DevPolitics

Service delivery in urban areas

For the first time in history, more than half of the world’s population lives in cities. The rates of urbanization are particularly high in developing countries where cities seemingly present economic opportunities. Much of this population growth has resulted in rapidly expanding informal settlements where people are living in conditions of extreme poverty and deprivation. These slums are characterized by a lack of access to adequate shelter, secure land tenure, as well as basic urban services such as clean water, sanitation, education, and health care. Surprisingly, these indicators are worse in urban areas than in rural regions which are often falsely perceived as being more under-developed.

Professor Jeff Hammer

We recently had Jeff Hammer come speak to our class about health care in the developing world.  It was a very interesting presentation, and he was an engaging and humorous speaker. I thought the most interesting piece of the presentation was his discussion on primary care.  According to him, primary care provision has shown little or no benefit to certain measures of public health.  Instead, his argument went, it is more important to provide people with access to hospitals and other things that deal with health shocks.

Moyo and a shifting development paradigm

On March 26, I attended an NYU discussion (video here) with Dambisa Moyo and William Easterly on her recent book “Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa.” Although I disagree with some of her critiques and solutions for aid in Africa, I found the discussion interesting for where it moves the development debate.

Moyo’s argument against aid was threefold: that it has failed, that it has contributed to poverty, and that there are more effective ways of accelerating development.  On the first, she made the claim that there was a relationship between an increase in aid to Africa and the continent’s decreased growth. In an excellent 8 page review, Owen Barder refutes that notion and others.

Second, her idea that aid exacerbates poverty is gaining traction with a growing number of supporters. I remain skeptical about this claim, but believe there is good evidence that aid weakens institutions, democracy building, and reform efforts. Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame and The Uganda paper The Independent shows support for those ideas.

Finally, unlike some claim, Moyo’s answers to aid were neither vacuous nor dishonest. I do find them generally lazy though. She states that developing states can move forward by raising money in capital markets, reducing trade restrictions, promoting financial services for the poor, and attracting foreign direct investment. These are all traditional development economic solutions whose results are arguably as tenuous as the benefits to aid that she denounces. Additionally, I don’t think like others that she believes these are alternatives to aid in the short-term, instead that they will work alongside aid than replace it in the long-term. I also disagree with her statement that development countries should stop aid flows in the next 5-10 years. How else would they support the solutions she espouses except for some form of investment by major development players?

Overall, the validity of Moyo’s statements at the NYU event were challenged in the Q and A session and her prognosis in “Dead Aid” has been deconstructed in numerous reviews (more here, here, and Paul Collier here . This has been appropriate, but Moyo’s main contribution to the aid debate is that her and a host of aid critics are shifting the development paradigm, contributing critical ideas that directly challenge standard wisdom. Their often polemic ideas always elicits a strong response, which evolves the development debate as a whole.

Africa's Image

On May 1, 2009, Nicholas Kristof reviewed Richard Dowdan's book Altered States, Ordinary Miracles (accessible at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/03/books/review/Kristof-t.html?_r=1&scp=24&sq=africa&st=cse).  The book review touches on a range of issues directly related to the politics of international development. 

Dowden and Kristof examine the image of Africa and whether it is accurate or helpful to Africa.  Kristof notes that Dowden looks at "the degree to which Africa is more promising than journalists or aid workers often acknowledge."  Dowden's book draws attention to the fact that the image of Africa is of violence and malnourished children, but there is much more to the continent, including "tiger cub" economies and fewer conflicts.  Kristof provides a link to website that highlights positive features of Africa, http://www.seeafricadifferently.com/. 

Kristof mentions the balance between taking advantage of his role as a journalist to cover disasters and conflicts and giving Africa a bad image which prevents foreign investment and actually hampers countries' abilities to get out of poverty.  Kristof comments that in fact too little attention is given to many of Africa's problems, but also recognizes that publicizing these issues can make it more difficult for Africa to be seen in any other way.  It is a similar issue to the one we grappled with in class, of femicide in Mexico. 

Kristof makes very interesting points throughout his review and Dowden's book sounds like an interesting read.  The points raised are relevant to all of us as we frame international development to various audiences.

Aid Transparency 2.0

At Private Sector Development Blog, I recently found a nice post highlighting some of the current trends in open data availability in the development and public sectors. Notably, it discusses how the British government, under a new campaign called “Show us a better way,” is releasing large amounts of data into the public realm as well as reviewing approaches to improving the visualization of data to the public.    

Additionally, as words like “transparency” and “corruption” are incessant buzzwords in development talk, it’s nice to see public pressure from watchdog groups like Publish What You Fund, AidInfo, and others coupled with innovations from web 2.0 developers and statisticians (like this new Google search feature) (or wiki group source humanitarian data) pushing the discussion into some action. However small, these actors can serve as gadflies to induce INGOs, government agencies, developmen banks, etc to show their work.  

Similar to the British initiative, President Obama on his second day in office instructed his head agencies in a memo to develop an Open Government Directive. This is an effort that moves the transparency dialogue from the 1966 Freedom of Information Act to transparency 2.0 where citizens can not only see what’s going on in their government, but participate and interact in the process. Other benefits of opening government can be found here.

Question: Is it possible that USAID, DFID, World Bank, and other international development agencies incorporate transparency and participatory initiatives that are blooming in domestic politics into their own agencies? It’s unlikely that they’ll do it voluntarily, but groups like AidInfo and web-based citizen movements are nudging them towards that process.

Too Much Pork in Global Health Agenda?

Bacon has bitten back (sorry I just could not resist the line from Jennifer Gardy’s blog at the Globe and Mail) in the last weeks and we have had a useful reminder about the importance of public health and disease surveillance. Moreover, like SARS it underscores the fully global nature of illness and the pitfalls of considering health to be a mere national issue. The media coverage has been intense; it is the first “open-source outbreak” that has been blogged, twitter-ed, facebook-ed and more.   

