DevPolitics

Carter Criticizes U.S. for Withholding North Korea Aid - the NY Times-

** This article is available at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/29/world/asia/29korea.html?scp=1&sq=North%20Korean%20human%20right&st=cse

I want to share an article in the New York Times about U.S. government’s aid to North Korea. The article says that during his visit to North Korea, Former President Jimmy Carter criticized the United States and South Korea for their refusal to send humanitarian assistance to the poor in North Korea. According to the article, Mr. Carter argued that two democratic governments have deliberately withheld food aid amounted to “a human rights violation”. Indeed, thanks to a harsh winter, severe flooding and outbreak of disease, North Korean people seemingly are really struggling with starvation.

With regard to this issue, many donor countries like U.S. argue that transparency in the distribution process should be a precondition for their aid. They seem to regard some vocabularies like ‘accountability’ and ‘transparency’ as one of the most important issue; Some people like Mr. Carter seemingly believe that if we can distinguish who the beneficiaries of the aid are, we should continue to provide the aid in terms of ‘human rights’.

However, the issue is far beyond that to South Korean people, because the issue includes ‘security’ issue, which can directly affect their safeties of lives and properties. Namely, this issue is not just about North Korean people’s human rights, but also about South Korea people’s safeties. Many South Korean people believe that the North has repeatedly lied to them. They think that on the one hand the North has built up their military powers, but on the other hand, they have begged humanitarian aids. Their concern has got more serious. The North is considered to be the culprit behind the sinking of a warship, the Cheonan, which is clearly an action of invasion to South Korea. The North continues to develop the nuclear programs. Recently, it is considered that North Korean computer hackers even attacked the network of a South Korean bank.

I don’t deny that ‘human rights’ is a real problem in the North and they really need our helps. According to the 2010 State Department Human Rights Report, there has not been any improvement in human rights. Rather, extrajudicial killings, disappearances, arbitrary arrest of political prisoners have become more serious issues.

It also pains to South Korean people including me (maybe, more than anyone else in the world) extremely to see North Korean people who are starving to death, because we are the Korean people.

As Mr. Carter argues, do you think that we are avoiding our duties or responsibilities to the poor in North Korea? Should we resume the aid in the situation where the North’ ruling class does not mend their ways? How do you guys think about this complicated issue?

 

Using diaspora bonds as a source of foreign aid

As we discussed the types of foreign aid that could make “the greatest impact” and/or are “low-hanging fruits” in one of the PID classes, I was reminded of a New York Times Op-Ed published in March about diaspora bonds (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/12/opinion/12ratha.html). According to the authors, diaspora bonds are basically the same as any bonds on the market, but are issued to emigrants to raise money for development in their home countries (e.g. investments in infrastructure). I felt very excited when I read this article. It sounds a great idea – a “low-hanging fruit” that is also likely to make “the greatest impact.” As the article mentions, “the idea taps into emigrants’ continuing patriotism and desire to give back to their home countries” and “migrants make more stable investors in their home countries than people without local knowledge. They’re less likely to pull out at the first sign of trouble. And they wouldn’t demand the same high rate of interest as a foreign investor, who wants to compensate for the risk of investing in what would seem to them like a relatively unknown developing country.”

On the other hand, it is important to ask who should issue these bonds. Bond issuers must have high credibility. According to the article, diaspora bonds can be issued by governments, private companies and public-private partnerships. It seems from the precedents that diaspora bonds are usually issued by governments of home countries to their people living abroad. But the problem with poor countries that rely heavily on foreign aid is that their governments are almost always weak and corrupt and therefore have neither capability nor credibility to issue bonds. Even so, I think that diaspora bonds can serve as a good additional source of foreign aid from donor countries.  For example, the United States can sell diaspora bonds to African immigrants living in the country and use the money as part of its foreign aid to African countries. This would be helpful in sustaining the foreign aid from US while reducing the actual amounts paid by the US government when financing is tight.

A new t-shirt controversy (only 100,000 this time)

John referred in class to the 1,000,000 shirts controversy - a well-meaning guy who started a drive to collect said number of t-shirts to send to Africa and was immediately skewered in the blogosphere. Apparently a similar situation has arisen - unfortunately this time the entity involved is World Vision, a generally respected org that sent 100K misprinted Super Bowl shirts overseas. Read more here (the blog post also has a link to the 1M controversy for those interested):

http://goodintents.org/uncategorized/world-vision-the-new-100000-shirts

 

Are NGOs Practicing What They Preach?

Today, contributors, donor agencies, graduate students, and relief and development practitioners are all asking: Are NGOs practicing what they preach? How would we know? Are claims of closeness to the grassroots a reality? Have NGOs become too dependent on public money? We must ask ourselves, really, are their projects and programs effective? How credible is the evidence? Would donors reach the grassroots better by connecting with local NGOs in developing and transitional countries? If donors must be transparent about evaluation results, why not NGOs?

