To Reform Foreign Aid Institutions, "Rewrite" the Rules

To change the U.S. foreign aid system, we must "[d]o what the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) did: break the rules and then rewrite them," Mark Dybul, former U.S. global AIDS coordinator, writes in a Foreign Policy opinion piece examining the development and implementation of the program. "PEPFAR was the start of a fundamental change -- a break from the past -- in not just the intellectual foundations of development but in the nuts and bolts of how it is done," according to Dybul.

He refers to two "new development institutions" -- the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria -- as "rule-breakers" that "have the greatest chance of ensuring the ideals of a new era in development." According to Dybul, "In the long term, expanding the MCC and the Global Fund is the right strategy, so long as institutional issues can be resolved." He writes that the world is "at a unique moment in history in which that opportunity -- to finally get development right -- is an open door," adding that "it would be a great tragedy to take the easy way out by killing development quickly or starving it slowly with partial and ineffective reforms. Instead, we need to harness our new ideas to change the course of human development. Not really much of a choice when you stop to think about it" (9/22).

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