Connie Veillette, director of the Rethinking U.S. Foreign Assistance Program, was quoted in an Inter Press Service article on budget cuts, security and development.
From the Article:
In the midst of a belt-tightening political climate in which pledges by prominent lawmakers to slash the United States' foreign affairs budget will likely soon be realised, some rights groups and experts are concerned about the increasingly blurry distinction between security and development in the face of shrinking resources. "The upshot of the budget situation is that we will continue to rely on the military for development efforts," Connie Veillette, foreign assistance expert at the Centre for Global Development, warned an audience at a panel discussion here Thursday. "If the international affairs budget goes down, we will have to rely on DOD (the U.S. Department of Defence) more and more." Meanwhile, a new Oxfam report released Thursday titled "Whose aid is it anyway?: Politicising aid in conflicts and crises" caution against the growing trend of militarising international aid.
"Effective aid saves lives, reduces poverty, builds health and education systems and strengthens the economies of poorer countries," said Mike Lewis, author of the report, in a statement. "Aid directed to short-term political and military objectives fails to reach the poorest people and also fails to build long-term security in fragile states and ultimately for donors, too."
On Monday, U.S. President Barack Obama will submit his budget proposal to Congress for fiscal year (FY) 2012. With an estimated 1.4-trillion-dollar deficit for FY 2011 and a national debt of over 14 trillion dollars, officials are scrambling to curb spending.
In a bid to convince policymakers of the importance of foreign aid, administration officials have recently ramped up their rhetoric of framing development as integral to national interests in an effort to justify further funding.
"[D]evelopment is not and cannot be a sideshow," said U.S.A.I.D. administrator Rajiv Shah in a speech at the Centre for Global Development last month. "As the President and the Secretaries of State, Treasury and Defence have all made abundantly clear, development is as critical to our economic prospects and our national security as diplomacy and defence."