The worst seems to be over and many are shrugging it off as a false alarm or a case of overreaction (which I am not sure is fair - in general the public health community has demonstrated it learned much from SARS. Karen Grepin makes this point well over at her blog). As the coverage dies down it seems appropriate to recognize the important issues raised by the outbreak, many of which fit closely within the development debate.

The H5N1 blog that has arisen in response to the outbreak makes an important point about priorities in global health. 26 people in Mexico have died of the disease and 2 in the United States with over 1600 cases in 20 countries being reported. Contrast with a meningitis outbreak that as swept through Nigeria, Niger and Chad since January killing over 1900 and infecting more than 56,000 people. Or malaria which is estimated to kill over 3000 children in Africa each day. As the H5N1 blog notes, apparently “we'd prefer to focus, via high-speed internet connections, on a conjectural disaster instead of the many real disasters killing people somewhere else.”

 

Although I agree with this analysis in principle - I think that attention to illnesses like H5N1 (swine flu) could present an opportunity to broaden the global health agenda beyond HIV, TB and malaria to discuss health systems and disease surveillance. Meningitis, pneumonia, influenza, diarrhea and many other neglected diseases could be combatted by a more holistic approach in global health. With the outbreak of swine flu we got a glimpse of the potential for disastrous global spread of contagion and are left to imagine what might of been had detection been slower, information delayed and containment tools unavailable. 

NGO involvement in CSD 17 - observations

I recently attended a Committee on Sustainable Development (CSD) 17 side event at the United Nations for the NGO CSD Planning Committee.  Representatives attended the meeting from mostly small NGOs interested in influence the language in the outcome document of the CSD 17.  The NGO representatives were mostly encouraged and excited to have the current Group of 77 representative, the Ambassador from Sudan.  I confess that my expectations were low for the credibility of the Sudanese Ambassador to the UN, considering the current stances of the government of Sudan.  It was interesting to hear his critiques of the West, particularly the United States, based on economic theory about the relationship of developed countries to developing countries.  While he made many good points regarding the US borrowing from developing nations and the greed of Wall Street, it was clear that he did not grasp the political implications of the reforms he proposed.  This aroused my awareness of the lack of political and real-life implications of how the Group of 77 is influenced by the financial crisis.  I’m not sure how effective this meeting or the NGO committee can be on proposing these changes and it will be interesting to see the outcome document to come at the end of CSD this week.

African Elites: Integrating Culture with Development

Whilst watching HBO’s first major film/TV project which was shot entirely on location in Botswana, ‘The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency’, which airs on Sundays, I felt utterly homesick of my own country Ghana. Ghana, the first African nation to gain independence from colonial rule from Britain in 1957, and which prides itself as the “Black Star of Africa,” has not produced Botswana’s developmental wisdom and humility which got independence from British colonial rule much later in 1966. With its humble elites displaying astounding arrays of developmental insights, Botswana, like most of the Southeast Asian and Latin American countries, has been able to mix its traditional values with the dominant global development ones. This got me thinking about Hossain & Moore’s piece, “Arguing for the Poor: Elites and Poverty in Developing Countries”, on which I had written a précis for class and some issues therein became much clearer.

Botswana has one of the world’s best rates of economic growth and has a relatively small population. The current economic prosperity of Botswana contrasts sharply with the situation at independence, when the state was viewed by most analysts as a very poor country dependent on foreign grants to finance its budget. Botswana has successfully implemented growth-enhancing policies that are driven by its elites’ ability to mix its “traditional sources of authority” with its ex-colonial and the global prosperity values, thus, the transformation of Botswana from a poor agricultural country to a buoyant thriving economy. “Why have elites in Ghana and other African states abandoned this important role when it comes to the societies of Africa?” In pre-colonial Africa, some of the elites, comprising of the kings, chiefs, entrepreneurs, priests, warriors and scholars played significant transformative roles. They helped to found and build the empires of Egypt, Zulu, Yoruba, and the Asante Empire of what is now the Ashanti Region in Ghana, Mali, Songhai, and Ethiopia among others. Most of these societies developed sophisticated legal, economic, social and political institutions, which provided the framework for developing functional and stable societies. Unfortunately, in many African countries not only are the elites at times working against national interests but sometimes they violate their cultural norms. In reality, their personal interests become the national interest. Ultimately, the development premise, whether seen from the perspectives of Ghana or Botswana or any other country in the world, is the ability of each particular elite to skillfully appropriate from dominant global development values and mix them with their local traditional values for progress.

(Source: from various African journals including some articles by journalist Kofi Akosah-Sarpong)

Defining Development -- Ends and Means

Judging by the many different definitions of development that have been advanced in class – and on this blog – it’s clear that the parameters of the concept aren’t easy to define. This is in part because the term ‘development’ conflates both the means and ends of the development project as a whole. 

I think the biggest point of contention has been about the means of development, in particular the difference between exogenous and endogenous development projects. It’s a useful distinction, but perhaps also a false dichotomy given the wide range of development projects being carried out today.

I think it can also be unfair to place the burden of development on the poorest of the poor. Community involvement is certainly important, but it shouldn’t be the responsibility of communities to engineer their own ways out of poverty when they lack the time, energy and resources to do so. In addition, the poorest of the poor can’t wait around for community development projects to build local capacities. Basic services such as access to clean water and shelter must be provided from above the community level – these sorts of projects may just be band-aids, but a band-aid is better than an open wound.  

In that sense, I think the primary responsibility for the means of development falls to the state. When the state is unable or unwilling to provide for its citizens, then the UN system and supranational agencies that have been designed to act as safety nets for the poor should step in. (I’m excluding supranational creditors such as the World Bank, which has often been an obstacle to development). Where possible, the secondary responsibility falls to communities to pull themselves out of poverty -- but it’s not reasonable to expect that will happen endogenously in communities below a certain  poverty threshold.

This is where the exogenous/endogenous debate brings us to the ends of development, which is really the crux of this issue. The ends can include a whole host of different topics – many of which are open to debate – but it’s probably easy to agree on the basic necessities: food, water, clothing, shelter, security, basic healthcare, education and gender equity. The list could really be endless – property rights, vocational training, access to financial instruments, etc. could be included – but these development projects should be determined on a situational basis.  

