Opinion: Other countries must step up to fill the void of USAID
Foreign assistance offers collective benefit — to security interests, humanitarian values, and public health. But it is also a collective obligation.
The dismantling of the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID, is complete. The humanitarian network, established in 1961 under President John F. Kennedy, once reached people in need in nearly 180 countries. It employed more than 14,000 aid workers through 6,200 programs, which oversaw missions from feeding malnourished children to clearing unexploded ordnance left after times of war. But in one fell technocratic swoop, what has been left of USAID is this: less than a fifth of its programs, with virtually no one to operate them.
But if foreign assistance is viewed for its collective benefit — to security interests, humanitarian values, and public health — it is best to understand it, perhaps, as a collective obligation. What, among the world’s nations, it once aspired to be. More importantly, what they must see it as now. No country, or single entity, can fill the gaping void left by the $44 billion enterprise that was once USAID. But the rest of the world’s wealthy nations must work together to take its place.
