The stories you want. The opinions that matter.
No, thanks
Tag: usaid
USAID

Democrats Demand Investigation Of Bigoted Appointees At USAID

Reprinted with permission from ProPublica.

Democratic senators have called for the Trump administration to investigate anti-LGBT and anti-Muslim statements made by recent appointees to the U.S. Agency for International Development, urging the organization to do more as its leaders grapple with internal strife over their approach to issues of racism and inclusion.

The letter by seven senators made oblique reference to nationwide Black Lives Matter demonstrations calling for racial justice, saying that it is “important that employees hear from their leadership at the USAID an unequivocal commitment to addressing institutional prejudices."

Read NowShow less
Merritt Corrigan

USAID Hires Anti-Gay Critic Of ‘Liberal Democracy’

Reprinted with permission from ProPublica.

A new Trump appointee to the United States' foreign aid agency has a history of online posts denouncing liberal democracy and has said that the country is in the clutches of a “homo-empire" that pushes a “tyrannical LGBT agenda."

In one post, Merritt Corrigan, who recently took up a position as deputy White House liaison at the U.S. Agency for International Development, wrote: “Liberal democracy is little more than a front for the war being waged against us by those who fundamentally despise not only our way of life, but life itself."

Read NowShow less
Ultra-Stingy: Ivanka Touts $1 Plan To Advance Global Women’s ‘Prosperity’

Ultra-Stingy: Ivanka Touts $1 Plan To Advance Global Women’s ‘Prosperity’

The Trump administration’s much-hyped initiative to help 50 million women in the developing world has allocated only $1 toward each woman.

Ivanka Trump is the public face of the “Women’s Global Development and Prosperity Initiative,” announced to much fanfare during the same week as the State of the Union address.

But so far, the initiative has only had $50 million allocated to it from the budget of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

“That’s just a dollar a year each!” said Charles Kenny, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development.

The funds are extremely small in comparison to efforts by previous administrations.

In 2016, President Barack Obama’s administration submitted a budget requesting $1.34 billion in foreign aid that would support gender equality and efforts to reduce gender-based violence. Some $40 million of that was set aside for Let Girls Learn, the initiative launched by Michelle Obama to help girls in the developing world get a quality education.

A year later, the Trump administration ended the program.

Just last year, philanthropist Melinda Gates announced a $170 million plan to increase the economic power of women around the world. That’s more than three times as much as the commitment from the entire U.S. government.

Yet, despite the comparatively paltry sum of his offering, Trump clearly wanted praise for the program.

During his State of the Union address, Trump congratulated himself for launching “the first ever Government-wide initiative focused on economic empowerment for women in developing countries.”

“Trump is committed to women’s economic empowerment,” claimed a White House press release. The document said the $1 per woman effort would advance “women’s full and free participation in the global economy.”

As Trump signed a memorandum establishing the initiative, Ivanka wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed that laughably claimed the fund would help “boost global economic output by an additional $12 trillion by 2025.”

The public relations maneuver is right in line with an administration that has attacked women around the world at every turn.

He reinstated the anti-choice global gag rule, then later expanded it — banning the United States from funding certain reproductive health initiatives around the world.

Opposition to abortion also led Trump to cut funding for the United Nations Population Fund, which is responsible for family planning, including ending deaths from childbirth, across 150 countries.

Trump hurt women and families when he ended the Syrian refugee program and imposed a ban on Muslim travel to the U.S. Additionally, he put in place policies at the U.S.-Mexico border that separated children from their families.

Trump is reviled by women, and this initiative is part of a gambit to improve his standing with them before the election. But even then, with Ivanka leading the charge, Trump hobbled the program and made it into an obvious joke.

There is no real commitment here, just smoke and mirrors for another con in progress.

Published with permission of The American Independent.