In summary, here’s my ‘definition’ of development based on the breakdown of ends and means:

• Primary responsibility for the means of development should fall to states, with support from multilateral/supranational institutions where needed.
• Secondary responsibility for the means falls to communities – where the burden of the development project would not have a minimal or negative impact.
• The ends of development include the provision of basic necessities
• Further topics should be included as ends, but this has to be determined on a case-by-case basis. Ensuring every child has a laptop for school, for example, is probably not the best use of resources in places where children are also severely malnourished and have little access to basic security.

 

 

Anti-Trafficking Event

Early April, I attended an anti-trafficking panel discussion to discuss the most recent reauthorization of the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act in 2008. 

One of the panelists, Alissa Moore, started an organization in New York called the Nomi Network.  The organization strive to create a network of socially responsible businesses and consumers working together and using their resources to combat sex-trafficking.  She led a discussion on the role of microfinance in assisting trafficked survivors.  Thus far, most of the anti-trafficking work has centered on treating the symptoms and not addressing the root causes.  Often times, poverty is the key root cause of human trafficking. 

The discussion was interesting because utilizing microfinance and treating human trafficking to be more of a development issue rather than just a human rights violation.

Hopefully, this means that development organizations and human rights organizations can partner and create more coalitions to combat human trafficking.

On April 1, I attended “Healing the Trauma of Humanity’s Failure: A Way Forward for Survivors of the Rwandan Genocide” hosted by NYU Wagner’s Research Center for Leadership in Action (RCLA).  The event was designed as a discussion between Mary Blewitt, founder of the nonprofit Survivors Fund, which assists and advocates for Rwandan genocide survivors and three mental health practitioners and academics, Dr. Carl Auerbach, Dr. Yael Danieli, and Dr. Richard Neugebauer.  After the formal discussion, individuals from the audience were invited to the table to join the discussion.

Mental health recovery for individuals who have experienced such traumatic events as occurred during the Rwandan genocide is vital.  This issue is important for development because individuals suffering from such mental health issues as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder experience significant psychological symptoms that interfere with their daily functioning.  The speakers at the event discussed mental health interventions that might help Rwandans heal from the trauma.  What I found interesting was how much the points of view of the three attendees differed in important ways.

Dr. Danieli has been treating survivors of genocide since the Holocaust.  Her interventions were based on the wishes of the survivors.  She suggested that rigorous studies occurring today are redundant from the work she has already accomplished.  Conversely, Dr. Neugebauer felt strongly about testing interventions and only using interventions that have been proven effective.  Dr. Auerbach held a view between the two, noting that some interventions that have been successful in a western context may not be applicable to Rwandan culture.  He also noted that there is urgency surrounding treating genocide survivors and that it may be beneficial for new interventions to be tried that may be more congruent with Rwandan culture, and for these interventions to be tested contemporaneously, a view that Dr. Neugebauer strongly disapproved of.

I recognize the importance of, first, causing no harm by utilizing proven interventions and, secondly, ensuring the prudent use of scarce resources.  However, there is much to be learned about imposing western mental health interventions on other cultures.  In a matter so important to development after a traumatic event, new ideas should be explored and tried, with the intention of finding better and more culturally appropriate treatment.

Are MDG Indicators adequate to monitor gender based aspects of development?

In January 2009, there was a UN Global Forum on Gender Statistics in Accra, Ghana, which I watched live via webcast.  The topic was, “Monitoring progress towards gender equitable development”.  It emphasized how there is universal recognition that gender equality and women’s empowerment are necessary conditions to achieve development.  It highlighted how women contribute to household income and how gender equality and women’s empowerment are necessary to achieve universal primary education, lower under-five mortality, improved maternal health, and lower likelihood of contracting HIV/AIDS.  It asserted how women’s greater control over household resource allocation improves children’s health, nutrition and education.

 

Basically, the message it had for its audience was that Governments need to honor existing international commitments to mainstream gender and promote the empowerment of women into all development policies.  So then, “Are MDG indicators adequate to monitor gender based aspects of development?”  On existing indicators, there are problems with data availability.  The data available from official national and international sources does not allow to monitor the basic aspects of development related to gender and to inform policies with the necessary statistics and the kind of data required for gender-sensitive policy formulation and monitoring.

 

Over the past few years, the urgency for development partners to address the lack of data has become more evident.  The political importance of the MDGs and the need to monitor progress has shaped the development of indicators and related statistical capacity-building programs.  The way forward is putting important new initiatives for statistical capacity-building and they are as follows: Marrakech Action Plan for the improvement of development statistics; Steering and Working Groups on MDG Africa: Thematic Group on Statistical Systems; IAEG on MDG Indicators: initiatives in statistical capacity building; and last but not the least, the 2006 ECOSOC resolution and recommendations by the UN Statistical Commission.

Women in Politics at the UN

In March I attended a panel on Women in Politics. This topic which was a topic of focus at previous Commissions on the Status of Women, is an issue I have been interested in a while. One of the panel speakers was from Rwanda and was discussing the immense success of women politicians in Rwanda both in terms of quality and quantity. A quota has led to increased numbers of women in political power at the legislative level. More than just increasing their numbers, elected women have embarked upon a number of successful laws regarding women's rights. Although his talk was interesting, the speaker did not mention how this success in Rwanda can be translated into other countries where women remain largely marginalized. 

One of the sad patterns in world-wide women's political power, is that women often achieve political power when there is a power vacuum created by war (for more read Ali Marie Tripp). Women can use the absence of men to carve out their own niche. I was curious to hear about more peaceful ways that women can achieve political power besides civil war and quotas. 