The moral of the story ladies and gentleman is that fundamental feedback loops that are reliable and accurate don’t exist. What signals guide NGO resource deployment decisions, and how do recipients signal their preferences to their benefactors? NGOs do things in developing countries (like providing basic services) that governments should do but often don’t, but the decision on to whom, what, how and when these are provided are at the complete discretion of the benefactor. If you live in rural Mali and have very little, and you get even less from your government, will you refuse goods and services from a NGO? Unlikely, but how do you make a NGO aware of what you really need most? How the trustees of a multinational NGO are accountable to the vulnerable person in rural Mali is the real question.  If you crack this, the debate on measurements will be redundant. If the provider of services is accountable to the receiver then you don’t have to measure inputs, outputs or outcomes – the receiver does it for you (and you don’t have to hire monitoring specialists to tell you what the outcomes are).
            On the flipside – do we as the donating public hold those same NGO trustees to account either? Do we really know what effect our well intentioned donations have once they leave our accounts? Do we drill down into the activities of NGOs we give to, or do we just rely on the glossy well prepared or shall I say confusing to follow annual report and on the fact they are non-profit and therefore benign?
            Do we as taxpayers hold our own governments to account when they spend 0.7% of GDP (our money) on international development? What effect would providing free fertilizer have on America’s agriculture sector, and why should we believe that this would be any different in the case of Mali where this has happened in the past? Now there’s a real debate………

Aid Agencies’ and Donors’ Hidden Intentions

Aid Agencies are hardly criticized by some of the authors we read for this course. Yet, more than just criticism on these readings, what we see is actually, how these institutions have failed on their main objectives of fighting poverty and bringing economic growth to developing countries. However, more than that, it makes us think, that in spite of all their mistakes, some of these Aid Agencies have been successful bringing socioeconomic wellbeing at a certain period of time to some nations.

 Institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, as their names say it they are banks, this means that their essence is to lend countries money, but under some conditions, on which they don´t  have any risk of losing their money. This means that those institutions choose what countries are going to be the beneficiaries of their loans and sometimes, they are not exactly the countries who need them the most. This for me is one of the main obstacles that Aid Agencies face in “empowering the poor”.  There´s nothing wrong with that, in the end they are banks and that´s what banks do, they have the right of choosing who they are lending the money to. What I think that is wrong is the conception on how they have been shown to developing countries, as Aid Agencies, when they are just banks that lend money to countries instead of people.

The Washington Consensus created false expectations in third world countries, about how this new Aid Agencies would solve all their unsatisfied needs. For me, it was all about a marketing strategy, consisting of good intentions that hid their real purposes: making money by lending the poor. So this name, “Aid Agencies” was the result of this ambitious marketing strategy which real main goal was not about making poor countries rich, but making rich countries, richer. Hence, it was not only about money, it was about political power; it was about consolidating a unique economic model imposed by the United States, Capitalism, as the path to prosperity and economic growth.

Nevertheless, I believe that if Aid Agencies and donors weren’t obsessed with imposing general structural and institutional reforms as their means of reducing poverty in every country they work at and instead of doing that they focused more on each country´s background and specific needs, their aid impact would be greater. Also, if they had less technocrats working at their offices and more practitioners in the field, they would be delivering more effective services, instead of just disbursing the money to the world´s poor, without having any substantial impact in their long term search for development.

The Personal is Political- Obligations to "Development"

I don’t think there is one neat solution to solving world poverty and all of that entails. Yet, like Michael Clemens (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bB1hRNMGdbQ) I believe that giving people more fluid borders in a structured way would create tangible benefits for people who’s current domestic experiences seem hopeless. I have seen data on remittances and inflows of capital and goods from emigrated groups and the positive results are astounding (http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/07/welcome-guest-workers/7517/).

I start with this because recently some of us have been asked what policy we would introduce that is both politically feasible and would have great impact. I believe that this could be it- is this THE solution? I don’t think so. I also know that there are many issues associated with migration (on both sides): immersion, marginalization, 2nd class citizenship- look at how Germany is currently struggling to deal with its more than 15 million “others” (http://www.economist.com/node/17469563).

Yet if you ask what personal/ethical obligations we have as a collective to this development concept- then the United States and others must rethink what we are willing to give up. Of course it is comfortable to gift charity/philanthropy to countries in the other side of the world- you as an individual, foundations, USAID, etc…pull out a checkbook and feel relief that you are tackling a problem- yet like a shareholder- you demand dividends in the form of incredible bureaucracy, evaluations, impact, gratitude and other phenomena that obstruct the very goal they are seeking to obtain. 

