Is aid working? Is this the right question to be asking?

Roger C Riddell, Courtesy open democracy (20 November 2009)

“Is it working?” is the question most commonly asked of aid. In response, aid agencies feed the public a diet of overwhelmingly “good news stories” to convince them that it is working. This diverts attention from the central question: how to reduce the major gap between what aid currently does and what it could achieve. How donors provide aid is a major cause of aid’s current ineffectiveness.

International aid today and its origins

International aid forms a constituent part of contemporary international relations.  Today, over 200 different official donor agencies provide aid and over 150 countries or territories receive aid. Practically every government either gives aid or receives it, and some do both, with China and India now both major donors and major recipients of aid.  Governments channel some of their aid funds to and through multilateral agencies, of which the United Nations and the Bretton Woods institutions are the most prominent: the World Bank’s International Development Association (IDA) being one the world’s largest providers of aid funds (in its case largely soft loans).  Latest figures, for 2008, put total ODA at a little less than $120 billion, in current prices, almost double the amount provided ten years ago – still far too little for aid’s strongest advocates, and far too much for its harshest critics

read the rest of the story here

Outrage as global poverty Ministry racks up £6m business class travel bill

By Miles Goslett (Daily Mail)

• Staff take nine flights every day at £1,664
• Routine first class rail travel costs £163,000

The Government department in charge of eradicating global poverty spent almost £6million of taxpayers’ money on first-class and business-class travel in just one year.

Officials at the Department for International Development (DfID) clocked up the £500,000-a-month bill for rail and plane journeys both in Britain and abroad between April 2008 and April this year.

Its 2,600 staff took an average of nine business-class flights every day for 12 months at an average cost of £1,664 per ticket.

Rough ride: International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander (far right) travels on Delhi’s metro. Officials at the DfID clocked up a £500,000-a-month bill for rail and plane journeys over a year

Rehabilitate the state

Courtesy The Guardian World News by Roy Hattersley on 8/21/09

Those who decry ‘big government’ soon realise how much we need it when things go wrong

Seventy-six years after the New Deal eased America out of depression, United States congressmen – Democrats as well as Republicans – are rejecting President Obama’s healthcare plans on a matter of principle. Many were opposed to him bailing out the banks for the same reason. They believe government initiatives that influence the conduct of the economy and the welfare of ordinary citizens are, by definition, wrong. The more literate of them quote Thoreau. “The government is best which governs least.” The more rabid support another of their countrymen, John O’Sullivan, who simply asserted: “All government is evil.” The theory those 19th-century luminaries propagated is supported by an increasing number of people on this side of the Atlantic. Indeed, patriots will claim it originated here with Magna Carta.

Healthcare for all – insurance initiative

I read this interesting email notice and thought that it should be shared here. RR

On August 14th, 2009, as our beloved Pakistan celebrates its 62nd year of Independence, www.PakUSonline.com is also marking its first year in existence.  We would like to thank all our readers who have made PakUSonline a part of their lives.

In dual celebration, we offer our readers a great treat by way of our August Voice(s) of the Month: Asher Hasan and Irum Musharraf.  These two remarkable individuals are blazing new trails through the foundation of ‘Naya Jeevan’ – the first affordable health care insurance for low income families through out the emerging world (http://pakusonline.com/page.aspx?page_id=94).

As civil society struggles with noble causes like education and relief work for IDPs, these two are adding the health care angle to our brave struggles.  A basic right in most developed countries (at least in theory), healthcare remains a luxury in Pakistan.

We urge our readers to support Naya Jeevan and to make healthcare available to all!

UN environmental governance programs are failing the Earth

The fathers and mothers of the international environmental movement all met in Montreux this week to reminisce and relive past exploits of green diplomacy at a conference hosted by the United Nations Environmental Program.

The list of attendees reads like an environmental hall of fame: Maurice Strong (he of Stockholm, Rio and Earth Charter fame);

The Global Food Crisis is not over. Our obligations go beyond fixing the financial system,” says UN Special Rapporteur

26 June 2009

(GENEVA – NEW YORK) The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Mr. Olivier De Schutter, calls on decision-makers gathering in New York for the UN Conference on World Financial and Economic Crisis not to forget the global food prices crisis. This crisis is continuing in many countries. It is connected not only with the financial and economic crises, but also with the climatic/environmental crisis.