Women's World Banking Conference

Last week I attended the Women’s World Banking conference sponsored in part by J.P.Morgan. The two-day event consisted of a number of panel presentations as well case study competitions among dozens of microfinance institutions from around the world.  One of the first presentations at the conference discussed how the current fiscal crisis is affecting microfinance institutions globally.  Before this conference, I had not thought much about it, but the impact on these institutions is tremendous on two accounts.  First, the issue of liquidity continues to be a problem as potential investors are retrenching, especially from emerging markets.  On the human side of the

MFI

issue, people around the globe are experiencing incredible personal hardships, which are making it difficult for them to fulfill repayment obligations.  Part of the reason this is happening is because the overall demand for goods (including those cultivated or produced by entrepreneurs) is shrinking and when sales are occurring, they are not commanding high prices.  This has forced families to dip into whatever savings they may have, while at the same time, many are still defaulting on loan payments. The ripple effect from both ends (limited capital and increasing loan defaults) is having a very negative on this sector in certain corners of the world.  It is interesting to note that the impact on the sector varies depending on 1) the region (some areas are fairing much worse than others in terms of default rates and infrastructure challenges; and 2) how the institution in funded (some institutions accept deposits, while others rely on debt, equity investments or private grants to make loans—all of which can impact the overall risk and liquidity of an organization).  These are just a few tidbits from the conference, but overall it was a fascinating event because it provided excellent insight from the provider, investor and consumer perspective.

CFR Event on "Is Aid Dead"

The Council on Foreign Relations hosted an event at the end of April called “Is Aid Dead? A Discussion with Dambisa Moyo on Foreign Aid and Development.” At the beginning of the event, Moyo said that her new book is a critique of large government to government aid transfers, and a discussion of alternative ways to finance development. So I thought it would be an interesting discussion on what some of those alternatives were. Instead, I found her to offer almost no substance to back up her arguments. Rather she seems to enjoy the spotlight created by the controversy of her statements, and I was disappointed in the questioning of the moderator and audience who only weakly challenged her to state what her alternatives would be.  While I do think her statements that aid should be an interim solution and African governments should plan for weaning themselves off aid are true, her demands on African leaders seem unrealistic, particularly for the poorest of the poor countries.  

 

She started out by mocking Bono, and saying that she has issues with celebrities being the face of Africa. Instead, she wants the elected leaders to take charge and say what they plan to do to increase growth and reduce poverty. While it is completely understandable that she demands more accountability from African leaders, they cannot produce real results without money. And as Laurie Garrett pointed out in her question, where are they supposed to get this money from if they can’t raise it from tax revenues? Mocking someone like Bono who has done so much to try to help the situation is disrespectful. While the RED campaign could be more efficient, etc, Bono has nonetheless raised a lot of money for causes in Africa and also done a lot to bring the world’s attention on important matters there. In answer to Garrett’s question, Moyo said that yes, aid is needed in the meantime before the governments can raise their own revenues. However, in the entire hour long discussion, she did not give one idea as to how these governments are supposed to wean themselves off of aid, and what economic activities would be better at stimulating more development than aid, which she says has been a total failure.

 

As someone who works in an international AIDS organization, I was most frustrated by her answer to the moderator’s question about aid for HIV/AIDS. She said that AIDS should ultimately be the responsibility of African governments (including for funding the fight against it). While that is true on one level, on the funding level it’s simply ridiculous to make that statement, especially coming from someone who is supposedly an economist. The moderator did push back a little, saying that ARV treatment is prohibitively expensive, and governments cannot be expected to be able to come up with that money when they don’t even have money to provide basic services. Her only response was that drug prices have come down somewhat, there’s an interim role for charities, and that governments should still take long-term responsibility. This kind of non-answer adds nothing substantive to the discussion on HOW governments can take more responsibility, or how to make aid more effective and the gains of development more sustainable.

FLOW - Review of Doc on Water Crisis

In between writing my end-of-semester papers, I had the chance to watch the documentary FLOW.  I’ve been steeped (ha, ha) in water issues for about a year now, and I found that FLOW does offer viewers an overview of the main issues with water currently at hand.  However, it does so in such a heavy-handed and alarmist fashion, I found the film a little tough to take.

FLOW only briefly touches on some of the major issues with water, such as climate change and the effects of the green revolution on agriculture, in order to focus on the commoditization of water and the effects of privatization and industrialization on our water sector and resources.  The documentary covers the growth of big three water companies, Suez, Vivendi, and Thames Water into the developing world and the World Bank’s support of water sector privatization in favor of these for-profit companies. FLOW also delves into corporate pollution and devastation of our water resources, both in the developing world and the U.S.

The film illustrates the affects of privatization and corporate greed with footage from the riots in Bolivia after the disastrous handling of their water sector by Suez, which left over 200,000 people without water.  Bolivia finally ended the contract with Suez in 2007.  FLOW also shows the successful sit-in in India against Coca-Cola, which had been polluting the community’s water supply.  It took two years of protests before the plant was successfully shut down. FLOW also details the fight of Michigan residents against Nestle, who was sucking so much water out of the community’s supply that their streams dried up and mudflats appeared.  The Michigan residents eventually lost their legal battle.

It is telling that FLOW counters each act of corporate greed and destruction with tales of community action and defiance.  The point of the film is to spread the world about the water crisis and spur people to action.  This is a worthy goal.  However, the film exhibits such bias that it’s hard to take it seriously. The white, male water company executives in expensive suits laugh their evil laughs, while the human rights and environmental activists warn of the “6^th great extinction of the Earth’s history.”  It seems the filmmakers thought that a battle between good and evil would be more compelling for audiences than providing a more nuanced argument. In fact, the filmmakers needn’t have bothered with such clumsy tactics.  All of the information in the documentary is true.  The stories, the people, the statistics—they all speak for themselves.

Climate Change Conference in Poznan, Poland, December 2008

From 1-12 December 2008, the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP14) took place in Poznan, Poland. During the conference, Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Parties of the Kyoto Protocol, their subsidiary bodies and representatives of businesses and industry, as well as civil society representatives negotiated their long-term support for improved global action against climate change. The Conference was seen as a landmark on the road to achieve the decisions and tracks set out in the Bali Road Map by 2009 and the Kyoto Protocol commitments by 2012. At the end of the Conference, governments committed themselves to actively negotiate an international response to climate change and to work towards a Copenhagen climate deal by the end of 2009. The Conference also brought progress with regard to the Adaptation Fund and other issues affecting mainly developing countries, such as finance, technology, reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) and disaster management.

