Foreign Assistance: Rule of Law Funding Worldwide for Fiscal Years 1993-1998
Released: 1999-08-02T00:00:00

Letter

Rule of Law Funding Worldwide

During fiscal years 1993-98, the United States funded rule of law programs and related activities in countries throughout the world. Over this period, rule of law assistance totaled at least $970 million. Figure 1 illustrates the worldwide U.S. rule of law funding for fiscal years 1993-98. Over the period, the total annual rule of law funding increased from $128 million to $218 million. Although funding appears to have declined substantially in 1996, this may be largely explained by the fact that USAID could not readily provide rule of law funding information for fiscal year 1996 due to problems with its automated information system.

On a regional basis, the Latin America and the Caribbean region received the largest share, with about 36 percent. Africa, Central Europe, and the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union received about 15 percent each. (See table 1.)

From fiscal year 1993 to 1998, rule of law funding shifted primarily from the Latin America and the Caribbean region to other regions, mainly Central Europe. Funding for Central Europe grew from about $9 million in fiscal year 1993 to over $67 million in fiscal year 1998, accounting for 31 percent of the worldwide rule of law assistance that year. Over the same period, rule of law assistance in Latin America and the Caribbean declined from about $57 million (44 percent of the worldwide total) to $42 million (19 percent). Rule of law assistance to Africa also declined from $38 million (30 percent of the worldwide total) in 1993 to $29 million (13 percent) in 1998. Figure 2 illustrates these trends; appendix I provides more detailed data.          During fiscal years 1993-98, we identified 184 countries that received at least some U.S. rule of law funding. However, over half of this assistance went to just 15 countries. Haiti received the most, primarily in connection with U.S. and international efforts to restore peace and stability to the country after a 1991 coup. Most countries (102 of the 184) received less than $1 million. Table 2 illustrates the top 15 recipients. (App. II provides detailed rule of law funding by region and country for fiscal years 1993-98.)

U.S. Departments and Agencies Involved in Rule of Law Assistance

State’s Under Secretary for Global Affairs has overall responsibility for coordinating rule of law programs and activities. At least 35 entities from the departments and agencies have a role in providing U.S. rule of law assistance programs. (See app. III.) Most U.S. rule of law funding is provided through the international affairs appropriations and is transferred or reimbursed to the other departments and agencies, primarily by USAID, but to a lesser extent by State.

Departments and Agencies Providing Rule of Law Assistance

USAID and the Department of Justice oversaw the implementation of 70 percent, or about $683 million, of all U.S. rule of law assistance programs and activities worldwide during fiscal years 1993-98. USAID focused on improving the capabilities of judges, prosecutors, and public defenders and their respective institutions as well as increasing citizen access to justice. Most of Justice’s rule of law activities were carried out by its International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program (ICITAP), which emphasized enhancing the overall police and investigative capabilities of law enforcement organizations.

State, the Department of Defense, and USIA accounted for about $258 million, or about 27 percent, of the U.S. worldwide efforts. State’s activities focused on international narcotics and law enforcement and antiterrorist assistance. Defense provided rule of law training to foreign military servicemembers, but most of its rule of law assistance was provided to support its operations in Haiti. USIA focused on increasing the awareness and knowledge of rule of law issues through various educational programs, such as exchanges between host country judicial and law enforcement personnel and their U.S. counterparts. (See fig. 3.)

Source of Rule of Law Funding

Funding for rule of law programs and related activities was provided primarily through the international affairs appropriations for USAID, State, and USIA. These three entities accounted for more than 91 percent of all rule of law funding, or $884 million, in fiscal years 1993-98. In addition, Defense provided about $58 million (6 percent). Although they provided small amounts of funding, almost all rule of law assistance provided by Justice, the Treasury, and other departments and agencies was funded through interagency transfers and reimbursements from USAID and, to a lesser extent, State.

Rule of Law Assistance to Latin America and the Caribbean

As previously noted, the Latin America and the Caribbean region was the largest recipient of U.S. rule of law assistance in fiscal years 1993-98. As with the overall worldwide rule of law assistance, we identified the funding and recipients and the departments and agencies involved. In addition, we categorized the rule of law assistance provided to the region to help describe what the overall purposes of the assistance were.

