
respect to trade capacity-building?
Answer. Through ``aid for trade,'' the United States focuses on
partnering with countries, particularly those countries that are least
integrated into the global trading system, on training and technical
assistance needed to: inform decisions about the benefits of trade
arrangements and reforms; implement obligations to bring certainty to
trade regimes; and enhance countries' ability to take advantage of the
opportunities of the multilateral trading system and compete in a
global economy. These goals are articulated in USAID's strategy
document ``Building Trade Capacity in the Developing World.''
(b) Please describe the interagency process by which all of
the U.S. Government's agencies collaborate to set those goals
and to construct a comprehensive strategy to implement those
goals.
Answer. In the Presidential Policy Directive (PPD) on Global
Development, the President laid out a modern architecture to raise the
importance of development in our national security policymaking and to
generate greater coherence across the U.S. Government. The PPD
highlighted that ``through existing policy mechanisms (e.g., trade
policy through the United States Trade Representative's Trade Policy
Review Group, etc.), an assessment of the ``development impact of
policy changes affecting developing countries will be considered.''
USTR chairs the interagency coordination process through the Trade
Policy Review Group (TPRG) and the Trade Policy Staff Committee (TPSC).
USAID has been using its position as a statutory member of this
interagency process to inject the development impact and ``on the
ground'' input from USAID field personnel into the trade policy
decisionmaking apparatus, which includes discussions on the need for
trade capacity-building interventions.
(c) How does the interagency process identify and eliminate
nontariff trade barriers?
Answer. USTR is responsible for annually publishing a National
Trade Estimate Report on Foreign Trade Barriers (NTE). Information in
this report is the result of input provided through the interagency
TPSC process and supplemented by input in response to a notice
published in the Federal Register, and by members of the private sector
trade advisory committees and U.S. embassies abroad.
While the NTE identifies foreign trade barriers--efforts to
eliminate them are led by USTR through a variety of negotiating
avenues: bilaterally in direct discussion with trading partners;
through regional bodies when they can play a significant role in
addressing barriers across their member states; in multilateral
negotiations; and, in some cases, through dispute settlement. USAID and
other agencies which provide TCB often augment USTR's efforts by
providing technical assistance in support of the policy changes
necessary to eliminate nontariff barriers.
(d) With respect to the administration's goals and the
strategy on trade capacity-building, how do you define success?
Answer. The goal is to graduate countries from requiring U.S.
foreign assistance. A number of former USAID-assisted countries have
achieved that measure of success based on their strong economic and
trade performance. Until that is achieved, the Department of State and
USAID have worked together to develop standard indicators to measure
what is being accomplished with foreign assistance resources, including
indicators related to measuring the success of trade programs.
(e) What are your criteria for success and how do you
determine or measure your progress toward success?
Answer. A primary criterion for success of TCB programming is to
expand the number of people that benefit from trade. This is
accomplished through reducing the barriers that inhibit the flow of
goods and services and working to integrate countries and businesses
into the global trading system. In a 2005 study, the GAO raised
questions about USG trade capacity-building efforts and the need for a
more disciplined assessment of TCB interventions. As a result of that
report, USAID undertook an extensive evaluation of TCB interventions
and published a report of its findings in 2010. The study, ``From Aid
to Trade: Delivering Results'' found that trade capacity-building had
contributed substantially to achieving the goals of TCB. Individual
USAID TCB projects also contain performance management plans which
measure progress achieved under their respective programs. Evaluation
of TCB programs and projects continues pursuant to USAID's evaluation
policy.
(f) What does a successful comprehensive trade capacity-
building effort look like?
Answer. Integration into the global economy is a powerful force for
economic growth and poverty reduction. The results of USAID trade
capacity-building include more active and better informed participation
by developing countries in a range of international trade negotiations,
greater compliance with trade commitments and obligations, tangible
improvements in the effectiveness of commercial laws and institutions,
reduction in the time and cost to export and import goods, and
improvements in the quantity and quality of individual developing
country's exports, imports, and foreign investment. USAID has assisted
more than 28 countries in acceding to the WTO. USAID assistance
includes supporting the government in conducting analysis and preparing
technical documents required for accession, as well as advice in
undertaking required legal and regulatory reforms, and supporting
effective implementation of those reforms.
(g) Is there a specific country that you would describe as
a success story?
Answer. Many countries which have received USAID trade capacity-
building are considered success stories. For example, significant
technical assistance and trade capacity building was provided as an
integral part of the trade negotiations that led to the Dominican
Republic-Central America-United States Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR)
with five Central American countries (Costa Rica, El Salvador,
Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua) and the Dominican Republic. U.S.
TCB support to Vietnam over many years led to the successful
implementation of the U.S.-Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement and
subsequently, to Vietnam's accession to the World Trade Organization.
USAID provided substantial assistance to Laos and Tajikistan to accede
to the WTO in 2013.
Question. Our current budget environment demands that we spend
scarce resources well. Please explain the administration's decision
process to direct TCB aid to countries with the best chance of success.
How do you decide where to spend TCB money to ensure it will do the
most good? For example, under your comprehensive strategy, do you
prioritize certain countries as being best positioned to implement the
trade capacity-building aid we provide?
Answer. USAID works closely with USTR to identify U.S. trade policy
priorities and to align USAID activities in support of those trade
policy objectives. For example, USAID has implemented significant TCB
programming to support implementation of U.S. trade agreements (CAFTA-
DR, Peru, Colombia, Jordan, and Morocco) and utilization of trade
preference programs such as the African Growth and Opportunity Act. In
addition to working closely with USTR, USAID determines the need for
trade capacity-building for individual countries through a Country
Development Cooperation Strategy (CDCS) process that includes input
from both U.S. and host country stakeholders and regional strategies
that are developed through a Regional Development Cooperation Strategy
(RDCS) process.
Question. A July 2011 GAO report notes that as many as 18 agencies
provide trade capacity-building assistance. For example, the report
identified that the Millennium Challenge Corporation and the Department
of the Army as two of the largest providers of trade capacity-building
assistance. Please describe the interagency process for coordinating
decisionmaking with these other agencies and USAID's role in that
process.
Answer. With respect to the Millennium Challenge Corporation, USAID
serves on the MCC Board of Directors, along with the Departments of
State and Treasury, and USTR. The Board is responsible for the
identification and selection of MCC Threshold and Compact countries.
The Department of Defense is also a statutory member of the TPSC
process led by USTR, through which trade-related policies are
coordinated within the executive branch.
(a) Does USAID lead the process?
Answer. The coordinating process for trade-policy-related issues is
led by USTR. USAID works with USTR to identify TCB-related activities
which complement U.S. trade policy goals. USAID is also part of the
country team in U.S. embassies around the world. USAID works within the
country team and with host country counterparts to identify and
implement country specific trade capacity-building activities
consistent with the partner country's development plan.
(b) Can USAID direct the Army's efforts on where and how to
spend trade capacity assistance?
Answer. USAID cannot direct the Army on where and how to spend
trade capacity building assistance.
Question. The GAO has identified 18 agencies as providing trade
capacity-building aid. Which U.S. Government agency is ultimately
responsible to the President for ensuring that TCB aid is spent wisely
and achieves the administration's goals as defined by the
administration's overall trade capacity-building strategy?
Answer. USAID works with USTR and other agencies as appropriate to
align USAID TCB programs to support trade policy and broader USG
objectives.
(a) Which agency and which official is in charge of the
process that decides where U.S. trade capacity-building money
will be directed?
