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Women’s Empowerment is Human Empowerment

Though we may wish to believe that the world has developed into a largely egalitarian society with equal opportunities for all, regardless of gender, this is a regrettably idealistic approach to the current global atmosphere. Studies have been conducted, goals have been presented, laws have been passed and conferences have been convened, all serving to raise awareness of gender equality around the world. But it has not been enough to solve the problem of the global suppression of women.

Nowhere is this inequity experienced more than in the developing world. Women and girls contribute to 60% of the world’s poorest people. Human traffickers target women and girls, forcing them into lives of prostitution and manual labor. Ill-equipped and under funded health care systems in the developing world lead to abysmal maternal and child survival rates.

The continuation of such practices and norms is even more unconscionable when taking into account that women are the backbone of society. Women are increasingly becoming the majority of the world’s farmers, health care providers, factory workers, and business entrepreneurs. While women have proven to be integral to the development and stability of society, they are continually left out of the development process and their power goes untapped. Thus, as Hilary Clinton would argue, providing equal opportunity to everyone, regardless of gender, is not only an issue of human rights and humanitarian values, it is a necessity to the progression of humanity and a prerequisite to sustainable development.

Secretary Clinton highlights the benefits investing in women brings to local societies and the world as a whole. “When women are free to vote and run for public office, governments are more effective and responsive to their people. When women are free to earn a living and start small businesses, they become drivers of economic growth. When women are afforded the opportunity of education and access to health care, their families and communities prosper. When women have equal rights, nations are more stable, peaceful and secure.”

Similarly, Nicholas Kristof noted in his keynote speech at the first annual Global Washington Conference that investing in women provides “so much bang for the buck.” Empowering women promotes smarter spending on education and health care, resulting in a more stable and secure environment.

In order to accomplish gender equality in the face of the global subjugation of women, the United States has embarked on a foreign policy strategy that aims to improve equality worldwide. By focusing on women in the three priorities of its global development policy, global health, food security, and climate change, the U.S. is working to improve the living conditions of women around the world. Senator John Kerry recently introduced the Enhancing Quality Assistance and Leadership and Improving Transparency (EQUALITY) Act that would create offices in the Department of State and USAID committed to elevating women’s empowerment and integrating gender equality into foreign assistance strategies.

Even with the actions taken by the United States and other international actors, we must change the way we view gender equality in global development in order to accomplish true gender equality. We must garner the vast array of benefits women can contribute to society. We must view gender equality as not only empowering women, but also empowering humanity as a whole.

Appropriated Aid Not Reaching Afghans

Since 2002, foreign donors have allocated nearly $36 billion to Afghanistan in an effort to assist in reconstruction efforts. In that time, however, little has changed for the Afghan people, particularly in rural areas. Access to electricity is difficult to come by and is inconsistent in its operation. Clean water, though paramount to survival, is a struggle to find and often a luxury to keep. Roads are little more than dirt paths that are prone to flooding making them barely traversable. With such a large-scale international effort to rebuild Afghanistan, why has so little progress been achieved? According to Pino Arlacchi, a prominent EU parliamentarian, only 20 to 30 percent of the foreign assistance funding has reached the citizens of Afghanistan in the past eight years due to corruption and waste. Corruption in the Afghan government is coupled with a high level of corruption in international assistance projects, preventing aid from flowing freely to those who are most in need. International donors are also guilty of high levels of waste and unnecessarily high salaries for development workers. According to Matt Walden of Harvard University, 40 percent of aid money goes to the salaries of aid workers and contractors rather than directly to projects that would benefit the Afghan people. However, some of these facts and figures can be misleading. It is indisputable that the Afghan people do not receive some aid, but not all of the aid is meant to directly reach the hands of Afghan civilians. More than half of the funds appropriated by international donors are meant for security assistance, which does not have any direct development implications for the general population. Also, with decades of violence and political instability, the Afghan infrastructure has been severely weakened and many technically skilled workers have emigrated. As a result, foreign workers are necessary to work on development projects until enough Afghans are trained are ready to take over the projects. Nevertheless, significant reform is needed to curb corruption, cut waste, and reduce inflated wages in an effort to improve the quality of development projects. Much like the corruption seen in the construction of schools and hospitals in Herat province, development projects in all of Afghanistan suffer from a lack of regulation. With little oversight of public funds appropriated to these construction companies, the companies are able to use low quality materials and pocket the left over funds. Such a lack of oversight will only encourage corruption on a national scale. This phenomenon serves to show that more attention must be paid to strengthening monitoring and evaluation systems within the Afghan government and international donors. This lesson can also be applied to any development project, anywhere in the world. Such oversight will help to make development budgets and processes more transparent. As one of Global Washington’s four Principles of Aid Effectiveness, transparency serves to make donors more accountable for their actions, leading to more sustainable development projects. For more information on Global Washington’s four Principles of Aid Effectiveness, read our white paper.