 

In the article published in the New York Times on December 12, Elisabeth Rosenthal gives a quick overview of the outcomes of the conference, and points out some of the criticisms expressed by the participants. Most of the article is oriented to the two biggest players - the European Union that had to face big challenges to agree on its own climate and energy package and the United States whose potential positive shift in the environmental policy gives an optimistic look into the future.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/13/world/13climate.html?_r=1&ref=science

 

Another article, “No Friends of the Earth” by Mohammad Cohen, published at The Guardian on the 11^th December, 2008, gives far less optimistic view of the Convention. This article asks why environmental NGOs support the Convention, as there is no evidence that the Convention is benefiting the environment. On the contrary, the article reports an increase in greenhouse gas emissions rather than a decline. The author is right when citing Andrew Deutz from The Nature Conservancy that the UNFCCC should not be the only legitimate forum for the climate negotiations. He is also right when pointing out that developing countries should not be completely excluded from the emission control, as it is the situation now according to the Kyoto agreement.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2008/dec/11/environment-carbon-emissions-un-poznan

“Whatever Happened to Civil Society?”

Under this intriguing title, UK-based International NGO Training and Research Centre, organized an international conference to discuss current civil society trends in theory and practice, and particularly its relationship with aid. The conference was held in December 2008 in the Netherlands, and gathered 140 participants from 40 countries. As the title implies, the role of the civil society somewhat changed under the influence of the development aid and aid policies. According to the participants in the conference, the concept of civil society as a social sphere for interaction between the economy and the state, populated by the self-organized actors and organizations that aim to promote collective goals is being overshadowed by the international assistance and aid industry. In such environment, the essential nature of the civil society as a crucial part of the democratic life is endangered. Indeed, current emphasis on direct poverty reduction by the aid industry often prevents the aid workers to see the importance of the long-term investment in civil society. Short-term development interventions can potentially undermine long-term civil society strengthening. This event laid out few important points to have in mind when discussing future of the civil society, starting from refreshing our understanding of the term itself and the changing position of NGOs within, to rethinking the costs and benefits of changes based on aided development.

GOD GREW TIRED OF US

This Brad Pitt-produced, Nicole Kidman-narrated documentary about a few thousand of the Sudan’s “Lost Boys” coming to the US as refugees may be mainstream, but nonetheless a moving and striking portrait of being a foreigner in the US.  The film follows 5 boys from a refugee camp in Kenya—where they had been confined to the camp for more than 10 years—to five years after settling (or rather, being settled) in various cities across the United States.  

There are more than enough moving moments to fill a lifetime in this 2 hour documentary. Some highlights: 

 

*An interview with one “boy” (who was by this time a young adult) when being asked his feelings using electricity for the first time in his life.  His response:   “I am a bit nervous to use electricity. I have never done so but I imagine it would be very difficult.”

*Scenes of saying “goodbye” to their campmates (There are over 10,000 lost boys still living in Kenya and the US granted only 2000 of them refugee status), with whom they fled their homeland in the south Sudan, walked thousands of miles after many of their family members were murdered, all the while burying their friends, who, along the harrowing journey, succumbed to thirst, starvation, lions, and illness.  As one “boy” put it, “they are my family now. I will miss them.” 

*Scenes from the plane on their way to the

US

: As the boys literally look as if they had landed on another planet, the flight attendant serves them their meals.  They eat every crumb on their plate: they eat the butter straight, and even the hand wipe that comes with airline food (“that food tasted very strange.”).

*One Lost Boy, placed in

Pittsburgh

, went swimming at a public pool. While there, he plays with some local kids.  He stands out dramatically:  almost everyone there is white; he is exceptionally tall and very, very dark.  This draws attention to the Lost Boys in the

US

almost always (especially in the suburbs where most of them are placed).  Anyway, one mother is being friendly with the Lost Boy, and she says, “I bet life is so nice for you here.  Isn’t it better here than where you’re from?” 

*After being in the

US

several years, one Lost Boy says, “what is really hard for me is to understand that you cannot go up to a house and ask for a glass of water without arousing suspicion.  You cannot walk up to a stranger and comfort them as they cry.”

One of the things that makes this film so interesting, other than the subject matter, is the stark contrast between wealth and abject poverty; extended family cultures and individualistic societies; and, despite those differences between the developing world and the “developed,”  the extent of globalization. Even as the boys were talking about how electricity would affect them, they were wearing Chicago Bulls and Mickey Mouse printed t-shirts, and they all spoke English in addition to their native tongues. Even as the boys adjusted to modern amenities such as flushing toilets, refrigerators, and television, old habits die hard:  a regular meal was Ritz crackers mashed by hand, mixed with milk and then beaten hard with a spoon.

Because it is a story of extremes, GOD GREW TIRED OF US is a perfect film to understand culture shock, the immigrant experience, and to begin to think about the similarities and differences in human beings around the world.  

Africa regional integration

I found the article “Regional Integration will liberate Africa from Poverty’ that appeared in the New Vision,

Uganda

’s Leading Daily newspaper on April 19^th 2009 remarkable. The article replicates a keynote address by the President of Uganda at a North-South Corridor Conference organized under the COMESA-EAC-SADC Tripartite Framework in

Lusaka

,

Zambia

. As we discussed in class, globalization has affected the way markets operate hence it is important to develop ways of global or regional cooperation to keep up with the pace and competition that comes with globalization.

 

Regional integration of countries in Africa will go along way in addressing the barriers and various traps such as the conflict trap; the land locked trap; and resource trap in which many

Africa

nations remain trapped. Museveni points out “…it is through deeper regional integration that the potential to liberate our economies from the ravages of poverty, socio-economic transformation and to create wealth and sustainable prosperity crucially lies.”