Answer. There is no single coordinating agency, official, or
process specific to TCB activities. USAID, as the largest provider of
TCB assistance, coordinates closely with USTR, State, Treasury,
Agriculture, Labor and other trade related agencies in prioritizing TCB
efforts. USAID programs identify TCB needs through a Country
Development Cooperation Strategy (CDCS) process that includes input
from both U.S. and host country stakeholders and regional strategies
that are developed through a Regional Development Cooperation Strategy
(RDCS) process. These strategies are approved by the cognizant USAID
regional Assistant Administrator with input from USAID policy, budget,
and technical bureaus.
(b) Can that agency and that official direct how resources
are spent?
Answer. There is no single agency or individual that directs how
all TCB resources are spent.
(c) Which of the 18 agencies officially participate in that
process?
Answer. Most of the USG entities that provide TCB are statutory
members of the TPSC interagency process led by USTR such as the
Departments' of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Energy, Health and
Human Services, Homeland Security, Interior, Justice, Labor, State,
Transportation, Treasury, the Environmental Protection Agency and
USAID.
(d) According to the President's Congressional Budget
Justification, some of this money is being spent to help
foreign governments modernize customs procedures at foreign
ports. For example, is reducing delays and paperwork at ports
one of the established benchmarks for success?
Answer. USAID focuses significant attention to the issue of trade
facilitation, particularly reducing the time and cost to move goods.
USAID trade facilitation activities include active support for customs
and border management reforms at border crossings, ports, and along
major transit corridors. In addition, USAID has worked closely with
USTR to support the WTO negotiations on a Trade Facilitation Agreement.
In particular, USAID recently launched the Partnership for Trade
Facilitation, which is working with 17 countries to respond quickly to
requests for assistance from trade and customs authorities for help
with implementing aspects of the proposed WTO agreement on trade
facilitation. Additional efforts to improve trade facilitation are also
being carried out by USAID's Africa trade hubs to promote both United
States-Africa trade as well as intra-African trade. Specific indicators
tracked in many USAID trade facilitation projects include the time,
number of procedures and cost (including informal payments) to clear
goods through customs and border agencies or to move goods along major
transit corridors.
(e) How do you identify, with the help of the business
community, specific areas where aid could be best applied?
Answer. USAID's country and regional development strategies are
primarily developed by its field missions, which seek input from host
country private sector stakeholders. USAID/Washington also plays an
active role in the development of these assistance strategies and
contributes input that reflects U.S. private sector views and concerns
as identified by USTR through its statutory private sector consultative
process--the Trade Advisory Committee system.
(f) What is the process for seeking their input?
Answer. In 1974, Congress created the trade advisory committee
system to ensure that U.S. trade policy and trade negotiating
objectives adequately reflect U.S. public and private sector interests.
The advisory committee system consists of 28 advisory committees, with
a total membership of approximately 700 citizen advisors.
USTR's Office of Intergovernmental Affairs & Public Engagement
(IAPE) manages the advisory committees, in cooperation with other
agencies, including the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, and
Labor, and the Environmental Protection Agency.
afghanistan/development in war zones and contingencies
Question. The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan
Reconstruction (SIGAR) estimates that there is about $10 billion in
assistance given to Afghanistan annually, yet the government raises
only about $2 billion in revenue. In your estimate, what is the gap
between foreign assistance flowing into Afghanistan to start and
maintain reconstruction and stabilization projects and the revenue the
Government of Afghanistan can be expected to accumulate in a given
year? What is the plan to overcome this challenge going forward?
Answer. The World Bank estimates the financing gap could reach as
high as 40 percent of the Afghan Government's budget in 2017 (including
security costs), then drop to around 25 percent in 2021 assuming an
increase in mining revenues. The current financing gap is estimated at
5.3 percent of GDP (2012), which continues to be financed entirely by
donor grants. The fiscal sustainability ratio, defined as the
percentage of operating expenses covered by domestic revenues--was 59
percent for FY 2012. Domestic revenues financed approximately 40
percent of the operating budget and the development expenditures.
In 2011, the Ministry of Finance reported that the Government of
Afghanistan collected more than $2 billion in revenues for the first
time ever, representing more than a 140-percent increase since 2008.
Customs accounted for about 48 percent of the revenues. Domestic
revenues increased by 7 percent in 2012, reaching US$2.15 billion. The
World Bank reported that the Afghan Government expects domestic
revenues to increase to US$2.5 billion (11.6 percent of GDP) this year,
with increases in all sources of revenue. This could finance
approximately 65 percent of the operating expenditures, with the
remainder to be financed through donor grants.
Donors have committed to cover the financing gap for several
years. Pledges from all donors at the July 2012 donor meeting in Tokyo
totaled $16 billion in development aid to Afghanistan over 4 years.
Together with earlier pledges on the security side, annual aid would
amount to about $8 billion--divided roughly equally between civil and
security aid.
USAID is continuing to work with the Government of Afghanistan and
the international donor community to improve trade, strengthen customs,
and support the Ministry of Mines in managing natural resource
extractions. In addition, USAID's agriculture strategy is focused both
on food security and high-value exports. These efforts are supporting
the Government of Afghanistan in growing its public revenue and manage
expenditures so it can better manage its own financing needs.
Question. In its final report, the Special Inspector General for
Iraq Reconstruction concluded that: ``The U.S. Government is not much
better prepared for the next stabilization operation than it was in
2003.'' Do you agree with that assessment? If not, why not?
(a) As a government, do we require a different approach to
planning and implementation in reconstruction and stabilization
circumstances?
(b) Are structural changes needed at USAID, in the
interagency coordination structures, or within specific
programs?
Answer. We respectfully defer to the Department of State's Office
of Civilian Response (CSO) to address the broader question of the U.S
Government's ability to respond to a stabilization initiative. CSO,
formerly known as the Civilian Reconstruction and Stabilization Office
(S/CRS), was specifically created in 2004 in the aftermath of Iraq.
As to USAID's readiness, since 2004 a number of structural changes
have better positioned the Agency to successfully support stabilization
type operations. One such change includes the creation of USAID's
Office of Conflict Management and Mitigation which, among other things,
developed a Conflict Assessment Framework (CAF) in 2005 to better
understand the underlying causes of conflict and instability in a
country or region. The CAF has been updated to reflect a more nuanced
understanding of these causes and has been used repeatedly by our
missions in the development of new projects and strategies. Agency
staff has been trained in the use of the CAF as well as other conflict-
related subjects, making USAID staff both in Washington and in the
field, more capable of designing programs and applying our development
assistance support to stabilization objectives.
In 2005, USAID launched a comprehensive human capital strategic
planning process which identified the lack of depth in critical core
areas such as education, health, and agriculture, and concluded that
this was severely constraining the Agency's ability to ``surge'' staff
in support of pre- and post-conflict programs in Iraq and other
Critical Priority Countries around the world. Staffing shortages were
limiting USAID's direct engagement with foreign government agencies and
local partners. Subsequently, USAID implemented an ambitious hiring
effort, the Development Leadership Initiative (DLI), paralleling the
Department of State's Diplomacy 2.0 Initiative, with bipartisan
congressional support and increased funding. Since 2008, USAID has
recruited approximately 800 additional Foreign Service officers through
the DLI program who now constitute part of USAID's ranks of technical
specialists. Since 2010, eight DLIs have served or are serving in Iraq
and 50 DLIs have served or are serving in Afghanistan. An increase in
Foreign Service officers has better positioned USAID to meet our
technical staffing needs abroad.