Delays in the Foreign Aid Reform Process

As reported in Foreign Policy’s blog “State Department Review? Not Until April,” the preliminary report on the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR) will not be released until the beginning of April at the earliest. In an update email sent by the director of the QDDR, the State Department Director of Policy Planning reported that the preliminary report is in its final stages. Meetings will be held with all agencies involved in U.S. development programs to seek their opinion on this initial report and the QDDR will continue to work alongside the NSA as they conduct the Presidential Study Directive-7 process. The email also announced that briefings will be conducted with Congressional leaders and staff before this report is released publicly.

Modeled after the Quadrennial Defense Review overseen by the Department of Defense, the QDDR is a major step toward foreign aid reform that the development community has been anxiously awaiting since the review was first announced last year. However, there are some concerns about the QDDR process and what it means for the roles of USAID and State in global development planning.  By grouping diplomacy and development concerns together in one review and relying on the policy planning operation of the State Department rather than USAID, the QDDR may only serve to continue the subjugation of USAID in planning long-term U.S. global development policy. The State-centric process of the QDDR simultaneously strips USAID of any policy planning legitimacy of its own and undermines its effectiveness. This process sends an important message that has implications for what we can expect from the QDDR’s content: it appears that the State Department fails to realize that foreign assistance must be separated from the political motivations of diplomacy in order to meet global development goals. Along this logic, Global Washington has recommended that USAID be made a Cabinet-level department autonomous from the Departments of State and Defense to better coordinate the response to global development needs.

The QDDR seeks to establish a set of short, medium, and long-term strategies for how the U.S. conducts its diplomacy and development programs. The State Department Director of Policy Planning Anne-Marie Slaughter and Deputy Secretary of State Jack Lew are directing and overseeing the process of the QDDR. This process calls for a comprehensive review of the diplomatic and development challenges faced by the U.S. both now, and in the future, as well as the responses to these challenges in the past as a means to realize and disseminate long-term U.S. foreign policy objectives. With these objectives in place, the QDDR will offer direction on how the State Department and USAID should organize the tools and resources necessary to meet the challenges of the 21^st century.

As a result of the delay in the QDDR process, the entire course of foreign aid reform has been slowed down. The Presidential Study Directive to review the U.S. global development strategy (PSD-7) is also underway and will most likely defer release until the QDDR is finalized and released. The Senate bill S. 1524– the Foreign Assistance Revitalization and Accountability Act of 2009- sponsored by Senators John Kerry and Richard Lugar, is also reported to be delaying Senate consideration until more detailed information on the findings of the QDDR is released.

The Presidential Study Directive has the potential to elevate USAID and global development concerns to a higher level, as it is an initiative of the White House, a neutral third party in planning the direction of U.S. global development policy. It follows a whole-of-government approach to reviewing and reforming the U.S. foreign assistance strategy. The PSD will evaluate the actions of the more than two-dozen departments and agencies contributing to U.S. foreign assistance programming in an effort to develop a national global development strategy to increase coordination and transparency, which is one of the principle recommendations of Global Washington in order to make U.S. foreign assistance policy more effective.

But before the PSD-7 can be completed and released, the State Department must first finish the QDDR. Thus, hopefully the initial report of the QDDR will be released during the first week of April as promised, and a clear and effective global development strategy will be one step closer to fruition.