 

Despite the benefits that regional integration would brings, one major obstacle to its practical implementation relates to the practice of political elites in Africa to hold on to power indefinitely and their belief that regional integration implies giving up their power to rule to other leaders.

What would the Poor say: Debates in Aid evaluation

The conference on ‘What would the poor say: Debates in Aid Evaluation’ scheduled earlier in the semester provided useful insights into my understanding of the link between ‘development’ and ‘aid’. It is not disputable that aid has done many things for the poor people such as alleviating suffering and meeting humanitarian needs; however, aid is not development. There is no evidence of countries developing through aid. What the poor need is democratic freedoms to meet their own prioritized needs and not donor government conditions. I found Easterly’s discussion plausible that the worst people driving aid are middle and upper management of development agencies who remain largely unaccountable. However, is it possible to make aid accountable? Unlike the developed world were governments are transparent, citizens contribute and have clear policies and strategies on what services they expect to get, in developing countries, such mechanisms are limited. Therefore, poor people often view services from NGOs running aid programs as a charity. To a poor person, a gift whether big or small, is a good gift. Given such impediments, I found Birdsall’s arguments for the Aid Modality model aimed at making governments accountable to their people rather than to donors, limited in its practical application to developing countries.

US Multilateralism

The Council on Foreign Relations had an interesting discussion about Stewart Patrick's book The Best Laid Plans: The Origins of American Multilateralism and the Dawn of the Cold War". The book, as Mr. Patrick describes it, is a look at the history of the multilateral internaltional institutions that the US helped establish after WWII. Focusing on the UN and the Breton Woods institutions, Mr. Patrick looks to the past in order to understand the current (somewhat broken) state of these institutions. In establishing the UN, Patrick is forgiving of the US. He states that Roosevelt was being "magnanimous" in his attempt to fend off another world war. He acknowledges as legitimate criticism that the UN was established to "hide the reality of hegemony in the trappings of pluralism," but he believes that for the most part, the US went into the endeavor honestly. The fundamental issue was the hubris of the US in trying and "remake the world in America's image."

Mr. Patrick also acknowledges the roots of american ambivalence to the UN were there from the beginning. He mentions some members of the Roosevelt administration who were concerned about the "annoying small countries" and the desire to leave important decisions to the big countries. He points to three factors that have contributed this ambivalence. The first is american power. With its place as the world's most powerful country the US has more unilateral options than most countries. This can be seen in its rejection of the ICC and Kyoto protocols. The second is the constitutional separation of powers. Since all laws must be enacted by congress, international treaties negotiated through the executive aren't necessarily binding. Finally is the idea of american exceptionalism. He cites this as the reason for opposition to to international initiatives such as small arms treaties, which are seen as contradicting the right to bear arms.

The conversation also raised questions about the role of the IMF and World Bank in promoting laissez faire capitalism. Mr. Patrick points out that these institutions weren't originally created with the ideas of pushing market based approaches, but rather were established as a "projection of the New Deal onto the world." He believes the Breton Woods need to move back to these ideals but vested interests are a significant barrier to effective reform. Finally, although he acknowledges that they are broken in many ways, Mr. Patrick believes there is an important role for these standing, treaty based international institutions in the globalized world. The talk is an informative look at the history and limitations of the institutions that dominate foreign relations and international development.

Event Discussion: Frontiers of Humanitarianism

    Last month, on March 31st, I attended the Frontiers of Humanitarianism 2009 Conference, entitled “The Ethics of Responsibility and the Modes of Protection.”  The first panel: “The Politics of the Responsibility to Protect” traced the history, emergence and current challenges of humanitarian intervention. The panel consisted as Monica Serrana, the director of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect (GCR2P); Fabienne Hara, vice-president of Multilateral Affairs for the International Crisis Group; and James Traub, Director of Policy at GCR2P and contributing writer for The New York Times.
    The panel discussed R2P as a norm and the challenges facing it. The mandate to protect, as discussed energetically and in detail by James Traub, rested on the claim that states do not have the right to commit human rights abuses, and in fact should have the obligation to prevent them.  The long-accepted norm of state sovereignty is thus called into question.  States wishing to preserve their sovereignty claim that the justification of expanding and protecting human rights was really a mask for violation and interference. Though many claim that the norm of sovereignty as a priority is in decline, this norm conflict is still prevalent and forms a large part of the conflict and discussion around R2P. I find this debate extremely interesting and engaging. Though there is heated discussion around it, it seems unlikely that much of this debate could be resolved or lessened.
    Another interesting issue involving R2P that was discussed in the panel, in addition to the question of ‘if/how’ to intervene to protect human rights in regards to state sovereignty, is the ‘when to intervene?’ Does the Responsibility to Protect mean that we should intervene to stop ongoing human rights abuses once they have begun? Or does the imperative mean that we should do more to protect, specifically preventative work? Should criteria, as difficult as this would be, be developed that could try to identify possible genocides or abuses and intervene before they occur? Fabienne Hara discussed the case of Burundi, and the efforts at prevention. I think this is one of the most pressing and difficult issues within the R2P framework. One of the interesting components of R2P is that it is relatively recent as an imperative and is thus still creating its identity in many senses. For example, Kofi Annan, in order to gain support for R2P, deliberately ‘repackaged’ the concept semantically.
    There is an array of pressing, possibly irreconcilable challenges in R2P, including one of consistency. Given the nature of the norm, as well the challenges it facing, it is difficult to create a consistent imperative.

