The Current

This week, the Government Relations team at IJM’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., is in India working with our colleagues from Chennai and Bangalore on strategies to influence local, state and national authorities.  We’ve been looking forward to this opportunity and can’t wait to stories with you soon. Although, at the moment, I’m thinking maybe our Indian staff should come here and train us on how to influence our government leaders!

Anti-trafficking activists are braced for trouble when the Senate takes up the foreign assistance appropriations budget this week or next.  According to Congressional Quarterly, the definitive source for what’s up on Capitol Hill, some Members of Congress are poised to pass amendments to strip billions of dollars from foreign aid financing. According to USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah, some in Congress are threatening to cut development assistance by 50 percent.

I’ve worked on U.S. foreign aid issues for 30 years, and while it is always a struggle to pass appropriations bills, this year is the worst I’ve ever seen. 

World Vision CEO Rich Sterns wrote brilliantly about the value of humanitarian assistance in a recent Huffington Post article, saying, “American aid is a small fraction of the U.S. budget.  Aid to the poor is less than .5 percent of the federal budget.  It amounts to 14 cents per American per day.  It hardly makes sense to think we can solve our fiscal problems by cutting funding to the poorest people in the world.” 

One of the effective foreign aid programs that Rich mentions in his blog is PEPFAR – the President’s Emergency Program to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria –  which was proposed by President George W. Bush in 2003.  I was working for Physicians for Human Rights at the time; we and dozens of other humanitarian organizations had been lobbying Congress around the clock to boost America’s paltry contribution to the AIDS pandemic. 

Activists were astounded and thrilled when the President announced that the U.S. would provide $15 billion over the coming 3 years to treat millions of poor people – most in sub-Saharan Africa – with antiretroviral drugs, provide prevention services to 7 million and care to another 10 million.  Congress, to its immense credit, shared the President’s vision and produced the legislation and appropriations to make it come true. 

George Bush and PEPFAR literally changed the way the developed world addressed HIV in poor countries.  It was a lot of money, and it saved millions of lives.  It was worth it.

Members of Congress from across the political spectrum put aside their differences, made compromises, and pounded out a consensus on global HIV/AIDS.  We need that vision and bipartisan cooperation again to eradicate slavery, at home and abroad.  We need it to save hundreds of Somali children, men and women from certain death from famine this year.We need it to build public justice systems to protect women and girls from sexual violence and widows from property theft. 

The U.S. economy will rally, U.S. budgets will go up and they will go down.  Senators and Representatives will come and go.  But history will judge the 112^th Congress harshly if they gut humanitarian programs that a hungry, sick, and weary world depends upon.

Holly Burkhalter is the Vice President of Government Relations at International Justice Mission. IJM's Justice Campaigns mobilizes people around the country in support of U.S. policies that will lead to the abolition of human trafficking and modern-day slavery.