Recipients of Rule of Law Assistance in the Region

In fiscal years 1993-98, the United States provided $349 million in rule of law assistance to Latin America and the Caribbean (about 36 percent of the worldwide total). Forty countries in the region received a portion of this assistance, although the funding was concentrated among a few countries. Seven countries accounted for about 76 percent of the total regional funding. Two of the seven—Haiti and El Salvador—accounted for just over 50 percent of the regional total, with $137.9 million and $40.7 million, respectively. (See fig. 4.)

Haiti was a special case. The United States provided large amounts of assistance during this period in an attempt to restore order and democracy after a coup in 1991. Nearly one-third of the assistance for Haiti was a $42.6 million, one-time commitment from Defense in 1994 for equipment, supplies, and other support to assist international police monitors and a multinational force. In subsequent years, Haiti continued to be the top recipient of rule of law funds in the region, receiving $35.5 million in fiscal year 1995, $16 million in 1996, and about $15 million in fiscal years 1997 and 1998. Most of this assistance was provided to develop and support a civilian national police force.

Rule of Law Assistance Activities in the Region

To help illustrate what rule of law assistance was used for in the Latin America and the Caribbean region, we grouped rule of law assistance into one of six categories based on descriptions provided by the cognizant agencies. Although we placed each program or activity into one primary category, many programs, USAID’s in particular, had multiple purposes that could be identified with more than one category. Figure 5 illustrates the distribution of rule of law assistance by these categories. (App. IV defines the categories we used and provides funding levels by country and category.)

The largest rule of law category was assistance for criminal justice and law enforcement. About $199 million—57 percent of the regional total for fiscal years 1993-98—was dedicated to these activities. We included assistance to police, prosecutors, public defenders, and other host country agencies (such as customs) that take on law enforcement functions, as well as antinarcotics and antiterrorism assistance, in this category. Almost every country in the region that received rule of law assistance had some criminal justice and law enforcement funding. Haiti received the largest amount of such assistance—$72.5 million. Other major recipients were El Salvador ($25.9 million), Colombia ($19.9 million), Panama ($11.2 million), and Bolivia ($9.8 million). Virtually all of the assistance provided through Justice and most of the funding provided by USAID and State was in this category.

Assistance for judicial and court operations was the second largest category, comprising $74.2 million (21 percent of the regional total). USAID provided 88 percent of the funding.

Assistance for civil government and military reform was the third largest category—$47.6 million (13.6 percent). We included assistance for governmental entities other than the courts and criminal justice and law enforcement systems in this category. The largest single element was $42.6 million provided by Defense to Haiti in 1994. In addition, we included most of the military service training on topics such as civil-military relations and professional skills for maritime and military personnel.

Much less funding was devoted to the other categories—$22 million for democracy and human rights, $5.3 million for general and other activities, and $1.1 million for law reform. In the category of democracy and human rights, we included civic education activities, as well as some efforts that focused specifically on human rights, citizen participation, and related topics. In the general/other category, we included most of the legal education grants provided by USIA, as well as assistance on various topics such as intellectual property rights and drug education and rehabilitation.

Scope and Methodology

To determine how much U.S. rule of law assistance was provided worldwide in fiscal years 1993-98, and to identify the U.S. departments and agencies involved, we reviewed program documentation and interviewed officials at the Department of State, USAID, the Department of Defense, and USIA—the principal sources of funding for U.S. rule of law programs. These officials identified other departments and agencies with rule of law activities. We asked officials from each of these entities to provide funding and descriptive information for its activities over the period.

However, most of these departments and agencies did not have rule of law funding information readily available and had to initiate ad hoc efforts to compile data addressing our questions. Further complicating this effort was the fact that the departments and agencies did not have a commonly accepted definition of what constituted rule of law activities. Therefore, we relied on each department and agency (and the bureaus and offices within those entities) to provide us information on the programs and activities it considered rule of law. In some instances, programs with an apparent rule of law element were not included. For example, USAID did not include all of its assistance for human rights, and State did not include all of its antinarcotics assistance.

