The Pentagon and Global Development: Making Sense of the DoD’s Expanding Role

One of the most striking trends in U.S. foreign aid policy is the surging role of the Department of Defense (DoD). The Pentagon now accounts for over 20 percent of U.S. official development assistance (ODA). DoD has also expanded its provision of non-ODA assistance, including training and equipping of foreign military forces in fragile states. These trends raise concerns that U.S. foreign and development policies may become subordinated to a narrow, short-term security agenda at the expense of broader, longer-term diplomatic goals and institution-building efforts in the developing world. We find that the overwhelming bulk of ODA provided directly by DoD goes to Iraq and Afghanistan, which are violent environments that require the military to take a lead role through instruments like Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) and the use of Commanders’ Emergency Response Program (CERP) funds. This funding surge is in principle temporary and likely to disappear when the U.S. involvement in both wars ends. But beyond these two conflicts, DoD has expanded (or proposes to expand) its operations in the developing world to include a number of activities that might be more appropriately undertaken by the State Department, USAID and other civilian actors. These initiatives include: the use of “Section 1206” authorities to train and equip foreign security forces; the establishment of the new Combatant Command for Africa (AFRICOM); and the administration’s proposed Building Global Partnerships (BGP) Act, which would expand DoD’s assistance authorities. We attribute the Pentagon’s growing aid role to three factors: the Bush administration’s strategic focus on the “global war on terror”; the vacuum left by civilian agencies, which struggle to deploy adequate numbers of personnel and to deliver assistance in insecure environments; and chronic under-investment by the United States in non-military instruments of state-building. We believe that DoD’s growing aid role beyond our two theaters of war carries potentially significant risks, by threatening to displace or overshadow broader U.S. foreign policy and development objectives in target countries and exacerbating the longstanding imbalance between the military and civilian components of the U.S. approach to state-building.Department of Defense, development, foriegn aid

Promoting Girls' Education in Africa - The Design and Implementation of Policy Interventions

Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,

Enhancing U.S. Leadership on Drinking Water and Sanitation: Opportunities Within Global Health Programs

This report examines the key health challenges associated with lack of access to safe drinking water and sanitation; identifies the principal United States agencies working on water and health internationally; reviews the limitations of the current U.S. approach; and offers recommendations to advance U.S. engagement on water and sanitation access issues in the context of global health programming and policymaking. This report focuses primarily on the links among water, sanitation, and the health sector and identifies opportunities for greater U.S. engagement on water and sanitation through global health programming and policymaking

Improving access to climate financing for the Pacific Islands

Executive summary The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) commits developed countries to provide assistance to ‘developing countries that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change in meeting the costs of adaptation.’ Although recent commitments of ‘fast-start’ climate funding from partners like Australia, Japan and the European Union are welcome, Pacific Island countries face wider obstacles in accessing appropriate and timely levels of funding for adaptation and mitigation to manage the adverse effects that environmental challenges have on core areas for economic, social and human development. The experience of Solomon Islands, the first Pacific country to obtain funding from the Kyoto Protocol Adaptation Fund for a project on food security and agricultural production, offers some important lessons for the region. Access to climate financing could be improved through seeking special access for small island states in financial mechanisms, establishing programs and structures that improve donor coordination and build the capacity of national institutions, developing national climate trust funds and a Pacific Regional Climate Change fund and, most importantly, implementing more targeted action on the ground to assist the most vulnerable communities with concrete adaptation programs