Many lessons learned from the Iraq have been incorporated into
USAID's development assistance, including:
Define what is needed for sustainability from the start by
ensuring that the host country beneficiaries are involved in
setting priorities and developing the capacities within their
societies to lead their own development. In some cases, the
host country was not involved in the planning stage of an
activity and the activity was less successful.
Ensure that people sent overseas to support a mission or
program possess the appropriate skills and experience.
The duration of the tour is critical to ensuring the
sustainability and continuity of programs.
An example of where USAID has incorporated sustainability into its
programming is Iraqi Government cost-sharing. Over the past year, the
Iraqi Government, through several Memoranda of Understanding, has
committed to cost share important USAID activities. This demonstrates
both the Iraqis' willingness to pursue critical development objectives
and invest their own resources into their own development. This has
enabled USAID to redirect resources to strengthen Iraqi governing
institutions, promote private sector development, and assist vulnerable
populations such as ethnic and religious minorities, internally
displaced persons, female-headed households and youth.
In Afghanistan, all projects, both current and planned, must
undergo an analysis to determine (1) Afghan ownership; (2) cost/program
effectiveness; and (3) contributions to stability. Through the
Accountable Assistance for Afghanistan (A3) initiative, USAID is
carrying out a 100-percent audit of all locally incurred costs,
expanding monitoring and evaluation capacity to include hundreds of
USAID onsite monitors in the field, and has placed limits on the number
of subcontractor tiers.
host nation reconstruction/infrastructure sustainability
Question. How does USAID collect and record information from
nations receiving U.S. foreign aid about their abilities to pay for the
maintenance or expansion of infrastructure we have funded?
Answer. USAID receives and analyzes information regarding recipient
nations' ability to pay for the maintenance or expansion of U.S.
foreign aid funded infrastructure construction activities through the
completion of a Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 Section 611(e)
certification process. When a capital assistance project is proposed,
and total U.S. assistance for it will exceed $1 million, the Mission
Director must review and certify a country's capability to effectively
maintain and utilize the assistance. Pursuant to section 611(e), the
certification is then forwarded to the cognizant Assistant
Administrator, as delegated by the Administrator, for consideration.
During project design, an analysis of the capital cost and operation
and maintenance costs along with an analysis of host country technical
and financial capability to operate and maintain capital projects is
undertaken. The project design includes training and institutional
reform components to increase the capability of the host country to
operate and maintain the facility that is being financed, and often
continues after the facility is constructed.
Question. What policies and procedures does USAID have in place to
prevent the funding of projects that, when added to the aggregate of
USAID projects in the same country, would be beyond the capability of
the host nation to raise sufficient resources domestically to maintain
the work that we have funded?
Answer. As part of USAID Forward reform efforts to strengthen the
Agency's project design process, all missions must complete a mandatory
sustainability analysis that assesses the host country's ability to
sustain the development gains that would be achieved through the
project. The sustainability analysis should include a review of the
financial implications of the project. For any organization to be
sustained following completion of the project (whether governmental or
nongovernmental), a recurrent cost analysis must be undertaken that
estimates the costs of operations during the project and of continuing
expected functions at the end of the project and estimated sources of
revenue. The recurrent cost analysis should take into consideration
maintenance capability and all other costs anticipated to implement the
project activities, business operations or infrastructure on a
continuing or recurring basis.
hiring vets
Question. The most recent version of the Office of Personnel
Management report on federal veteran employment claims that just 7.2
percent of USAID employees are veterans, making the agency the third-
lowest in the executive branch for percentage of veterans on staff.
Given that many of our veterans' experience in contingency environments
seem to match exactly with the current needs of USAID programs still
ongoing in contingency environments, what do you think contributes to
such low levels of veterans in the ranks of USAID employees?
Answer. Veterans have greatly contributed to the Agency and work in
myriad professional and administrative positions in the United States
and overseas. There has been a significant increase in USAID's data on
veterans since the issuance of the OPM report. Currently, there are 356
veterans employed at USAID (9.3 percent of the Agency's total
workforce). Indeed, veterans account for 14.6 percent of the Agency's
Civil Service employees (251 veterans) and 4.9 percent of our Foreign
Service staff (105 veterans). In addition, the Agency is trending well
above its FY 2013 veteran hiring goals of 15.3 percent for veteran new
hires and 4.7 percent for disabled veterans. As of May 2013, 24 percent
of USAID's new hires were veterans and 6 percent have been disabled
veterans. As discussed in response to the Question below, the Agency
will continue its efforts to increase the number of veterans in the
Agency.
Question. Beyond that mandated by the President's Veterans
Employment Initiative, has USAID implemented any additional programming
for veterans?
Answer. USAID has implemented a number of aggressive strategies to
increase the number of veterans in the Agency. We began by hiring a
full-time employee as our Veteran Employment Program Manager. The
Program Manager has initiated a robust referral program that targets
veterans for vacancies as soon as they occur. The referral program has
allowed veterans to be referred for consideration prior to the posting
of a job announcement. As a result, 30 percent of all veterans hired in
FY12 were referred from this highly successful program. In addition,
USAID sponsors quarterly Federal Employment Workshops at our
headquarters, at no cost, for separating and retiring military members
and spouses. We have also increased the number of veterans hired
through our formal Student Internship Program, as well as by partnering
with a wide variety of Military Transition Assistance Programs and
Veterans Rehabilitation Organizations.
Question. As USAID continues to have significant involvement in
contingency zones, its projects demand exceptional leadership and
character on the part of USAID personnel. Have veterans enabled USAID
to more effectively carry out contingency missions?
Answer. Our veterans' previous military experience has allowed them
to transition directly into positions conducting development and
diplomacy in contingency zones and other locales. For example, during
FY12, USAID hired 13 veterans as Foreign Service Limited Officers to
work on critical priority programs in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen.
Their work has indeed enabled the Agency to be effective in carrying
out its mission.
Question. By virtue of their service, veterans bring a unique and
valued perspective to any government agency. In what ways do you think
an increase in veteran employment at USAID would have on the culture of
USAID?
Answer. Veterans hired by USAID have contributed greatly to our
mission. Their discipline, work ethic, and leadership skills, coupled
with the USAID-specific technical skills they have learned, make them
well suited for a variety of positions at USAID. Veterans at the Agency
are currently working in occupations such as acquisition, information
technology, communications, security, human resources, engineering,
public policy, finance, and education.
Question. Please describe any specific plans you have to increase
the hiring of veterans by USAID.
Answer. USAID will continue to implement a number of strategies to
increase the number of veterans in the Agency. Specifically, we will
continue to increase veteran hiring by improving the following:
Continue to sponsor USAID Federal Employment Workshops
onsite at no cost for separating/retiring military and spouses;
Support the Operation Warfighter and Wounded Warrior
Programs;
Continue to develop our partnership with the Department of
Veterans Affairs Vocational Rehabilitation & Employment
Program;
Increase the number of veterans hired as interns through the
Pathways Program;
Expand the Agency Veterans Hiring Database and usage of
OPM's Shared Database of People With Disabilities
Continue to participate in Military Transition Assistance
Programs (TAP); and
Increase hiring of veterans through the Foreign Service
Junior Officer Program. This vital program brings qualified
applicants into the Agency's Foreign Service to assume
positions of increasing responsibility for planning,
implementing, and managing USAID's economic and humanitarian
assistance programs.
climate change
Question. USAID's budget fact sheet states that $481 million is
requested for the Global Climate Change Initiative ``implemented in
partnership with the Department of State.'' Of this, how much funding
is requested for USAID?