Additionally, the funding data is a mix of obligated amounts and actual expenditures. For agencies (primarily USAID) that provided rule of law assistance over several years, obligation data better reflected the magnitude of the funding involved because actual expenditures (or requests for reimbursement) may not be reported until subsequent years. However, other rule of law assistance provided, for example by law enforcement agencies, was relatively low-cost, short-term training or exchange programs. In this instance, obligations and actual expenditures were virtually synonymous. Therefore, we used actual expenditures.

Because of the volume of data—almost 4,600 program and activity records—and the lack of documentation in some agencies, we did not independently verify the accuracy of the data provided. Some agencies could not provide data for the entire period—fiscal years 1993-98—or lacked funding amounts for some identified rule of law activities.

USAID’s automated information system could not provide worldwide data for fiscal year 1996. The system was upgraded that year, and 1996 information was not captured in the new system nor was it available in USAID’s prior system. At our request, USAID polled each of its missions in Latin America and the Caribbean to obtain rule of law funding data, including fiscal year 1996; however, because of the magnitude of the effort, we did not request that USAID do the same for the other regions of the world. To help mitigate this limitation, we used information from other agencies indicating USAID rule of law funding for 1996. However, this information likely understates USAID’s assistance levels to regions other than Latin America and the Caribbean for the year.

State’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs provided us funding information for fiscal years 1997 and part of 1998. Essentially, this office transferred rule of law funds to U.S. law enforcement and related agencies to assist their foreign counterparts. Therefore, for the other years, we relied on the U.S. recipients of this funding to report the amount of rule of law funding provided by the Bureau.

In addition, for many agencies, the fiscal year 1998 data provided to us was compiled before the fiscal year data had been finalized and may be incomplete. However, with the exception of not having complete USAID funding information for fiscal year 1996, we believe the funding levels for the other departments and agencies generally reflect their rule of law activities.

We performed our work from June 1998 to May 1999 in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards.

Agency Comments

The Departments of Commerce, Defense, Justice, State, and the Treasury; USAID; and USIA commented on a draft of this report. Defense and USAID provided written comments (see apps. V and VI); the others provided oral comments. USAID also provided its definition of rule of law. All of the agencies concurred with the report; some provided technical comments that have been incorporated, as appropriate.

Unless you publicly announce its contents earlier, we plan no further distribution of this report until 15 days after its issue date. At that time, we will send copies of this report to the Honorable Madeleine K. Albright, the Secretary of State; the Honorable William S. Cohen, the Secretary of Defense; the Honorable Robert E. Rubin, the Secretary of the Treasury; the Honorable William M. Daley, the Secretary of Commerce; the Honorable J. Brian Atwood, the Administrator of USAID; the Honorable Penn Kemble, the Acting Director of USIA; and interested congressional committees. We will make copies available to others upon request.

Please contact me at (202) 512-4128 if you or your staff have any questions about this report. Key contributors to this report are listed in appendix VII.

Worldwide U.S. Rule of Law Funding Summary by Region, Fiscal Years 1993-98

Worldwide U.S. rule of law assistance grew from about $128 million in fiscal year 1993 to about $218 million in fiscal year 1998. The growth was not uniform across the geographic regions, with Central Europe increasing from about $8 million to over $67 million during the period—supplanting the Latin America and the Caribbean region as the leading recipient of rule of law assistance. Table I.1 shows rule of law assistance by region for fiscal years 1993-98.

We used “multiregional” for rule of law assistance provided to several countries in two or more regions or when such assistance was not broken out by recipient countries.

Worldwide U.S. Rule of Law Funding by Region and Country, Fiscal Years 1993-98

In fiscal years 1993-98, the United States provided at least some rule of law assistance to 184 countries. The assistance ranged from multiyear institutional development programs to one-time, short-term training for police or other law enforcement personnel. Table II.1 shows the dollar value of the rule of law assistance provided to all the countries we identified as receiving some assistance. In some cases, the assistance was not identified with a specific country or was provided to countries in multiple regions—such assistance is identified as “regional” or “multiregional,” respectively.

Table II.1: U.S. Rule of Law Funding by Region and Country, Fiscal Years 1993-98 Congo (Brazzaville)

Congo (Kinshasa)

U.S. Departments and Agencies Involved in Rule of Law Activities

In compiling the rule of law assistance data for this report, we identified 7 cabinet-level departments and 28 related agencies, bureaus, and offices involved in providing rule of law assistance. Many are law enforcement agencies providing training and technical assistance to their counterparts overseas. These are listed below.

