Foreign aid is mostly gone; it’s being replaced with something better

Over the past year, wealthy countries around the world have undermined a decades-old consensus that human dignity is universal and that nations have a responsibility to further it.

- By RAJIV J. SHAH The New York Times

The shuttering of the United States Agency for International Development, which I led for five years, is just one piece of a broader, tragic retreat from a system of foreign aid that helped cure the sick, feed the hungry and empower the poor.

Countries, including the United States, Canada, Britain and Germany, have slashed billions in assistance. Research published by The Lancet estimates that more than 14 million people could die as a result of American aid cuts alone — 4.5 million of them children younger than five. This is a moral failure that will make the whole world less safe, less secure and less prosperous.

Amid the tragedy, it is tempting to defend what we know. Fortunately, leaders in Africa, Asia, Latin America and elsewhere are building something new. They are taking ownership of their countries’ own development, figuring out ways to leverage new technology and, most important, encouraging private investment - long the single biggest challenge for development projects. Their initiatives are modeling a way to lift up the vulnerable that will be more sustainable in the 21st century.

Eighty or so years ago, powerful nations came together around the concept of universal dignity, codifying that idea into institutions like the United Nations, the World Health Organization and the World Bank. This om helped usher in an era of extraordinary progress: transforming AIDS into a manageable condition, saving millions of children from dying of preventable causes and helping to cut hunger in low-income countries by more than 60 percent from 1970 to 2015. It also benefited donor countries by fighting diseases like Ebola abroad to protect lives at home and turning poorer countries into trade partners that created jobs.