In 2003, Grassroots International argued in an op-ed in the Boston Globe, in response to the Treasury Department’s guidelines (the “Voluntary Best Practices for U.S.-based Charities”) that: “The Bush administration has used this [post 9-11] climate to challenge the independence of all U.S. aid organizations. Andrew Natsios, administrator of the US Agency for International Development, said [in May 2003] that any US organization taking USAID funding should consider itself an ‘arm of US foreign policy.’”
Now, as then, we disagree strongly with this misguided notion. In fact, one of our tag lines is “We’re your progressive alternative to the official U.S. government plan for the rest of the world!” Since our beginning in 1983, Grassroots International has maintained its independence and autonomy from the U.S. government – irrespective of which party is in power in the White House or Congress – by not seeking or taking USAID funding. We see the Obama Administration’s Partner Vetting System (PVS), as proposed, for recipients of USAID funding, as another step that potentially threatens to undermine the autonomy of all US aid and development organizations, and their credibility in the countries they work in overseas with their grantees, partners and, for that matter, governments.
Like our colleagues within the Charity & Security Network, we strongly support the prevention of any funds – not just USAID monies – being misappropriated by terrorist organizations. But we also remain convinced that due diligence conducted by NGOs would be a superior approach to vetting than list checking, and that the fundamental flaws in the current design of USAID’s PVS should be reconsidered and redesigned.
Like the Treasury guidelines, the PVS could in effect “turn charities into mini intelligence agencies. This role is quite different from the one for which they were chartered and requires resources that simply are not available to most aid organizations.” It would be tragic, in the face of President Obama’s historic speech to the Arab and Muslim world in Cairo if these efforts by Treasury resulted – as we noted back in 2003 – in “cutting off the oxygen to the courageous few who provide the real democratic alternatives in Palestine [and the larger Middle East]. The regulations currently under discussion at the Treasury Department threaten to do just that.”
And that is why, even though Grassroots International does not take USAID funding, we signed on to the comments submitted to Treasury by a number of our colleagues within the Charity & Security Network.