International Trade Administration

National Telecommunications and Information Administration

Office of General Counsel, Commercial Law Development Program

U.S. Patent and Trademark Office

U.S. Air Force

U.S. Army

U.S. Marine Corps

U.S. Navy

Drug Enforcement Administration

Federal Bureau of Investigation

Immigration and Naturalization Service

Criminal Division

International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program

Office of Overseas Prosecutorial Development, Assistance and

Bureau of Diplomatic Security, Office of Antiterrorism Assistance

Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs

Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs (formerly Bureau of Inter-American Affairs)

Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms

Office of International Affairs

Office of Investigations

Federal Law Enforcement Training Center

Financial Crimes Enforcement Network

Internal Revenue Service

U.S. Secret Service U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)

U.S. Information Agency (USIA)

U.S. Funding for Rule of Law Assistance Categories for Latin America and the Caribbean, Fiscal Years 1993-98

To develop an overview of the types of activities being funded for the Latin America and the Caribbean region, we grouped the U.S. rule of law assistance program data for the region into six categories based on activity descriptions provided by the cognizant departments and agencies. Although we placed each program or activity into one primary category, many programs, USAID’s in particular, had multiple purposes that could be identified with more than one category. The following definition for each category we used and the types of activities we included.

Criminal Justice and Law Enforcement: Assistance to help criminal justice or law enforcement organizations make reforms or improve their capabilities to carry out their responsibilities in a professional and competent manner. We included technical assistance and training for police, prosecutors, public defenders, and other personnel in law enforcement-related agencies (such as Customs) in this category. Assistance for police often focused on investigative capabilities and management improvements. Technical assistance and training topics included detection and identification of firearms, development of criminal investigation units, maritime law enforcement, and detection of counterfeit currency. We also included antinarcotics and antiterrorism assistance.

Judicial and Court Operations: Assistance to help reform or improve operations of judicial and court systems. We included activities that focused on modernizing court administration, training in oral advocacy skills, training judicial personnel, and establishing procedures for judge selection and a career ladder for judges. In addition, we included programs intended to improve access to the justice system and establish legal aid services and justice centers; to institute alternative dispute resolution, mediation, or arbitration procedures in various sectors; and to provide exchange opportunities, training, or research related to the judicial or legal system in general.

Civil Government and Military Reform: Assistance to help promote reform in other than judicial and law enforcement government agencies, improve cooperation and understanding between civil and military agencies, or develop responsive or responsible government institutions and officials. The majority of the activities were training courses provided by the military services on topics such as civil-military relations, professional skills for maritime and military personnel, and military law, although the largest single item was the funding to support multinational forces and police monitors in Haiti. We also included training and related programs on government ethics and corruption in this category.

Democracy and Human Rights: Assistance to promote democracy, electoral reforms, or respect for human rights. We included USAID human rights activities and many USIA-funded activities that focused on civic education, citizen participation, free press, and related topics in this category.

General/Other Activities: Assistance that did not fit into other categories or was not clearly described. We included legal education grants provided by USIA and training or exchange programs on an assortment of topics such as intellectual property rights, drug education and rehabilitation, and domestic and gender violence. In addition, we included assistance that had no description.

Law Reform: Assistance to help develop, document, or revise constitutions, laws, codes, regulations, or other guidance that institute and strengthen the rule of law. We included activities primarily focused on law reform, including judicial or criminal procedures code reforms. However, some law reform activities may be included in other categories as a component of a larger program—especially USAID programs that had multiple goals.

Table IV.1 illustrates the distribution of the rule of law assistance by the categories we developed among the countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. Well over half of all U.S. rule of law assistance to the region was technical assistance and training for criminal justice and law enforcement personnel—police, prosecutors, public defenders, and others.

Comments From the Department of Defense

Comments From the U.S. Agency for International Development

GAO Contacts and Staff Acknowledgements

GAO Contacts

Acknowledgements

In addition to those named above, Ann L. Baker, Mark B. Dowling, Marcelo Fava, Wyley Neal, and Richard Seldin made key contributions to this report.

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