The Humanitarian Response Index has rated the United States as in the bottom third of western countries in humanitarian giving. Should we be alarmed that our country is so miserly and unhelpful?
Well, not if we look at how the ratings are calculated. In terms of the amount of dollars given, the US does quite well. And if you look at ratings at how well we work with nonprofits, promote accountability, and otherwise the efficiency of US aid dollars, America also ranks quite high. The overall ratings of the US suffer because the US refused to ratify several treaties regarding human rights. We also refuse to give cash aid to countries or organizations that actively work against US interests.
In other words, its not that the US is stingy, or that the US doesn’t help others, or doesn’t allocate its aid effectively – its that the political ideology of the US doesn’t happen to align with the Europeans who did the rankings. And for a group that claims that the U.S. suffers from a lack of “neutrality” in its giving of aid, one has to wonder about hypocrisy in the lack of neutrality about political ideology was in the construction of these ratings.
For some reason, the US always gets the short end of the media stick in the giving of aid. After the tsunami, UN undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs Jan Egeland called the US “stingy” for its limited pledge. But, as reported by Bill Ashton of CUNY, while the US pledged less per capita than other countries, it actually paid a large portion of what it pledged, while other countries that pledged considerably more actually paid considerably less. Somehow, this never made it into the news – only the stinginess.
And none of these reports ever mentions the fact that US citizens charitable giving for humanitarian projects is larger than from most other countries (especially in Europe) and that if you consider both government and private contributions then the US becomes a leader in humanitarian giving.
It’s unfortunately in vogue to think about the US as an ogre and a bully and play down all the good that America does in the world. Yesterday, Mike talked about the PR war, and how to make America seem like the good guy. Biased reports based on political ideology like the HRI don’t help, and neither does uncritical media coverage of it, such as in the link above.
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