The real question is- if “aid” fails or has v. little demonstrated impact, what are some other solutions- solutions that perhaps are not so comfortable to deal with or as simple as writing a check or devising some program to be implemented in another place.  What are we willing to do to get our hands dirty in this process? Are we willing to stop subsidizing entire domestic industries so that others flourish? Are we willing to have thousands/millions of new workers migrate to gain the jobs that our low-skilled laborers currently have? Are we willing or more importantly ready to train and educate our labor force so that it can actually compete globally? Are we willing to truly reform our education system so that the systematic failure of children of color stops?

I am not sure what we as a society are willing to do that? I sometimes see so many students getting degrees to go provide “capacity building” services abroad when there is a lot of capacity building and structuring that needs to occur internally in order for our foreign service to be truly effective….i think that’s what I personally think are our obligations- to start at home…. 

There is a phrase in radical feminist theory- the personal is political by Hanisch. I think we need to start at home- where the battle lines drawn are more personal.  

 

Re: ‘Israel to allow clothes, shoes into Gaza’

‘Israel to allow clothes, shoes into Gaza’ http://af.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idAFTRE6330WT20100404?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=0

Relevant quotes from the article:

“Israel bans shipments of cement and steel to Gaza on the grounds that Hamas could use them for military purposes. Its long list of controlled goods also includes items that critics say have no apparent military value, such as children's crayons and books… Gaza's merchants, who imported the goods privately, said Sunday's shipment was not enough to replenish their stocks and demanded Israel release more goods held at its ports since 2007. "Some of it even smells bad. I can say half of the merchandise is still good, but the other half is damaged. I fear I may not be able to recoup my outlay," importer Ziad Barbakh told Reuters while frantically inspecting his clothes shipment…Some 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed in the December 2008-January 2009 Gaza war.”

This article on clothing imports to Gaza highlights the absurdity of the blockade of Gaza and the desperate circumstances of impoverished people there. Gaza is one of many places where development is impeded by U.S. and Israeli politics – and where silence on these political issues severely undermines both the effectiveness and the integrity of development practitioners.  It is difficult for Gaza to develop in any way, given the Israeli effort to starve Gaza into submission, with Egyptian and U.S. complicity. The civilian population of Gaza can be assumed to be suffering horrifying casualties to the specters of infant and maternal mortality, basic privation of food, shelter, clothing and opportunities to earn an income. While many have died in the bombings of Gaza, many have likely also died due to denial of their basic rights to clean water, food, modern health care, and access to markets. While direct relief if needed, the helpfulness of minimally-allowed service provision is highlighted in these stark circumstances. Rights to  basic food, water, and health care should not be a political issue subject to debate.

A democracy can occupy and colonize other countries for self-defense reasons George W. Bush argued. His excuse for invasion and occupation was that the U.S. would bring the joy and trappings of electoral democracy and free markets. While this entire assumption is highly suspect, it puts the U.S. is in the awkward political position of having to defend Israel’s denial of the most basic of Palestinian human rights in the occupied territories; due to the heavy influence of a knee-jerk ‘defend Israel no-matter what’ lobby.

At minimum five to six times as many Palestinians as Israelis have been killed in the simmering conflict since 2000. According to Iraq War Body Count and iCasualties.org, more than 15 times the number of civilians have died in Iraq, than 9/11 victims and coalition soldier combined.  I find this a profoundly disturbing question for development and democracy. While majorities in the U.S. and Israel still exercise a wide range of rights, their international practice (not rhetoric) is often undemocratic.  In a world where the dominant regional democracies in the Americas and the Middle East are the most heavily armed, most aggressive, and dominant players in international intelligence, detention and assassination – what does this mean for democracy? 

This raises the question of how democracy, conflict and development ought to be related in international fora. Development funding, sometimes in the form of military support and arms sales, is used to express political support to allies of the United States, and occasionally to undermine governments with which the United States does not agree.  Israeli receives the highest level of aid per capita from the United State of any nation - $3 billion on average (2008 figures); Egypt receives billions annually as well.  In other words, aid has been and is used to fuel conflict and political agendas - sometimes undercover, sometimes in the name of building democracy.  I believe that, with the exception of direct service providers in some circumstances, avoiding addressing the politics of international development is not an effective way of pursuing development.  Many seeking expedient solutions to severe suffering avoid the difficult political choices and base-building that participation in development politics necessitates. I would argue that this approach is short sighted and damaging.

Gaza is an extreme example because the politics of the situation makes discussion of humanitarian aid to the territory, at least for most pro-Israel US government officials and many media outlets, taboo. As we have seen with the nebulous and vague U.S. ‘War on Terror,” at a certain point politics trumps all basic rights and eliminates the development discussion entirely.  This is not to argue that we must “do the hardest thing first” always, this is no more practical than doing the easiest thing first. I am arguing that we should start from the hard problems, be they gender inequality and oppression, or ghettoization and bombing of civilians. Focusing on the power dynamics at the root of problems, can help us find strategies to unravel them bit by bit. I feel we should keep the heart of the problem at the heart of the work we do. In other words, yes, moldy clothes should be brought to Gaza. Yes, they are better than nothing. But, don’t forget about the blockade.