Answer. Of the $481 million request for the Global Climate Change
Initiative in partnership with the Department of State, $349 Million is
being requested for USAID.
Question. What dollar amount of FY 2014 USAID climate change
funding is going to the United Nations and affiliated agencies? How
much was provided in FY 2012?
Answer. It is too early to tell how much USAID climate change
funding may be implemented through United Nations (U.N.) programs in FY
2014. In FY 2012, USAID did not provide direct climate change funding
to United Nations agencies or programs.
Question. In the past 10 years, how much climate change funding has
USAID spent on programming for peer-to-peer interaction and
information-sharing (e.g., conferences, Web sites, exchanges,
fellowship, etc.)? What specific advances have been made in U.S.
development goals through these types of initiatives?
Answer. Addressing climate change depends on having the best
available data and tools and knowing how to apply them. USAID has made
this type of assistance a priority to help expand the knowledge base
and more broadly and effectively share information. Several of our
approaches to climate assistance have been delivered through the types
of mechanisms that you reference, particularly peer-to-peer knowledge-
sharing and information-exchanges.
For example, SERVIR Global, USAID's partnership with NASA, works
with scientists and decision makers around the world to provide
training and access to satellite and geospatial data and applications.
These applications are being used to predict a range of natural
hazards, from red tide blooms in El Salvador to stream flows in Kenya
to forest fires in the Himalaya region. Over the past 10 years, USAID
has programmed approximately $29 million, with NASA also providing
approximately $22.4 million, to develop and sustain this information
sharing tool. In 2011, the Environment Minister for El Salvador
estimated that the red tide information available from SERVIR averted
$14 million in losses. In Africa, SERVIR has developed early warning
tools for Rift Valley Fever, a vector-borne disease. In an effort to
increase evidence-based decisionmaking among countries, USAID is
expanding this partnership in west Africa and Central Asia in FY 2013.
USAID does not distinctly capture these approaches collectively as
an indicator or reporting category within climate funding.
Question. What are the overall objectives of the climate change
programs? What are specific outcomes (not outputs) USAID aims to
achieve? How will you measure progress and determine success or
failure?
Answer. USAID's 2012 Climate Change and Development Strategy
defines three objectives: (1) reducing greenhouse gas emissions by
accelerating targeted countries' transition to low emission development
through clean energy and sustainable landscape use (mitigation); (2)
increasing the resilience of people, places and livelihoods to climate
change (adaptation); and (3) integrating climate change considerations
into USAID's programs, policies and operations (integration).
Regarding outcomes and related measures, USAID assistance is
refining the development of a series of indicators against which we
will assess the success of our climate change programming. For example,
USAID will assess: (1) whether assisted countries prepare greenhouse
gas inventories and sustain the quality of those inventories; (2)
whether partner countries' national and subnational development plans
are informed by climate change analysis and include mitigation and/or
adaptation actions; (3) the extent to which stakeholders are using
climate information in their decisionmaking; and (4) tracking increased
leverage of public and private sector investment devoted to climate
change mitigation and adaptation as a result of USG assistance.
USAID is engaging in an organized effort with other donor and
implementing agencies to explore ways to assess the capacity of
individuals, households, and institutions to adapt to climate change.
With the help of evaluations, such analysis will allow for the
assessment of impact of adaptation assistance in post-disaster
situations, as well as create opportunities to strengthen the
predictive quality of the outcome measures outlined above.
______
Responses of Administrator Rajiv Shah to Questions Submitted
by Senator Barbara Boxer
gender-based violence strategy and india
Question. It is my understanding that you traveled to India last
month to focus, at least in part, on violence against women. So I am
certain that you are aware of the heartbreaking stories that have
emerged out of India recently, including the gang rape of a 23-year-old
woman on a bus last December. Her injuries were so horrific that she
later died of them. A Swiss tourist was also gang raped by five men
while traveling with her husband. And just last week, a 5-year-old girl
was kidnapped, repeatedly raped, and nearly killed. These cases--as
well as others--have garnered significant international attention and
sparked protests within India.
How is USAID working in India to help address rape and
other forms of gender-based violence?
Is there more that we could be doing, especially in light
of the recently announced U.S. Strategy to Prevent and Respond
to Gender-Based Violence Globally?
Answer. USAID shares your strong concern about gender-based
violence and violence against children in India.
Our approach in India and other countries around the world is to
work across sectors to identify and close gender gaps wherever they
exist, because we recognize the broader benefits that arise when women
are able to realize their rights and determine their own outcomes.
USAID/India's goal is to enhance women's leadership and gender equality
in all program sectors in which we work, including health, clean
energy, and agriculture programs, and identify entry points in each of
these sectors to address gender-based violence and other barriers to
gender equality.
In India, we are working through a variety of partnership
mechanisms to identify innovative approaches to combating gender-based
violence (GBV) that build on local knowledge, Indian innovation, and
show the potential for scale and replication in India and around the
world.
USAID is partnering with Care, ITVS--the independent television
station, and the Ford Foundation to support Women and Girls Lead
Global. In India, this program is working to engage men and boys and
change their attitudes and behaviors related to GBV. USAID is
partnering with U.N. Women to implement the Safe Cities program in New
Delhi--an innovative program that employs a gender empowerment approach
to the issue of urban planning and infrastructure development. The goal
is for girls and women to reclaim their right to public spaces.
Further, we are working through our health programming in India to
identify entry points in patient care where front line health workers
are equipped in a systematic way to identify GBV in patients as well as
counsel them and refer them for care.
The U.S. Strategy to Prevent and Respond to Gender-Based Violence
Globally is a milestone in solving this critical problem and USAID has
developed an implementation plan to realize the goals of the strategy,
yet there is always more to be done. USAID appreciates the efforts and
coordination of many U.S. Government agencies at home and abroad to
implement this strategy as well as the advocacy from senior leadership
across the government.
malala yousafzai and pakistan
Question. Earlier this year, I introduced the Malala Yousafzai
Scholarship Act with Senator Landrieu. Specifically, it would build
upon an existing USAID-funded scholarship program for disadvantaged
Pakistani students by increasing the number of scholarships awarded
each year by 30 percent and requiring that all of these new
scholarships be awarded to women. To date, only 25 percent of the
program's scholarships have gone to women.
Will you commit to working with me to ensure that Pakistani
women are given full and equal access to USAID scholarship
programs?
What more can the United States do to expand educational
opportunities for women and girls in Pakistan and around the
world?
Answer. USAID is committed to ensuring that Pakistani women are
given full and equal access to USAID-funded scholarship programs. USAID
specifically supports the goal of increasing the number of scholarships
available to Pakistani women under USAID's Merit and Needs-Based
Scholarship Program (MNBSP). The MNSBP provides scholarships for
Pakistani students to attend bachelor's and master's degree programs at
Pakistani universities, targeting underserved populations, including
women.
Based on an overall positive independent evaluation of the MNBSP
issued in August 2012, USAID is making several programmatic adjustments
to reach that goal. These adjustments are scheduled to take effect for
university enrollment in September 2013. Among these adjustments are
targeting of the distribution of scholarships to women for entrance
into the fall 2013 matriculation at 50 percent; this is 4 percent above
the ratio of women attending university as a percentage of the
university-going population (46 percent). In order to reach the 50
percent target, USAID is expanding disciplines of study from
agriculture and business to a wide variety of fields popular with women
from chemical engineering to journalism. USAID is also expanding the
university pool to include five women's universities. In addition, in
our other scholarship programs in Pakistan, we have set a 50 percent
target for scholarship awards to women.