Panama's HPV Vaccine Campaign

I recently listened to a Public Radio International news report on Panama’s HPV campaign, which is vaccinating all 10-year old girls in the country for free. Cervical cancer is the 2^nd leading cause of death for women in Panama. The vaccine campaign has been very popular in the country, facing basically no resistance, unlike in the US, where there has been a very vocal group of people who argue that it advocates unsafe sex. The secret to the campaign in Panama is that they’re selling the vaccine to the public as a cancer vaccine, and not even telling people that it’s against a virus that is sexually transmitted. Some critics are arguing against the campaign, saying that it’s not right not to give people full information. Others are arguing that they’re missing an opportunity to educate people on safe sex. However, in my opinion, both of those arguments are weak, and the Panama campaign’s success should be applauded and replicated in other countries. If ‘full’ information was given to people, then there would most likely be an outcry against the vaccine, which would result in fewer vaccinations, and more women dying of cervical cancer than otherwise. The campaign does not contain any false information, which would obviously be wrong, it simply omits information that is not necessary for people to know in order to take advantage of the benefits of the vaccine. Safe sex campaigns have failed in the past because of the taboo involved, so there is no reason to think that tying that to the HPV vaccine would eliminate the taboo. Rather, it would likely subject the HPV vaccine campaign to the same fate. I think any other developing country with a similar level of HPV prevalence should implement a similar campaign, and even developing countries should consider a similar marketing approach. Even if the information about HPV being a sexually transmitted disease is available, it would be very interesting to see if it would be possible to re-frame the issue in the United States to make it more popular.  

 

Economic Reform in Iran

The New Yorker had an interesting article, entitled The Rationalist, about economic reform in Iran a few months ago.  The piece profiled Mohammad Tabibian, a Duke educated economist who adamantly disagrees with President Ahmadinejad's populist policies.  Tabibian is an interesting individual.  A devout Muslim who returned to Iran after the revolution to serve in the Planning and Budget Office, the institution tasked with "drawing up an economic agenda for the world's first revolutionary Islamic state."  In light of Iran's 28 percent inflation, Tabibian believes the country needs to privatize firms and allow market forces to drive growth.  When asked about this in the context of the current financial crisis and the nationalizing of firms that is taking place in the West, Tabibian had an interesting quote.  He says, "We are on two different sides of the spectrum.  You need more regulation and government intervention in financial markets to avoid moral hazard; we need less regulation and less government intervention to avoid moral hazard. You need, maybe, to increase public spending; we need to reduce public spending. You need to reduce the rate of interest; we need to increase it."

This seems to me to be a very reasonable approach.  Policies tend to swing to extremes.  When rejecting the Washington consensus, structural adjustment and neo-liberal ideology, there can be a tendency to swing very too far to the left and advise policies that restrict free trade and encourage protectionism. In some cases this advice may be prudent, but often, as Tabibian notes, it goes too far.

Paul Farmer: There Are No Silver Bullets for Effecting Social Change

After reading Tracy Kidder’s

Mountains

Beyond

Mountains

and sections of Paul Farmer’s Pathologies of Power this semester, it was a privilege to hear Dr. Farmer speak in person at the

NYU

Medical

School

on April 30. He was the final speaker of the NYU Reynolds Program in Social Entrepreneurship 2008-2009 Speaker Series. In addition to his general affability and wit, several things he said have stayed with me as particularly meaningful.

 

He recapped comments he made at last year’s Reynolds Speaker Series event, outlining three paradigms for involvement in international development work, or work with and for the world’s poor more generally: rights-based; public health needs; and economic development. He called these paradigms complementary, noting their promise and limitations for prompting and informing appropriate, equitable and entrepreneurial action for social change. He repeated that there are no silver bullets, and stated that, “There is nothing to save us from hard work.”

 

I took this to mean that whatever path you follow, recognize that it is not the only one that matters or that will provide answers, and that it will always involve an enormous effort, which will require new learning along the way.

 

He also noted that he believes that coordination is the biggest challenge to entrepreneurial approaches to social change. He quoted a Haitian proverb “The rocks in the water do not know the pain of the rocks in the sun” and said that there are many important entrepreneurial projects being undertaken by do-gooders that are poorly coordinated. An important entrepreneurial activity then involves figuring out how to coordinate this work so that it adds up to more than the sum of its parts. He explained that the ongoing, devastating effects of recent hurricanes in

Haiti

are not simply the result of natural disaster, but result from a combined environmental, social and political disaster, requiring a much more coordinated approach to prevention and response.

 

Dr. Farmer further argued that entrepreneurial activity requires government, that is, public action to establish a basic “safety net” for people around the world. He called for a recommitment to, and investment in public health as an essential objective of, and basis for social entrepreneurship and social change. Dr. Farmer thus reminds us that important social innovation need not involve new ideas, but simply implementing them or implementing existing ideas in new ways.         

 

The Reputation of Latin American Countries

This post relates to the following article in the Economist: 

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13576159

This is a short and interesting article that discusses the general current economic climate in Latin America.  Through prudent government spending (and savings) Latin American countries have held up as well as richer countries throughout the global crisis. In the past, they have not faired so well. This fact is improving the economic and financial reputation of Latin America. And while they are by no means immune to the crisis, and indeed have a list of things to improve upon, this improved reputation is a good thing.

What I found interesting about this article was the fact that no where does it mention anything about the rich countries' role in the poor reputation Latin America has had in the past. It seems that few would still argue that many of the Washington Consensus policies that were forced upon Latin American countries didn't turn out to be disastrous. And while some of these policies likely contributed to previous downswings in these countries, the reputation that resulted from them is put entirely on their shoulders. Now that they have pursued successful policies, the rich nations still struggle to change their perceptions of Latin America, even though these perceptions are based on realities for which they were partly to blame.

Reflection on conference

Last April, the Korean Labor Ministry held an international conference on enhancing women’s status, at a time when an increasing number of women are out of work.

According to statistics released by the ministry earlier, the increasing number of self-employed women who are out of work has contributed to the sharp drop in the total number of employed people in recent months. The number of self-employed women who were out of work increased by 56,000 in January from a year earlier, rising to 112,000 in February and 120,000 in March. Not only self-employed women, but women in general face additional barriers at work compared to men, said Rhodora Palomar-Fresnedi, vice president of global diversity at Unilever.

Some of the barriers include stereotyping, exclusion from informal networks and a lack of role models, Palomar-Fresnedi said.