The Dominican Republic's role in Haitian Crisis.

The Donors Plan to Put Up $3.8 Billion For Haiti Rebuilding article from the NY Times, shows the important role the President of the Dominican Republic, Leonel Fernandez, and the country itself is playing in the current rebuilding and assistance efforts. Considering the fact that the last Dominican Constitution (approved in December 2009) denies Dominican nationality to individuals borne of Haitian decent in Dominican territory, it is very contrasting seeing how the earthquake has moved the Dominican society and government into acction. I hope that these efforts along with the efforts of the private and non profit sectors in the DR mark the begging of a new age of compassion and understanding from the two neighboring countries. 

Lant Pritchett- The Best and the Worst of Aid

At the "Best and the Worst of Aid" hosted by NYU's Development Research Institute, I had the pleasure of hearing Lant Pritchett's eloquent, totally entertaining account of how the worst of aid is like plieés and the best of aid is like exquisite modern dance and how as a movement we are at risk of becoming the 6th Rocky movie or like flies that look like bees (isomorphic imagery). Watching him do plieés behind a podium was the highlight of the conference and I was immediately hooked. His colorful, winding roundup of the aid industry was not only...unusual...it was right on. 

He said that the worst of aid, or all the attempts at development was just a body of knowledge, or the apparatus, that would allow a few moments of truly authentic innovation to rise to the top and change the world. Muhammad Yunus did this, certain well placed economic policies did this, Oral Rehydration Therapy did this- and there will be more. He cautioned the audience against harmful policies in our own countries, namely agricultural subsidies, and the risks of inauthentic replication (the Rocky phenomenon) where aid agencies recreate themselves in unnecessary forums and only stay as long as our own egos are satisfied. His cautions are welcome and his optimism for the ability of the aid apparatus to sometimes support innovation was lovely. Thank you Lant. 

On “Development” and the Nonprofit “Developers”

Why does a person from the US one day decide to pack-up, travel to Africa and join a development NGO? 

Between utilitarianism and egoism -  as ethical theories, not philosophies - I am convinced of the latter. I believe that any action, no matter how altruistic it may appear, is ultimately motivated by some form of personal interest.

For the sake of this discussion, I will nonetheless make the more common assumption that altruistic motives do exist. Going back to the question I pose, it then seems to me that a foreign NGO worker must be motivated by one fundamental belief: life where he or she is heading to is worse than life where he or she is coming from. This holds regardless of how one chooses to decompose the concept of development. At a very basic level, offering unsolicited help on the other side of the globe must stem from a simple differential assessment – life here vs. life there – and an ensuing general sense of pity.

To me, there is an annoying level of absurdity in this. During my childhood in wartime Lebanon, water and electricity were scarce; food was occasionally rationed; the education system was dysfunctional; and my playgrounds were quite often improvised inside bomb shelters. Since then, I have lived many years in Europe and North America. And, as difficult as it seems for some to believe, I would never trade the imperfect yet happy childhood that I had in Lebanon for one in the wealthier countries I have gotten to know since. I’m not saying that war is good. I’m just getting to one simple idea - deciding what constitutes a “good life” or a “bad life” is only legitimate when it is a personal exercise; any assumption made onto the other is highly contentious.

To substantiate this claim, I will attempt a second and less personal approach. Consider the suicide rate indicator. If anything, this indicator must say something about how conducive an environment is to desperation. To many, this is at least as important as a growing economy or an efficient infrastructure. Well, if suicide rate were the basis of development, then looking at a world map of national suicide rates (click here), it is Mexicans who should be volunteering in the US, and not the opposite. US volunteers, in turn, should rush to the rescue of the depressive French. 

If well-being is so complex and ultimately immeasurable, as I argue, then why speak of “development”? I am surprised that the literature on the nature of development seldom questions the relevance of the concept. Most authors will note the shortcomings of its existing normative definitions, but just go on proposing fixings. As if “development” were an indigenous concept that we ought to understand, when in reality we created it. I am inclined to see in the endurance of the concept of “development” the persisting influence of earlier times when the notion of civilization was strongly anchored.

With all this said, I remain sensitive to the claim that the concept of “development” serves a practical purpose. But I find its sociological implications too grave. Actions based on pity perpetuate anachronistic colonial schemes. And so, as a final thought, I would like to suggest that the solution to this problem might be found in strengthening the role of the private sector in what we commonly designate as “international development”. In the private sector products are in principle based on the demands of the receivers, not on the emotionally-based and oft-flawed speculations of the providers.