Scholarship programs are only one aspect of USAID's education
initiative in Pakistan. In many areas parents will only send their
girls to schools with an all-female teaching staff, so increasing the
number of women teaching will expand access to education for girls. To
ensure more girls have the opportunity to pursue basic education, USAID
is working to mobilize communities to increase girls' enrollment in
school and training female teachers, which encourages families to send
their girls to school. USAID is also constructing or rehabilitating
over 185 girls' schools in Sindh, FATA, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and
Balochistan. To address the challenges of educational quality, which
impacts access, USAID will be transforming the way classroom teachers
teach and assess reading over the next 5 years by working with
universities and colleges on new degree programs in preservice teacher
education as well as working with in-service teachers.
Similarly, USAID is working to expand opportunities for women and
girls worldwide. In 2012, the Agency adopted a new policy on Gender
Equality and Female Empowerment, which includes equal access to
education as part of its vision. Among the requirements under this new
policy are that gender equality and female empowerment must be
integrated throughout the program cycle: in policy and strategy
formation, project design and implementation, and monitoring and
evaluation. USAID's Automated Directives System, which dictates
operational policy, also requires gender analyses to guide long-term
planning and project design so that men and women experience an equal
opportunity to benefit from and contribute to economic, social,
cultural, and political development; enjoy socially valued resources
and rewards; and realize their human rights.
Taken together, these efforts along with those that the Agency has
undertaken around the National Action Plan on Women, Peace and
Security, preventing Gender-Based Violence, ending Child Marriage and
Countering-Trafficking in Persons, provide a global approach for the
empowerment of women.
climate change
Question. Numerous statements and studies from the defense and
national security communities have warned that climate change and its
impacts--from extreme events to sea-level rise to water and food
scarcity--will create political instability, especially in the poorest
and least able to adapt countries.
How will funding the President's budget request for the
Department of State and USAID's efforts on global climate
change help prevent and mitigate such impacts and assist U.S.
national security priorities?
Answer. Global climate change has the potential to significantly
alter the relationships between people and their environment. It could
undermine the resource base upon which people have built their
livelihoods and sociopolitical institutions. However, there remains
little certainty over exactly how these changes will be manifested in
specific events and locations and what the consequences will be in
terms of economic development, political stability, peace and security.
It has therefore become a priority for USAID to help build an evidence
base about the relationship between climate, resources, and conflict
and to be able to knowledgeably inform both development policy and
programming, especially when working in fragile and conflict affected
areas.
USAID recognizes at least three ways by which climate change could
potentially contribute to armed conflict or violent social unrest: (1)
climate change could intensify existing environmental or resource
problems (whether due to scarcity or abundance); (2) climate change
could create new environmental problems that contribute to instability;
and (3) the introduction of climate-related resources and financing
could interact with existing grievances and fault lines in
counterproductive or destructive ways.
USAID and other development organizations have recognized these
risks and have widely accepted the need to be ``conflict-sensitive'' in
climate-related interventions. The FY14 foreign assistance request
includes funds for the collection of needed data and for adaptation
funding as a critical component of the climate change program.
We believe our adaptation programs will play a critical role in
helping prevent and mitigate instability caused by the impacts of
climate change. USAID adaptation programs seek to make early and smart
investments to build the resilience of vulnerable communities and
reduce many of the negative impacts of climate change. Adaptation funds
are targeted at the poorest and most vulnerable countries, both in
terms of exposure to physical impacts of climate change and
socioeconomic sensitivity to those impacts. USAID's Climate Change and
Development Strategy prioritizes small island developing states,
glacier-dependent nations, and least developed countries, especially in
Africa, for adaptation investment. The Global Climate Change Initiative
is a critical component of USAID's Resilience Strategy; considering the
current and future effects of climate change allows us not only to
better predict, prepare for, and respond to shocks and stresses (e.g.,
hurricanes, flooding, and droughts) but also to improve planning for
the long-term stresses of climate change.
Question. As we have seen here in the United States, extreme
weather events associated with climate change are increasing in their
number and impact. The frequency and intensity of these events will
only increase. The poor and countries least able to adapt are the most
vulnerable to extreme events and other climate change impacts such as
sea-level rise, water and food scarcity, and shifting seasons and
disease vectors.
How will funding the President's budget request for the
Department of State and USAID's global climate change efforts
help prevent and mitigate the impacts of climate change on the
world's most vulnerable people and nations?
Answer. FY 2014 adaptation funding will bolster the Global Climate
Change Initiative's efforts to increase the resilience of vulnerable
communities to climate threats, and preserve hard-won development gains
in democracy, food security, health, economic growth, and natural
resource management. Through adaptation programming, the United States
is contributing to stability and sustainable economic growth in
developing countries, preventing loss of life, and reducing the need
for post-disaster assistance.
With FY 2014 resources, USAID will support on-the-ground programs
that rigorously test the effectiveness of adaptation actions,
disseminate lessons learned and catalyze their widespread adoption to
build resilience across communities, countries, and regions. Adaptation
funding will also be used to support strategic investments in science
and analysis for decisionmaking, and tools and platforms that can be
used in multiple countries around the world. For example, USAID will
continue to extend climate forecasting technology systems, such as the
Famine Early Warning System and SERVIR, to help vulnerable countries
adapt and respond to shocks.
The USAID-supported Famine Early Warning System Network
(FEWS NET) is an information system designed to identify
problems in the food supply system that potentially lead to
famine or other food-insecure conditions in sub-Saharan Africa,
Afghanistan, Central America, and Haiti. The USGS FEWS NET Data
Portal provides access to geospatial data, satellite image
products, and derived data products in support of FEWS NET
monitoring needs throughout the world. This portal is provided
by the USGS FEWS NET Project, part of the Early Warning and
Environmental Monitoring Program at the USGS Earth Resources
Observation and Science (EROS) Center. (http://early.warning-
usgs.gov/fews/index.php) FEWS NET predicted a recent drought in
Africa and allowed donors to take quick action before the worst
conditions set in. In those areas that were expected to be hit
the hardest, USAID helped households with ``commercial
destocking''--selling off some livestock while the prices were
still high, which helped families bring in enough income to
feed themselves and their remaining livestock. USAID also
prepositioned significant amounts of food and nonfood
commodities and worked to rehabilitate wells before the worst
drought conditions, preventing the need to launch expensive
water trucking efforts in those regions.
In Mozambique, USAID will help vulnerable coastal cities
incorporate climate change projections into their planning processes
and implement adaptation measures to reduce risks associated with sea-
level rise, flooding, storms, and erosion; direct beneficiaries will
include municipal governments, local communities, nongovernmental
organizations, and faith-based organizations. In the Dominican
Republic, USAID will build on a new partnership with reinsurer Swiss Re
to make an affordable tailored weather index insurance product
commercially available to small farmers who are currently unable to
make optimal productive investments due to increasing risks of drought
or flooding. Hundreds of Dominican farmers will also receive training
and technical assistance on climate change, financial management, and
the design and application of farm-level risk reduction measures. USAID
has built an impact evaluation around this project in the Dominican
Republic, and will be gathering evidence of the effectiveness of this
holistic risk management approach over the next 2 to 4 years.
USAID programs will also promote effective governance for climate
change adaptation, by helping governments integrate climate resilience
into development planning, and building the capacity of civil society
organizations and the private sector to engage in policymaking
processes.
Adaptation resources will be spent in the vulnerable countries and
communities that need them most. The Global Climate Change Initiative
prioritizes adaptation funding for least developed countries,
especially in sub-Saharan Africa, small-island developing states, and
glacier-dependent countries.