Aid under pressure

Aid under pressure: Support for development assistance in a global economic downturn – Fourth report of session 2008–09

Source: Government of the United Kingdom

Date: 02 Jun 2009

Full_Report (pdf* format – 323 Kbytes)

Summary

The developing world was not responsible for causing the current economic crisis, but it is paying a heavy price for mistakes made by rich countries. Poor countries are experiencing significantly reduced income from trade, remittances and foreign investment. As a result, an additional 90 million people are expected to be living in poverty by the end of 2010, and 400,000 more children are likely to die. Progress towards the Millennium Development Goal of eradicating hunger and extreme poverty has been set back three years.

Assessment Of Corruption In Afghanistan

‘Assessment Of Corruption In Afghanistan‘, United States Agency for International Development, March 2009

EXCERPT: “USAID/Afghanistan commissioned an assessment to provide a strategy, program options, and recommendations on needs and opportunities to strengthen the capacity and political will of the Government of Afghanistan to fulfill its National Anti-Corruption Strategy. This report thus assesses the issue of corruption in the country, the legal and institutional frameworks for combating corruption, as well as USAID, USG and other donor activities against corruption,

Public millions fail to provide wells, schools and clinics in Afghanistan

Courtesy Timesonline

<!–
/* Global variables that are used for “image browsing”. Used on article pages to rotate the images of a story. */
var sImageBrowserImagePath = ”;
var aArticleImages = new Array();
var aImageDescriptions = new Array();
var aImageEnlargeLink = new Array();
var aImageEnlargePopupWidth = ‘500′;
var aImageEnlargePopupHeight = ‘500′;
var aImagePhotographer = new Array();
var nSelectedArticleImage = 0;
var aImageAltText= new Array();
var i=0;
// –> <!–
aArticleImages[i] = ‘/multimedia/archive/00560/Afghan_385×185_560969a.jpg’;
// –>

<!–
aImageAltText[i] = “Children queue for water in Kabul, but many aid projects are failing to reach their targets” ;
aImageAltText[i] = aImageAltText[i].replace(/&quot;/g,”\”");
// –> <!–
aImageEnlargeLink[i] = ‘/multimedia/archive/00560/Afghan_385×185_560969a.jpg’;
i=i+1;
// –>

<!– Remove following

to not show photographer information –> <!– Remove following

to not show image description –> <!– Remove following

to not show enlarge option –>

<!–
fCreateImageBrowser(nSelectedArticleImage,’landscape’,”/tol/”);
// –>

Deborah Haynes, Defence Correspondent

Millions of pounds in taxpayers’ money have been wasted on failed reconstruction projects in Afghanistan, according to an internal assessment by the Department for International Development.

World economy in freefall

By Andre Damon
22 May 2009

Governments of the world’s major economies announced staggering first-quarter contractions in the past few days, as real indicators of the economic crisis continue to worsen.

Mexico was the latest country to post a huge decline in the first quarter, announcing Wednesday that its economy shrank by 8.2 percent compared to a year ago. This is the steepest fall since the peso crisis of 1995 brought the country to the brink of insolvency and works out on an annualized basis to a 21.5 percent free fall.

Corrupt Afghan officials hurt aid

By Ken Dilanian, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — Corruption in the Afghan political and legal systems is “pervasive” and “entrenched,” a report prepared for the main U.S. aid agency says, posing a challenge to the Obama administration’s plans to steer more assistance through the U.S.-backed Afghan government.

“Seven years after the fall of the Taliban government, corruption has become more than the standard-issue bribery, nepotism, and extortion,” says the little-noticed report, prepared in March by consultants to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). It’s become systemic, and “the officials and agencies that are supposed to be part of the solution … are instead a critical part of the corruption syndrome.”

oOpenDemocracy on world poverty and global justice

Some great links here:

Rajeev Bhargava, “Poverty and political freedom” (12 August 2003)

Ehsan Masood, “The aid business: phantoms and realities” (18 July 2006)

Farida Khan, “Muhammad Yunus: an economics for peace“, (25 October 2006)

Stephen Browne, “Whatever happened to ‘development’?” (18 April 2007)

Paul Collier, “The aid evasion: raising the ‘bottom billion’” (11 June 2007)

Paul Rogers, “The world’s food insecurity” (24 April 2008)

Simon Maxwell, “Development in a downturn” (4 July 2008)

Lyndall Stein, “Ethiopia: the tears and the rains” (23 July 2008)

Andrew Shepherd, “The anti-poverty relay: a progress report” (24 September 2008)

Anita Sharma, “The core crisis: standing with the poor” (30 October 2008)

Michael Edwards, “Philanthrocapitalism: after the goldrush” (19 March 2008)

Michael Edwards, “Philanthrocapitalism: old myths, new realities” (14 November 2008)

