U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs

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Foreign assistance reform is a key priority for the Committee. Read and comment on our proposals! Send us your thoughts.

Foreign assistance is a critical component of America’s national security strategy and an essential tool to respond to long-term development and security challenges as well as urgent humanitarian needs. Yet there is a growing consensus that our entire system of foreign assistance is in desperate need of fundamental reform. The current foreign assistance structure, which is generally guided by the Foreign Assistance Act (FAA) of 1961, is characterized by duplication, lack of flexibility, outdated authorities, and lack of clear purposes and objectives. The FAA may have been appropriate for an era when the United States faced one major threat--the Soviet Union--but it is clearly inadequate to address the myriad development and security challenges faced by our nation in the twenty-first century.

Chairman Berman has indicated that foreign assistance reform--and specifically, re-writing the FAA--is one of his top legislative priorities in the 111th Congress. The Committee plans to undertake this endeavor on a bipartisan basis and in partnership with the new Administration, our colleagues on other committees and in the Senate, and the non-governmental community. To that end, the Chairman has released a Concept Paper for Foreign Aid Reform (July 23,2009), Discussion Paper #1: Development Assistance Reforms (October 6, 2009), Discussion Paper on Peacebuilding (issued jointly with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, April 8, 2010), and Discussion Paper #3: Human Rights and Democracy (May 28, 2010)

We are very interested to hear your thoughts and suggestions on foreign assistance reform, and invite you to submit your feedback below.

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