______
Responses of Administrator Rajiv Shah to Questions Submitted
by Senator Ron Johnson
Question. Foreign assistance is an important component of America's
foreign and defense policy. I am proud of the fact that we portray
American values around the world, and when done effectively and
strategically, it is money well spent. At the same time, however, we
have a responsibility to ensure that taxpayer funds are being spent in
the national interest, and our allies and partners have not always been
reliable. The American public has become more skeptical of aid, and in
some cases, with good reason.
In your opinion, what is the best way of holding
accountable recipients of U.S. assistance, while also
understanding the reality of difficult situations, whether
discussing Egypt, Pakistan, Syria or others?
Answer. USAID is committed to accountability, transparency, and
oversight of USG funding and we have a number of mechanisms for
ensuring that resources are not lost to waste, fraud, or abuse
throughout development assistance implementation, as follows:
Pre-Award: Contracting and Agreements Officers (CO/AO) make
a determination whether a contractor/recipient is sufficiently
responsible in terms of financial capabilities to account for
funding, and have the ability to carry out or perform the work,
under an award. This process is known as ``a pre-award
responsibility determination.'' As part of the Request for
Proposal/Application process, CO/AOs also ensure that
regulatory language enabling oversight and performance
monitoring is included in each award. This language comes from
the Federal Acquisition Regulation, the Office of Management
and Budget (OMB) Circulars and/or Agency operational policy.
Finally, performance indicators and metrics linked to the
desired results are also included in the awards.
Post-Award: During the period of performance for an award,
USAID performs myriad activities to ensure award compliance.
Contracting/Agreement Officer's Representatives COR/AORs review
and approve awardee vouchers for invoices submitted, conduct
site visits, and enable third-party program and project
evaluations. They also monitor performance through reporting,
meetings, and general oversight of the work being performed.
COR/AORs formally document any material deficiencies in
performance. This documentation triggers immediate action by an
Agency CO/AO which may ultimately include recommending that the
vendor not be paid. Additionally, we use financial systems and
controls, as well as internal and independent audits to enable
the Agency to effectively manage, track, and safeguard funds
before they are disbursed.
Award Close-out: Like other federal agencies, USAID uses the
Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting System (CPARS) to
formally record data about contractor performance. CORs are
responsible for compiling and entering past performance data
into CPARS annually. Additional USAID mechanisms are also in
place to evaluate contractor performance including the post-
performance audit process and the Office of the Inspector
General to whom any instances of suspected waste, fraud, or
abuse are promptly referred.
In February 2011, USAID stood up a Compliance Division within the
Bureau for Management's Office of Acquisition and Assistance (M/OAA) to
serve as the central repository for any and all referrals of
administrative actions, including suspension and debarment actions. In
just its first year the Division issued 102 administrative actions and
recovered nearly $1 million. For this achievement the Agency was
recognized by the Office of Management and Budget in 2012 as a success
story:
``The Agency debarred 16 people in 2012 for their
participation in a scheme to submit fraudulent receipts for the
administration of federal foreign assistance to support public
health, food aid, and disaster assistance in Malawi. By working
with its recipient organization to assure that the unlawfully
claimed funds were not reimbursed, USAID was able to avoid
waste and abuse of taxpayer funds designed to provide vital
assistance to a developing country.''--``Taking Contractor
Accountability to the Next Level,'' September 18, 2012 (http://
www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2012/09/18/taking-contractor-
accountability-next-level).
With respect to audit mechanisms and accountability standards,
U.S.-based grantees are subject to OMB Circular A-133 and U.S.
contractors are subject to FAR 52.1215-2 and 52.216-7. For all foreign-
based recipient entity types, including contractors, grantees and host
government entities, audits are conducted in accordance with USAID
Inspector General (IG) guidelines. The USAID IG guidelines were derived
directly from U.S. Government auditing standards for implementation in
the overseas, developing country context in which USAID financed
performance takes place. The most notable difference between USAID
audits on non-U.S. entities and U.S. entities is that a lower annual
audit threshold is used for non-U.S. recipient entities--$300,000 in
annual expenditures instead of the $500,000 threshold applicable by OMB
to U.S. entities. Also, in most cases, foreign contractors and grantees
and host governments are audited by independent, private sector
auditors using the USAID IG guidelines. However, pending USAID IG
concurrence, audits on host government implementing entities may also
be carried out by host government Supreme Audit Institutions. Such
audits must comply with one of the following standards: (1) Comptroller
General of the United States; (2) International Organization of Supreme
Audit Institutions (INTOSAI); (3) International Auditing Practices
Committee of the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC).
Question. The issue of branding--making sure recipients know who is
sending the assistance--has been discussed several times before this
committee, most recently regarding aid to Syrians.
What is your assessment of the branding of American aid to
Syria? Also, please explain our branding efforts globally,
including where there are areas for improvement.
Answer. The U.S. Government requires NGO partners to brand our
assistance unless doing so would imperil the lives of aid recipients
and the humanitarian workers delivering assistance. Recognition of U.S.
humanitarian efforts inside Syria is severely constrained by safety and
security concerns, but we continue to work to make our humanitarian aid
more visible, including some small-scale branding of our assistance. In
areas where it is safe to do so, including opposition-held areas in the
north; we are able to inform local leaders and recipients about where
the aid is coming from. For example, nearly all of the bakeries
receiving U.S. Government flour in Aleppo governorate are informed that
it is U.S.-donated flour.
Because wide-scale branding is not an option at this time, we are
seeking to get the word out in ways that do not undermine the
operation: U.S. Government staff in D.C. regularly meet with the Syrian
diaspora community to utilize its connections inside Syria and spread
the message of USG support. We also continue to heavily engage with
local, regional and international media, both traditional and digital,
to illustrate the extent to which USG humanitarian assistance is
reaching a wide range of areas inside Syria.
In addition, we work with our international organization partners
to highlight U.S. Government support wherever possible, and U.S.
Government officials use every public opportunity to highlight our
humanitarian assistance to the region, including speaking engagements,
social media, and regional, national, and international media
interviews.
More broadly, since 2004, USAID has significantly improved its
branding and marking efforts in order to drive greater awareness of
America's support in countries that receive aid ``From the American
People.''
Over the past 8 years, we have seen concrete results from our
efforts to brand and market USAID's assistance. USAID now has the
strongest and most robust branding and marking efforts of all bilateral
donors, and we have integrated our branding efforts across our project
design and award process to ensure consistency and effectiveness.
USAID's marking requirements, as outlined in the Code of Federal
Regulations (22CFR226) and ADS 320 policy guidance, ensure that USAID's
visual identity is represented or ``marked'' on all appropriate
products: food aid, clinic signs, schools, hospitals, training
materials, and other program materials. These federal marking
regulations are complemented by our work to ``brand'' USAID
assistance--a phrase that broadly encompasses all of our efforts to
advance America's strategic priorities abroad by communicating our
mission and the investments of the American people around the world.
To put our branding and marking regulations into practice, USAID's
overseas communications officers create strategies to tailor messages
and information according to each country's specific needs and
opportunities. Branding and marking plans, which are required of every
USAID contract and grant agreement, further these strategies by
outlining how each project will specifically apply federal marking
requirements and communicate the message that the assistance is from
the American people.
Our communications officers also occasionally direct in-country
polling surveys both before and after the communications efforts.
Polling data results by region from these surveys offer an important
evidence-based review of the impact that can be generated with the
consistent application of the USAID brand. The results show that
USAID's branding and marking have garnered returns for the United
States in terms of awareness and support of our efforts and policies.
