Small donors show up U.S. aid

It doesn't look pretty: The United States ranks last among the world's 28 top foreign aid donor countries, and its foreign assistance levels have dropped dramatically over the past 10 years, according to a United Nations report released this week.

The United Nations Human Development Report 2002, a wide-ranging report that includes both fascinating country statistics and a questionable development ranking of 137 nations, puts the United States well below Denmark, the Netherlands, Japan and even Spain and Portugal on the list of the biggest foreign aid donor countries relative to the size of their economies.

Granted, if you look at the actual dollar figures, the $9.9 billion annual U.S. foreign assistance ranks only second after Japan's $13.5 billion.

But when you look at countries' foreign aid relative to the size of their economies, the United States is devoting 0.1 per cent of its gross national product (GNP) to help the world's poorest countries, less than any other industrialized nation.

By comparison, Denmark spends 1.06 percent of its GNP on foreign aid, the Netherlands 0.84 percent, Norway 0.80 percent, Germany 0.27 percent, Japan 0.28 percent, Portugal 0.26 percent, and Spain 0.22 percent. What's worse, U.S. foreign aid has by this measure been cut in half over the past 10 years.

Is this something we should care about? You bet. Until earlier this year, the decline in U.S. foreign aid was not seen as a catastrophe in Washington: Conservative Republicans had persuaded many moderates in Congress that foreign aid had for many years been wasted in handouts to corrupt foreign leaders who often stashed it in their Swiss bank accounts.