This bill — the Multilateral Aid Review Act of 2019 — would establish a review process for U.S. foreign aid dollars going to multilateral entities. To this end, it would establish the United States Multilateral Aid Review Task Force, comprised of senior agency officials from relevant departments of the federal government, to publicly assess the value of U.S. government investments in multilateral entities, such as the United Nations or the World Bank.
The review would include multilateral entities to which the U.S. government contributes voluntary or assessed funding, whether cash or in-kind. Its objectives would be to:
- Provide a tool to guide the U.S. government’s decision making and prioritization with regard to funding multilateral entities;
- Provide a methodological basis for prioritizing funding for entities that advance relevant U.S. foreign policy objectives;
- Incentivizing improvements to multilateral entities’ performance in achieving better outcomes on the ground in developing, fragile and crisis-affected regions; and
- Protecting U.S. taxpayers’ investments in foreign assistance by improving transparency with regard to multilateral entities’ funding.
For each multilateral entity that receives U.S. government funding, the review would provide an assessment scorecard evaluating:
- The extent to which the entity met its stated mission, goals and objectives during the review period;
- The quality of the entity’s management;
- The extent to which the entity's policies and procedures followed best practices for accountability and transparency during the review period;
- The extent to which the entity’s policies and practices align with relevant U.S. foreign policy objectives; and
- The extent to which the entity’s mission, goals and objectives overlap with the mission, goals and objectives of other multilateral institutions that also receive U.S. government funding.
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