Challenges and Solutions to Improving Branding Impact
Despite the progress made by the Agency, challenges remain in our
branding and marking efforts and USAID continues to undertake a
proactive stance in ensuring branding guidelines are followed. In some
parts of the world, the security situation makes marking inherently
dangerous to our employees, grantees, and program beneficiaries. In
these cases, waivers are sought and granted when situations merit this
action.
When USAID observes implementing partners not adhering to branding
and marking requirements, we notify these partners in writing of their
noncompliance and reiterate the mandatory requirement to observe and
apply branding standards. USAID also retains the right to terminate
agreements for noncompliance.
Finally, regular polling and surveys of local populations are
important tools to understanding the impact and management of our
assistance programs in country. Missions also may monitor the local
media, and coordinate closely with their respective Embassy Public
Affairs Sections, to assess the general sentiment toward USAID's
ability to improve host country perception of U.S. political,
diplomatic, economic, and security goals in country.
USAID recognizes that effective branding and marking of American
assistance abroad can help our Nation achieve its diplomatic,
political, economic, and security goals. USAID also works proactively
to strengthen efforts to communicate directly to governments, our
beneficiaries, and their communities that aid is from the American
people.
______
Responses of Administrator Rajiv Shah to Questions Submitted
by Senator Christopher A. Coons
kenya
Question. I am convinced that USAID's long-term commitment in
support of democratic and electoral reform in Kenya made a significant
contribution to the largely credible and peaceful election, but the
reform process is far from complete and accountability must be strongly
enforced.
How will USAID programs help ensure that Kenya continues to
implement critical reforms such as devolution, accountability,
and land reform?
Answer. Support to the implementation of hard-won reforms will be
central to assistance programs in post-election Kenya. USAID programs
will continue to assist Kenyans by providing responsive programs which
build upon years of partnership. Devolution and accountability will
cross-cut all programs, and support for land reform will continue as an
integral part of the mission's agriculture programming.
Devolution
Kenya's decision to devolve government systems to the county level
will bring governance and service delivery closer to the people served.
It will also make decisionmakers more accessible to their constituents.
Devolution represents a new operational environment. All of USAID's
programming is being adjusted to work with traditional national
ministries, new county systems and governance structures, and civil
society. The Kenyans are making the adjustments needed across 47 new
counties. Most health and education programs were already being
implemented by devolved institutions, and the mission is reviewing how
it can facilitate the adjustment to county decisionmakers by engaging
with the new county governments. This is also true of agriculture
programs under Feed the Future. In a targeted governance effort,
USAID's democracy, human rights, and governance programs support
Kenyans with devolution by assisting national entities facilitating
this reform process and providing comprehensive capacity-building for
appointed and elected officials. Initial capacity-building has focused
on all 47 counties and included training for Governors, Senators, and
local assembly representatives. Over the long term, USAID will
concentrate resources in 15 to 20 of the newly formed counties--
focusing especially on strengthening new women leaders, enhancing
public financial management, and combating corruption. Assistance will
also target 100 different county-level civil society organizations to
strengthen their capacity to oversee local service delivery, ensure
accountability, collaborate together, and effectively represent citizen
interests (especially those of marginalized groups) in county-level
decisionmaking.
Accountability
Because of the high level of corruption in Kenya, USAID strives to
build into all of its programs support for transparency and
accountability. This is something that relies heavily on both how one
does business and what is done. Thus, USAID adheres to regular high
standards in program management and oversight through monitoring,
evaluating, and auditing. The USAID-funded program, ``Strengthening
Institutions of Governance and Service Delivery to Entrench
Transparency and Accountability,'' advances the implementation of
anticorruption reforms enumerated in Kenya's new constitution,
including laws and policies that will reduce corruption throughout the
political, electoral, and governance systems in the country. The
program increases participation of the various stakeholders in the
anticorruption agenda in Kenya by promoting networking among like-
minded organizations and state institutions, policy advocacy, and
research and documentation. The program also supports research,
including institutional systems and practices audits, and systematic
monitoring of the performance of key institutions. Central to the
program's research work is the annual East African Bribery Index, which
documents citizens' experiences with corruption. Research findings are
widely disseminated, through stakeholder organizations, the mass media,
and social media. The formation of a more effective policy and legal
framework has promoted accountability and transparency, resulting in a
number of corruption cases that have been investigated, and public
resources recovered. For example, recent engagement by Transparency
International with the courts helped to clarify that Members of
Parliament are constitutionally required to pay taxes and cannot exempt
themselves from this responsibility.
USAID's future devolution program also contains several major
components that focus on accountability, transparency, and
anticorruption. Technical assistance will be provided to county
governments to help them set up transparency mechanisms such as the
adoption of freedom of information policies and ensuring that
government proceedings are shared with the public. The program will
also support the adoption of strong procurement, public financial
management, and public engagement mechanisms. On the demand side, the
program supports civil society and the media to advocate for reform, as
well as to monitor county governments through instruments such as
citizen scorecards and investigative journalism.
Land Reform
USAID engaged in land reform after the 2007 post-election violence,
when no other donor viewed it as feasible. USAID established a pilot
community land rights recognition model on the island of Lamu that the
Ministry of Lands (MoL) adopted as part of its drafting of the new land
laws. After the passage of the 2010 constitution, USAID supported the
MoL and the Attorney General's office to draft three new pieces of land
legislation that passed in 2012. After executive branch delays, members
of the new, constitutionally mandated National Land Commission, which
was established by one of the pieces of legislation, were named. In
addition, USAID supported women's land rights in the contentious Mau
Forest region, helping to empower women in that community and securing
better livelihood options for them and their families. USAID continues
to support the establishment of the National Land Commission, as well
as drafting of the important Community Land Rights Recognition Act,
because it will bring transparency to the regulations that govern over
60 percent of Kenya's lands. USAID will also continue to support
community-based wildlife conservation, since 60 percent of Kenya's
wildlife resides on these communal lands.
USAID's Kenya Civil Society Strengthening Program works with
hundreds of civil society organizations to help them effectively
advocate for governance reforms, conduct civic education and peace-
building activities, and improve management of natural resources. The
program provided subgrants, totaling over $27 million, to 260
organizations working to advocate for and monitor progress on important
issues, including: elections; ethics and anticorruption; land; human
rights; devolution; the police; judiciary; rights for women, youth and
persons with disabilities; peace-building; and natural resource
management. The program also assisted civil society to provide input
and advocacy on key pieces of reform legislation. Legislation
successfully enacted include: Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Bill;
National Land Policy; Political Parties Bill; Elections Bill; Forest
Act; and Wildlife Policy Bill. Partners continue to monitor
implementation of these new laws. More than 5,000 people benefited from
the improved management of more than half a million hectares of land.
The program has created viable, profitable nature-based enterprises and
natural resource management activities.
In addition, USAID's Land and Conflict Sensitive Journalism
activity has trained dozens of news media representatives on more
conflict-sensitive and objective reporting. Land reform, as a major
source of livelihoods and of conflict in Kenya, has been a recurring
theme covered by the activity.
democratic republic of congo (drc)
Question. Recent developments in the DRC--such as the signing of a
multilateral Framework Agreement, appointment of a U.N. envoy, and the
expanded mandate of MONUSCO with an intervention force--present an
opportunity to make meaningful progress toward sustainable peace.
What is USAID's role and to what extent is the DRC able to
effectively absorb more U.S. assistance in light of its
significant governance challenges?
