USAID spent $271 million in Guatemala between 2011 and 2015. But where was this money going? It is split up into eight different categories: health, economic development, democracy and government, program management, education and social services, environment, and peace and security. Economic development’s share of the funding has been steadily increasing in recent years, while democracy and government and health had varied between years.
The bottom three categories are peace and security, humanitarian assistance, and environment. The top three categories in Guatemala are health, democracy and governance, and health. The government of Guatemala has recently been criticized for increasing levels of corruption through the United Nations. The security in the nation has also been called into question due to high levels of organized crime and gang-related violence.[1] This becomes more interesting as we look at the way that the top funders are distributed by sector within each category.
Based on the table, there is an uneven distribution of funding across categories. The second highest amount of funding goes toward good governance, likely as a way to support the democratic process in Guatemala and mitigate some of the difficulties in dealing with public corruption. It is interesting to highlight that most funding among these sectors goes towards agriculture. Data from the World Bank demonstrates food insecurity among children, which could hopefully be improved by funding for the agricultural sector. In 2015, for example, 46.5% of children under the age of 5 were stunted in Guatemala.[1] Because stunting is related to lack of proper nutrition, the funding allocation could be a result of statistics like these. In addition, more than one-third of the land area in Guatemala is agricultural and this sector employs 44% of Guatemalan men.[2] It makes sense to bolster this component of the Guatemalan economy in the hopes that it can lead to sustainable growth. The health funding, on the other hand, is relatively evenly distributed across family planning, HIV/AIDS, and maternal and child health.