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Aid Delivers 2023

Fundamentals for U.S. Development & Humanitarian Assistance

Poverty-focused development and humanitarian assistance is integral to American engagement in the world and remains a strategic, economic, and moral imperative. U.S. global development and humanitarian assistance leadership should adhere to the following fundamentals:

  • Assistance must be human-centered and effective in accomplishing its long-term goal of ending poverty, hunger, disease, injustice, corruption, and conflict. It should not be instrumentalized or used to leverage short-term political, foreign policy, or military objectives.
  • The goal of foreign assistance is to build sustainability and capacity for the eventual transition away from assistance, paving the way for other forms of partnership and international cooperation.
  • Foreign assistance should be transparent, data-driven, accountable, and outcome-oriented. It should be evidence-based, cultivate learning, and use best practices.
  • Foreign assistance should support locally-led development and humanitarian response to better address community needs and achieve impactful and effective results.
  • As an investment in U.S. global leadership, foreign assistance funding should be robust, dependable, and timely. Funding levels should be commensurate with global needs, based on locally determined priorities, and reactive to changes on the ground. Once the U.S. commits assistance, it should be delivered.

Programs not aligned with these principles threaten the sustainability of programming and risk further backsliding on key development and humanitarian assistance objectives. For more information on these fundamentals, see the InterAction community’s “Fundamentals for U.S. Development and Humanitarian Assistance.”

USG Impediments to Aid

Sanctions have become the first line of attack when U.S. security interests are threatened. The scale and scope of these restrictions have expanded in recent years, and entities/individuals subject to sanctions are often present in contexts where NGOs are responding to the greatest needs.

Sanctions reforms are necessary to avoid unintended consequences on humanitarian aid and development. Sanctions are a primary impediment to the timely and effective delivery of humanitarian aid in crisis settings, as they do not adequately protect legitimate humanitarian action. Consequently, NGOs must invest significant resources in navigating complex legal and security environments, beyond what they already do to comply with humanitarian principles and to protect their work, donors, and beneficiaries. Coupled with the U.S. prohibition on material support to designated terrorist entities, these impediments often result in avoidable suffering as the needs of the most vulnerable people are not met.

Confusing and changing sanctions programs also result in what is commonly called “bank derisking,” where financial institutions are reluctant to process funds transfers for programming in sanctioned countries and regions or where designated entities and individuals are present. When NGOs lose access to formal banking channels, they often must use alternative means of moving money overseas, such as carrying cash, which poses its own risks and can undermine the goals of counter-terror financing.

As stated in the Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2020, “providing vital humanitarian and development assistance and protecting the integrity of the international financial system are complementary goals.” Solutions must strike a balance between two equally important objectives: stopping financing of malign actors and promptly facilitating vital, life-saving humanitarian aid to crisis-affected people.

InterAction’s Together Project confronts obstacles facing principled humanitarian action to help shape systemic solutions.