Paul Rogers, “A world on the edge” (29 January 2009)

Göran Therborn, “The killing-fields of inequality” (6 April 2009)

Patrice de Beer, “Esther Duflo: the new French intellectual” (9 April 2009)

Africa: No to AfDB Neoliberalism

Forum on the African Development Bank

14 May 2009

---

press release

As the African Development Bank (AfDB) holds its 44th annual assembly, African civil society groups met at a forum in Dakar to express their deep dissatisfaction with the bank’s policies. Forum participants allege that the bank does not fully understand the implications of the global financial crisis for Africa and that it has done nothing more than peddle the neoliberal line of institutions like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF). They also say that it has failed to come up with a single initiative of its own to tackle the African debt crisis. The forum stressed the need for the AfDB to be an institution committed first and foremost to the welfare of the African people if it is to promote sustainable development and food sovereignty successfully.

Post Mortem Report; The Migration-Displacement Nexus in Pakistan

by mariazk at http://genderacrossborders.wordpress.com

A looming threat from Al Qaeda & the Taliban militia and an in-flux of Afghan refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs) has left Pakistan in a worst refugee crisis since the partition in 1947. US led drone strikes and Pakistan military’s onslaught against the Talibans has crippled a great mass of Afghan and Pakistani civilians. Why do states always carry out post-mortem reports on innocent war causalities, instead of ensuring civilians’ security prior to the

A life to save: direct action on poverty

Courtesy Open democracy

Peter Singer

People with more than enough have an immediate and personal obligation to help those living in extreme poverty, says Peter Singer.

(This article was first published on 11 May 2009)

Imagine you come across a small child who has fallen into a pond and is in danger of drowning. You know that you can easily and safely rescue him, but you are wearing an expensive pair of shoes that will be ruined if you do. We all think it would be seriously wrong to walk on past the pond, leaving the child to drown, because you don’t want to have to buy a new pair of shoes – in fact, most people think that would be monstrous. You can’t compare a child’s life with a pair of shoes!

First, Reform the I.M.F.

By MARK WEISBROT

Published: April 24, 2009

The International Monetary Fund turns 65 this year. Until the current economic crisis, it had reduced its workload drastically to a near-retirement level — its total loan portfolio plummeted by 92 percent in four years. But like many senior citizens, the Fund has kept working past retirement age — and is now expanding its responsibilities.

The I.M.F. has a track record that seems to have been almost completely ignored in discussions of a proposed $750 billion increase in its resources. Nearly 12 years ago, a financial crisis hit Thailand, South Korea, Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia. The word “contagion” became part of the financial reporting lexicon as the crisis spread to Russia, Brazil, Argentina and other countries.

World Bank: Globe bracing for more poverty

By DEB RIECHMANN –

WASHINGTON (AP) — The global economic crisis has stymied the international community’s effort to halve extreme poverty by 2015 and meet other goals to reduce hunger, fight disease and get young children to school, the World Bank warned on Friday.

A report released in conjunction with this week’s meeting of the bank and International Monetary Fund in Washington said the financial meltdown is impeding efforts to achieve most of the eight U.N. millennium development goals. Although it still may be possible to reach the first goal — halving extreme poverty by 2015 from its 1990 level — it will be an uphill battle, according to “The Global Monitoring Report 2009: A Development Emergency.”

HIV and Income Inequality

Title: HIV and Income Inequality: If There Is a Link, What Does It Tell Us?

Author: Göran Holmqvist

Series: One Pager # 83

Download: http://www.ipc-undp.org/pub/IPCOnePager83.pdf

Arundhati Roy on NGOs

Arundhati Roy’s position on NGOs from here:

A SECOND hazard facing mass movements is the NGO-ization of resistance. It will be easy to twist what I’m about to say into an indictment of all NGOs. That would be a falsehood. In the murky waters of fake NGOs set up or to siphon off grant money or as tax dodges (in states like Bihar, they are given as dowry), of course, there are NGOs doing valuable work. But it’s important to consider the NGO phenomenon in a broader political context. In India, for instance, the funded NGO boom began in the late 1980s and 1990s. It coincided with the opening of India’s markets to neoliberalism.

Surprising Success at the G20

Cross-posted from here

The conclusion of the G20 seems, at first blush, to provide a great deal of positive news for developing countries. The official Communique begins with the recognition that

prosperity is indivisible; that growth, to be sustained, has to be shared; and that our global plan for recovery must have at its heart the needs and jobs of hard-working families, not just in developed countries but in emerging markets and the poorest countries of the world too; and must reflect the interests, not just of today’s population, but of future generations too.