by Gwynn Guilford
US government humanitarian aid programs have an unfortunate knack for supporting human rights violators. Maria McFarland Sanchez-Moreno and Naomi Roht-Arriaza home in on the case of Ethiopia, where "human rights groups have reported in great detail how the leadership in Addis Ababa has become increasingly authoritarian over the past few years":
This is not a simple issue. Ethiopia is one of Africa's largest and poorest countries, and donors understandably want to help provide a safety net for its most vulnerable citizens. Unlike in countries where donors can support non-governmental activity in lieu of funding a repressive state, in Ethiopia the government has constricted that opportunity through a repressive law that limits the ability of civil society groups working on any human rights or advocacy issues to receive foreign funds.
They highlight another thorny diplomatic issue: when foreign aid is seen as endorsement of the dominant regime.
Another problem arises when U.S. assistance becomes too closely aligned with a repressive government's priorities and is interpreted as political support for the regime. This is particularly difficult when dealing with countries that restrict the types of support foreign donors can provide. In Egypt, for example, USAID's willingness to comply with President Hosni Mubarak's funding restrictions while he was in power led to criticism from many civil society organizations at the time. What's more, this compliance harmed the credibility of USAID's protests after Egypt's military-led government harassed and intimidated American NGOs last year — the Cairo authorities could simply say they were merely enforcing their own laws, by which the United States had previously abided.
The Dish 