Answer. As it becomes clearer how the Peace, Security and
Cooperation (PSC) Framework Agreement and authorization of the
Intervention Brigade will influence the situation in eastern DRC, USAID
will be ready to assist the Congolese people through humanitarian
assistance, recovery and development programs specific to eastern DRC,
and programs with a broader national coverage that includes, but are
not limited to, the east. In FY 2012, USAID programmed approximately
$168 million dollars in the region. USAID can also provide strategic
analysis of drivers of conflict. Such analysis would help inform the
design of strategies and activities to address the root causes of
conflict.
It is our judgment that the DRC is able to absorb all of the
assistance that the United States has requested. USAID will
increasingly implement its programs in alignment with DRC Government
priorities and in concert with Congolese partners. This will be a means
to build local and national government capacity, strengthen civil
society, and foster communication with and accountability to citizens,
thus promoting the sustainability of service delivery and building
state legitimacy.
We will continue to press the DRC to undertake much-needed domestic
reforms, including comprehensive security sector reform, as it
committed to do in the PSC Framework. USAID will increase efforts to
help the Government of the DRC (GDRC) implement decentralization, as
envisioned in the 2006 constitution. Much remains to be done, including
putting in place enabling legislation, establishing new institutions,
and training officials. USAID and State will coordinate with
stakeholders to promote electoral reform and support the GDRC to
undertake credible, transparent, and peaceful elections--provincial and
local as soon as feasible, and national in 2016.
In eastern DRC, USAID already works with communities to reconcile
underlying causes of political and socioeconomic disputes; helps extend
state authority through work with local governments; and increases
communities' capacity to respond to insecurity. USAID also focuses on
sexual and gender-based violence preventative programs and reinforcing
communities' capacity to combat sexual violence themselves. In
addition, USAID projects provide psychosocial and economic support to
allow victims to reenter society.
USAID is helping to develop a mineral traceability program that
monitors minerals from the mine to the manufacturing user, ensuring
that the minerals do not help fund conflict. USAID and the Department
of State will build on recent successes and continue working with
private sector partners to demonstrate that legal, responsible, and
economically viable trade in natural resources is not only possible but
can be beneficial to all stakeholders in a given supply chain. As
security in the east increases, these efforts can be expanded to
benefit more communities and miners. This expansion will give the
diverse actors who currently exploit the absence of state authority a
vested interest in supporting improvements to the DRC's stability.
______
Responses of Administrator Rajiv Shah to Questions Submitted
by Senator Jeff Flake
Question. A school of thought exists which posits that U.S. foreign
assistance is only effective for countries that want to change.
To what degree do the programs administered by USAID take
this into consideration?
The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) has a pretty
good success record, and is an organization that firmly
subscribes to this school of thought. Can you tell me whether
USAID collaborates with MCC on the lessons it has learned in
administering foreign assistance?
Answer. USAID subscribes to the view that foreign assistance is
most effective when it is given in the context of a full collaboration
between the United States and a strong democratic government that is
effective on behalf of all its citizens. However, it would not be in
the U.S. national interest or comport with American morality to only
provide assistance to people fortunate enough to live in countries with
such governments. We cannot afford to restrict our fight against global
public health threats like HIV/AIDS and multi-drug-resistant
tuberculosis to countries that have the best governments, or ignore the
plight of sick and starving children because they are not well
governed.
USAID has developed effective ways of providing assistance through
civil society, NGOs and implementing partners when governments are not
the most effective at, or interested in, promoting the welfare of all
their citizens, and of promoting improvements in democratic rights and
governance that over time will produce better development prospects as
well as a more secure world. MCC fills an important niche in U.S.
Foreign Assistance. There is a healthy interchange between MCC and
USAID on issues of aid effectiveness, and USAID and MCC perform
complementary roles in the countries where both operate.
use of oco funds
Question. FY 2012 was the first year that OCO funds were requested
for State & Foreign Operations. In that year, Congress provided an
additional $2.5 billion in OCO funds above what the administration
requested for things like USAID operating expenses, and international
development assistance.
Given that OCO funds are extra-budgetary and do not count
toward overall spending caps set forth by the BCA, does the
addition of funds help or hinder USAID's future years budgeting
process?
Is it common that USAID would try and expend all these
dollars to demonstrate a need for them in the next budget year?
How does USAID define ``Overseas Contingency Operations?''
Does USAID plan to cease the request of OCO funds,
commensurate with the timetable for withdrawal from
Afghanistan?
Answer. The FY 2014 OCO request funds the extraordinary, but
temporary, costs of the Department of State and the U.S. Agency for
International Development (USAID) operations in the Frontline States of
Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. This approach to funding extraordinary
but temporary costs, which is similar to the approach taken by the
Department of Defense, allows USAID and the Department of State to
clearly identify the exceptional costs of operating in these countries
that are focal points of U.S national security policy and require a
significant U.S. civilian presence.
The administration continues to propose a multiyear cap that limits
governmentwide OCO funding to $450 billion over the 2013 to 2021
period. FY 2014 OCO funding will provide resources for the United
States continuing diplomatic platform and foreign assistance programs,
including assistance focused on foundational investments in economic
growth, support of the military, political and economic transitions,
and continuing the capacity-building within the Afghan Government to
sustain remarkable gains made in the past decade.
It is certainly not USAID's practice to seek to expend all OCO
funding to demonstrate a need for such funding in the next budget year.
USAID's assistance programs in Afghanistan, particularly those funded
by OCO, are designed through close civilian-military cooperation to
ensure collaboration and coordination and a cohesive effort in support
of overarching stabilization and development objectives in Afghanistan.
They are also designed and implemented in accordance with the
Administrator's Sustainability Guidance for USAID in Afghanistan:
http://transition.usaid.gov/locations/afghanistanpakistan/documents/
afghanistan/sustainability_guidance_
final.pdf.
contracting at usaid
Question. An October 2012 memorandum from the Office of the
Inspector General at USAID to your office noted some ongoing issues
with projects USAID has been managing. For example, in Afghanistan,
``forty percent of the reports issued from October 1, 2010, through
June 30, 2012, have identified contract or project management
deficiencies and noncompliance with relevant procedures or
regulations.'' In Pakistan, ``more than 40 percent have found internal
control weaknesses and noncompliance with relevant procedures or
regulations.'' In light of these persistent performance management
issues:
If a project does not meet specific criteria within its
first year, what is USAID's plan for course correction?
What are the baselines that Congress should use when
evaluating whether USAID is meeting the goals set out for
particular projects?
How heavily is performance history weighed when USAID is
considering awarding a contract to a particular entity?
Answer. USAID staff develop detailed monitoring and evaluation
plans as part of their project design process. The targets set in the
project monitoring and evaluation plans are the basis for portfolio
reviews of progress or lack thereof against targets, during which
mission staff make appropriate course correction according to the
context.
USAID continues to make strides in its ability to effectively
monitor and evaluate its development assistance programs. The Agency
has many mechanisms through which it sets targets and collects
performance information against those targets. The Agency has revised
its guidance on performance monitoring, requiring that missions develop
a Project Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) Plan during the design of new
projects. This Project M&E Plan provides a framework for collecting
baseline data as well as monitoring project performance during
implementation. It is the baselines established for various project
level indicators that missions then use during periodic reviews of
project implementation to determine whether projects are meeting the
targets that have been set against their baselines.
USAID recently updated guidance on past performance tracking as a
mandatory reference document to the Automated Directives System (ADS)
Chapter 302 with a suggested weight of 20-30 percent.
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