Slashing Foreign Aid Risks Millions of Lives

The White House announced last January that waging war on the “foreign aid industry and bureaucracy” would be among its first orders of business. Unfortunately, many other rich-country governments are following its lead. If current and planned cuts to foreign aid stand, the cost could be millions — repeat, millions — of lives lost.

No question, the US and others need to change the way they design and administer aid. Too many of their programs have failed to promote development. Bureaucracies proliferate, spending is badly allocated, money is wasted. But the recent cuts are failing to discriminate between good and bad projects and aren’t even trying to improve efficiency. Worst of all, many of them threaten critical health interventions in the poorest countries, programs that are proven to save lives at relatively little cost. Aid should be streamlined and repurposed, not blindly cut.