List of contributors to the tsunami disaster. Canada has increased her aid to 80M from 33M according to the Globe and Mail.
philly.com
U.S. aid generosity is in eye of beholder
Posted on Sun, Jan. 02, 2005
By differing measures, the United States is either the most charitable nation or one of the stingiest.
By Sonni Efron
Los Angeles Times
WASHINGTON - Americans think of themselves as the most generous people on earth. So to many, it came as a shock to hear that the U.S. response to the southern Asian tsunami last week was considered stingy.
But views of American generosity depend on who is doing the measuring and how.
By total money, the United States by far donates more than any other country in the world. This is the gauge preferred by most U.S. officials. But when aid is calculated per citizen or as a percentage of the economy, it ranks among the least generous in the industrialized world.
As U.S. officials and foreign aid experts debate which measure is more apt, the issue is another example of how Americans' views of themselves differ from those around the world.
"I don't take kindly to comments from the U.N. calling these miserly responses, when we're the ones who generally foot the bill, and we will in this one," Sen. Sam Brownback (R., Kan.) said, referring to comments from U.N. officials questioning initial U.S. aid offers.
The Bush administration now is pledging $350 million, up from $15 million, and said the amount will rise further. Still, others in Washington sympathize with the view that America can do more.
"It's embarrassing," said Tim Rieser, an aide to Sen. Patrick Leahy (D., Vt.), who works on foreign-aid issues. "Nothing illustrates this more vividly than that out of a trillion-dollar budget, we provide less than 1 percent for foreign assistance and far less than 1 percent for humanitarian aid."
Critics cite statistics from the Paris-based Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD, which measures overseas development assistance as a percentage of gross national income for the 22 leading industrialized nations.
In 2003, the United States was last on OECD's list, spending 0.15 percent of its national income. Other Western nations contributed far more. Norway spent 0.9 percent, France 0.4 percent, and Britain 0.3 percent.
Officials in the Bush and the Clinton administrations have argued that the OECD does not measure many forms of assistance provided by the U.S. government other than formal foreign aid. While the OECD puts U.S. foreign aid at $16.2 billion last year, the U.S. Agency for International Development counts U.S. giving differently, saying aid to developing countries was $22.6 billion in 2000.
Further, private assistance - from individuals, universities, religious groups, foundations, corporations and others - was $33.6 billion, USAID said. And other spending for international affairs - including peacekeeping, foreign military loans, nonproliferation efforts and democracy promotion - was $12.7 billion: a total of nearly $69 billion. Still, many believe aid spending should not include some military expenditures or funds to promote democracy.
Even using the American view, the United States comes up short, said Patrick Cronin, a former assistant administrator for policy and program coordination at USAID under Bush.
"We have to do more," said Cronin, now at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. "But we have to do it smart, and we have to change the debate away from a simple redistribution of wealth to a discussion of... aid effectiveness."
A different key measure of generosity was devised by the Center for Global Development and Foreign Policy magazine, which ranked rich countries' contributions in terms of aid, trade, investment, technology, security and the environment. Countries got points for quality as well as quantity.
On that scale, the United States ranked seventh of 21 nations, behind Canada, Britain, Australia, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands.
The scale found U.S. contributions of foreign aid relatively much lower than other countries, while it scored higher on immigration and trade. Allowing in foreigners and foreign products is considered a measure of how much a rich nation is willing to help a poor one.
But the study upended the commonly held view that shortfalls in U.S. government aid for the global poor are made up by private contributions. It found that government foreign aid in 2002 worked out to 13 cents per American a day; private donations were 5 cents per person.
In 16 other countries, governments gave more. In three - Switzerland, Ireland and Norway - private citizens gave more. The Norwegian government gave $1.02 per citizen a day; private giving was 24 cents.
Cronin said U.S. per capita giving would never match that of Norway, a nation of 4.5 million. On the other hand, the United States makes many contributions hard to quantify in dollar terms, he said, including using its military prowess for peacekeeping, or airlifting tsunami relief supplies and sending ships that desalinate water.
"We're not going to hand out the Nobel Peace Prize, but we are going to go into harm's way and provide international security in a way Norway won't, even though they are a staunch U.S. ally," Cronin said.
David Roodman, an architect of the Center for Global Development study, argued that no rich country gives enough.
"Stingy, of course, is a relative term," he said. "I wouldn't say the entire world is stingy. But helping the rest of the world is clearly a low priority in making our policies, and that's true in every country to a greater or lesser extent."
Aid Pledged
A partial list of the countries and organizations pledging aid for tsunami victims, based on U.N. data and official announcements by the nations. The United Nations said yesterday that about $2 billion had been promised so far.
In millions of dollars.
Japan... $500
United States... 350
World Bank... 250
Britain... 95
Sweden... 75.5
Spain... 68
China... 60
France... 57
Australia... 46.7
Canada... 33
Germany... 27
European Comm... . 45
Switzerland... 21.9
Denmark... 18.1
Norway... 16.6
Portugal... 11
Qatar... 10
Saudi Arabia... 10
Singapore... 3.6
New Zealand... 3.5
Finland... 3.3
Kuwait... 2
United Arab Emirates... 2
Ireland... 1.4
Italy... 1.3
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Source: Associated Press |