Analysts Debate Proper Role Of U.S. Democracy Programs In Cuba

Analysts Debate Proper Role Of U.S. Democracy Programs In Cuba

By Juan O. Tamayo, El Nuevo Herald

MIAMI — The U.S. government has a right to finance pro-democracy programs in Cuba but must ensure they are not so aggressive that they wind up hurting dissidents and strengthening the hand of Havana hardliners, analysts and political figures said this week.

“U.S. policy has long been to bring about or hasten a democratic transition in Cuba,” said Carl Meacham, former senior staffer on Latin America for the Republican side of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “This is consistent with that policy.”

Meacham was reacting to a Monday report by The Associated Press that a U.S. Agency for International Development program sent young people from Venezuela, Costa Rica, and Peru to recruit young Cubans to anti-government activism … under the guise of civic programs from 2009 to 2011.

USAID said the program, which was run by Washington-based Creative Associates International working under a grant from the agency, was designed to “empower (Cuban) citizens to tackle a community or social problem, win a ‘small victory,’ and ultimately realize that they could be the masters of their own destiny.”

But the AP report poured fresh fuel on the long-running debate over the U.S. government’s Cuba programs. USAID says they are designed to promote democracy on the island but the Cuban government views them as attempts to topple its communist system.

Phil Peters, president of the Cuba Research Center in suburban Washington, D.C., and a proponent of easing U.S. sanctions on Havana, said USAID efforts such as the Creative Associates program can increase Cuban government suspicions.

“This kind of activity can hurt people who are trying to do good work in Cuba, put them under suspicion that they are working on a political program — to say nothing of the possible damage to USAID itself around the world,” Peters said.

But Mauricio Claver-Carone, an anti-Castro activist in Washington, D.C., defended such programs. “The United States should never apologize for helping the victims of brutal dictatorships throughout the world. To the contrary, it’s emblematic of our nation’s finest moments,” he wrote.

“All countries do this,” Meacham said of the Creative Associates International program.

Cuban dissident Jose Daniel Ferrer said the U.S. government is right to help opposition and civil society activists because the Cuban government controls every aspect of their lives, denies them the right to speak freely, and even fires them from their jobs.

Opposing the government “would be impossible without the help of friendly democratic nations and Cubans abroad” who pay for items such as printers, cellphones, and taxis to meetings, said Ferrer, head of the Cuban Patriotic Union.

Said Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL): “The fact that USAID is using measures to promote democracy in Cuba is no secret. We must continue to pressure the Castro regime and support the Cuban people, who are oppressed on a daily basis.”

In a statement Monday, USAID said that the U.S. Congress “funds democracy programming in Cuba to empower Cubans to access more information and strengthen civil society … The work is not secret; it is not covert, nor is it undercover.”

The AP reported that the young travelers to Cuba worked undercover and often posed as tourists.

In its statement, USAID said The Associated Press included a paragraph in its report that correctly described the program but “then goes on to make sensational claims against aid workers for supporting civil society programs … This is wrong.”

But some analysts cautioned that Cuba democracy programs run the risk of becoming too aggressive, counterproductive, and might even further complicate the already fractious debate on how to improve U.S.-Cuba relations.

The latest report could strengthen hardliners in Havana who oppose economic reforms, and others in the United States who support sanctions on Cuba, said Meacham, now Americas program director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Teo Babun, executive director of EchoCuba, a Miami nonprofit that has received U.S. government dollars in the past to assist churches in Cuba, said the USAID program, as described, was too “aggressive” for his taste.

“It is clear that USAID supports democracy-building programs,” he said. “But it is wrong to engage with or to try to introduce programs that are so aggressive against the (Cuban) government. We cannot be supportive of that.”

Babun added, however, that he hadn’t ever encountered a USAID Cuba program that was as aggressive as that described in the AP report. “Not in one instance did we see this type of program,” he said.

In April, the AP sparked another aid controversy with a report on a previously unknown USAID program — a Twitter-like social media platform for Cubans known as ZunZuneo.

Photo via WikiCommons

Interested in world news? Sign up for our daily email newsletter!