Joint NGO letter to Senate Leadership on Humanitarian Accounts

The Honorable Harry Reid
Majority Leader
U.S. Senate

The Honorable Mitch McConnell
Minority Leader
U.S. Senate

March 28, 2011

Dear Majority Leader Reid and Minority Leader McConnell:

As executive officers representing a diverse group of U.S. refugee, relief, and development organizations, we are writing to urge you to maintain Fiscal Year 2010 (FY10) funding levels for the core humanitarian accounts in FY11 and FY12. We are deeply concerned about the House of Representatives’ proposed funding cuts to the Migration and Refugee Assistance, Food for Peace, and International Disaster Assistance accounts. We believe that a reduction in resources will severely hamper the U.S.’ ability to providelife-saving protection and assistance to victims of war, famine, and those uprooted from large scale natural disasters.

Historically—and with strong bipartisan support—the United States has been the global leader in responding to the needs of these most vulnerable people. Successive Republican and Democratic leaders have understood that humanitarian assistance upholds America’s tradition of generosity and compassion and is an effective way of building trust with foreign governments and their citizens.

The consequences of major cuts to humanitarian budgets would be drastic:

• The U.S. would be unable to fully respond to emerging crises like Libya without cutting life saving assistance in other places;
• The U.S. will not be able to follow through with its special responsibility to provide protection and assistance to some two million Iraqis who remain displaced from the war;
• The U.S. will no longer be well positioned to provide support for people displaced by conflict and natural disasters in Afghanistan and Pakistan, undermining U.S. foreign policy goals at a critical moment;
• Reduced funding would decimate U.S. capacity to respond to a worsening drought in the strategically important Horn of Africa—a region that stands on the verge of a famine that could push more than seven million people towards starvation;
• Funds from the humanitarian accounts provide the vast majority of support to Darfur as well as substantial support to the future state of South Sudan. Cuts in funding would put hundreds of thousands of Sudanese lives at risk, just as the country embarks on the fragile process of North-South separation;
• A reduction in resources would slash USAID’s disaster risk reduction (DDR), which saves lives and money by reducing the humanitarian impact of natural disasters; and
• Programs aimed at reducing sexual and gender based violence and supporting vulnerable women and children in conflict would be crippled.

Effective humanitarian response requires up-front funds in order to support life-saving activities during the onset of an emergency and to ensure that resources remain steady until communities can recover and solutions can be found. For this reason it is urgent that the humanitarian accounts receive full funding now rather than be patched up with supplemental appropriations later in the fiscal year, which often take months to negotiate while people suffer. We would also stress that robust humanitarian funding should not come at the expense of other international poverty reduction and development accounts.

We strongly urge that Senate leadership work to maintain current FY10 funding for the Migration and Refugee Assistance, Food for Peace, and International Disaster Assistance accounts in the current and next fiscal year.

Sincerely,

Daniel Wordsworth
President and CEO
American Refugee Committee

Curtis R. Welling
President and CEO
AmeriCares

Larry Cox
Executive Director
Amnesty International USA

Dr. William Keh, MD
CEO
Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation

Helene D. Gayle MD, MPH
President and CEO
CARE USA

Douglas Johnson
Executive Director
Center for Victims of Torture

Joseph Kassab
Executive Director
Chaldean Federation of America

David A. Weiss
President and CEO
CHF International

Anne Lynam Goddard
President and CEO
ChildFund International

John L. McCullough
Executive Director and CEO
Church World Service

Tom Arnold
Chief Executive Officer
Concern Worldwide US

Joan C. Parker
President and CEO
Counterpart International

Deborah Stein
Director
Episcopal Migration Ministries

Tsehaye Teferra, Ph.D.
President
Ethiopian Community Development Council, Inc.

David Evans
U.S. President
Food for the Hungry

Gideon Aronoff
President and CEO
HIAS (The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society)

Elisa Massimino
President and CEO
Human Rights First

Nancy A. Aossey
President and CEO
International Medical Corps

George Rupp
President and CEO
International Rescue Committee

Fr. Michael Evans, S.J.
National Director
Jesuit Refugee Service/USA

Dr. Pary Karadaghi
President
Kurdish Human Rights Watch

Hannah Song
President
Liberty in North Korea (LINK)

Dr. Mujahid Al-Fayadh
President and CEO
Life for Relief and Development

Linda Hartke
President and CEO
Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service

John Arthur Nunes
President and CEO
Lutheran World Relief

Sasha Chanoff
Executive Director
Mapendo International

Neal Keny-Guyer
CEO
Mercy Corps

Umar al-Qadi
President and CEO
Mercy-USA for Aid and Development

Neil Grungras
Executive Director
ORAM—Organization for Refuge, Asylum, and Migration

Frank Donaghue
CEO
Physicians for Human Rights

Michel Gabaudan
President
Refugees International

Michael Poffenberger
Executive Director
Resolve

Charles F. MacCormack
President and CEO
Save the Children

Doua Thor
Executive Director
SEARAC—Southeast Asia Resource Action Center

Lavinia Limon
President and CEO
U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants

Sarah Costa
Executive Director
Women’s Refugee Commission

Rick Leach
CEO
World Food Program USA

Stephan Bauman
Senior Vice President of Programs
World Relief

Richard Stearns
President
World Vision