"The question of whether women can reach their aspirations, use and grow their skills, be supported and energized within a workplace is a test for inclusion capabilities of that workplace," she said. "(However) in recent studies, the major economic potential of women has been highlighted, citing women as powerful drivers of economic development."

Martine Durand, deputy director for employment, labor and social affairs at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, said Korea recently made great strides in skills and competencies, but they had not been matched by progress in the labor market concerning women.

"The difference between male and female employment rate is just above 20 percent, while the gender pay gap is almost 40 percent at median earnings," she said, adding that such gaps were amongst the largest in the OECD.

Noting that Korea had a lot of well-educated women, Durand said that times had changed, but that employment conditions had not changed with them.

"The Korean workplace culture may fit the male-breadwinner model, but that notion has lost much of its appeal," she said. "Korean women, whose level of educational attainment is regarded with envy in many countries, find it difficult to pursue their labor market aspirations and combine this with motherhood."

In conclusion, flexi-time work solutions and part-time employment opportunities should become more widespread and the remuneration system should be reformed into a performance-based system that does not automatically punish women for taking time off to take care of family commitments.

Most of all, for social and family policy to be effective, workplace cultures have to give all workers a fair chance to fulfill their individual aspirations and provide for their children. In Korea, however, female workers often have to choose between work and family commitments, and if they choose motherhood they find it very difficult to find employment which does justice to their high levels of competencies and which is rewarded on a comparable basis with mainstream regular workers.

Flexi-time work solutions and part-time employment opportunities should become more widespread, but most importantly the remuneration system should be reformed into an essentially performance-based system which does not automatically punish women for taking time off to honor care commitments. Indicators on literacy competencies and educational attainment show that the Koreans are among the most trained people in the workforce and that women do at least as well as men. This should be reflected at the workplace. The gender gap in employment and earnings reflects an incredible waste of investment in human capital. In order to address future economic growth and fertility concerns, as well as personal wellbeing issues, the Korean society as a whole, and the business community in particular, should review their policies and attitudes to maximize the use of women’s competencies.

MSM HIV Funding -- A Test Case for Personal Obligations/Ethical Considerations

The amount of personal obligations and ethical considerations involved in development work may not be inexhaustible -- but there are certainly enough that it would be challenging to develop an overarching framework in 500 words or less. (A user’s manual may not be such a bad idea).

However, it seems that some of our key knowledge on these topics can stem from the unusual  or jarring experiences that suddenly bring these issues to light.  In the absence of a clear, widely-accepted rubric of ‘ethical’ development, these circumstances can be very instructive in qualifying both what we should do (obligations) and how we should do it (ethical considerations).

Some recent HIV-related work I’ve done around  ‘men who have sex with men’ (MSM) in developing countries may provide a good example of this. (The footnote here is that MSM is a behavior rather than a self-identification, which is why it’s not just shortened to ‘homosexual’).

Put simply, MSM populations are extremely vulnerable to HIV for a variety of reasons. Stigmatization and criminalization have led to an extreme lack of prevention services and care. To put the added risk in perspective -- MSM in Bolivia are 179 times more likely to contract HIV than a member of the general population.

Unfortunately, the neglect that MSM populations face in their home countries is matched by the international donor community. Only a fraction of the billions of HIV aid dollars goes to MSM services and organizations.

I was shocked when I discovered these statistics, and my surprise got me thinking about the  obligations we have to vulnerable populations, and the ethical considerations that should factor into our projects. 

In the case of MSM funding, the obligation is  to acknowledge the hard truths about the issues we deal with and organize our work accordingly. We have an obligation in this case, for example, to match HIV funding dollars to the impact of the epidemic rather than pet projects and causes. (No easy task to be sure -- and impossible without community-wide coordiantion -- but I think it's an obligation nonetheless.)

Second, the ethical implications should involve a careful and robust consideration of how projects are funded and carried out – ‘do no harm’ is usually a good starting point, though many other issues come into play. Funding MSM groups or other ‘invisible populations’ is a difficult task, as  grantees  need to be kept anonymous for fear of government or community reprisals.

This is admittedly a pretty simplistic assessment of an issue, and what it could mean int erms of our obligations and ethics. However, I think these jarring experiences are some of the best ways to suddenly discover a new way of looking at an issue -- and that in itself can be instructive in terms of our of personal obligations and ethical development practices.

 

Paul Farmer and the Uses of Moral Force

Last Thursday, many of us attended Paul Farmer’s talk at the Reynolds lecture series on social entrepreneurship. Dr. Farmer covered a lot of varied and disparate ground in his lecture – everything from the mechanics of Haitian disaster relief to a philosophical rendering of the development community’s obligations to the poor.

In between his many asides, anecdotes and shout-outs to NESRI, he spoke with a moral clarity and force that was markedly different from many other development speakers. This was especially apparent in his ability to make unequivocal statements that were still entirely convincing: public health is a public good. Healthcare for the poor is a right, not a privilege.

It was a nice change of pace from the occasionally measured, detached or dispassionate ‘narratives’ that comprise quite a bit of development literature and many development events. In particular, Dr. Farmer’s comments about the vastly oversimplified ‘health systems’ debate were a great example of how we need more inspirational, big-picture thinking  that moves beyond the tired debates over vertical and horizontal systems.

He spoke of the various discourses around health systems and how the community has really lost the kernel of the debate – what the different approaches mean for the poor – in favor of a false dichotomy. The bloggers at CGD recently spent some time and effort debating whether the human body is the best metaphor for debating health systems, which I think provides some clear evidence for Dr. Farmer’s point.

It’s challenging to even articulate what the problem is here (and if, in fact, it highlights a more systemic discursive issue in development literature). But seeing Dr. Farmer speak, I couldn’t help but wonder whether the difference in narratives (the way we talk) can also lead to a difference in outcomes (the way we work). Partners in Health has been a relatively indisputable programmatic success characterized by the unequivocal, uncompromising values present in the speech – so I think the answer is yes.