Mooning the world

"FITTING easily into the most conservative wing of the Bush administration, Josette Sheeran was from the outset an unlikely candidate to run the World Food Program, the world’s largest humanitarian aid organization, which has frequently been at odds with Washington.

But what made her more unusual was her long tenure as a major figure in the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church — she left it in the late 1990s — a conservative church that many Americans distrust.

She was appointed the World Food Program’s executive director in November, having been nominated and aggressively promoted by the Bush administration over vociferous objections from the European Union."

The gates of hell

"The Gates Foundation [1], the world’s largest, richest philanthropic organisation founded by Bill and Melinda Gates in 2000, and doubled in size by Warren Bufflett in 2006, is “dedicated to bringing innovations in health and learning to the global community” [2] in order to enhance healthcare and reduce extreme poverty. It is indeed famous for giving hundreds of millions to good causes.

But an investigative report published in the LA Times at the beginning of 2007 found that the Gates Foundation “reaps vast financial gains every year from investments that contravene its good works” [3]. These investments go to companies responsible for causing the problems the Foundation tries to solve."

I blogged on this topic this earlier, but a reminder is always useful, especially when we are trying to raise funds from the Gates foundation. This article is very fully referenced.

unkept promises

"Families participating in an American-financed irrigation project from 2002 to 2006 were promised payment in corn for clearing the land and digging canals. The Kenyan government objected to the importation of American corn because the country was awash in a bumper harvest that had caused corn prices to plunge.

The result: American officials, prohibited by law from buying the corn locally, could not deliver it. As the impoverished families waited in vain for sustenance from the American heartland, malnutrition among the youngest children worsened and five people died of hunger-related causes." (thanks Yasmine)

Strategic planning

"Last month, Roche Pharmaceuticals announced a global recall of its HIV/AIDS drug Viracept, after discovering that some batches had been contaminated with a carcinogen during a flawed manufacturing process at its Swiss plant.

Patients should immediately discontinue the drug and switch to other medicines, Roche said, noting that the recall affected "Europe and some other world regions."

In Europe the recall cause little stir, since the drug has mostly fallen out of use, replaced by newer, more expensive alternatives. But tens of thousands of people take Viracept worldwide, most of them poor people with AIDS in developing countries.

And in places, newer substitutes are not available to patients, either because they are not licensed or are substantially more expensive, said people with HIV and international health experts. In Panama, for example, a substitute drug, Kaletra, costs ten times as much as Viracept.This has left patients with the painful choice of discontinuing a lifesaving medicine, or using a drug that might contain a dangerous contaminant.

Roche, which had revenues of 42 billion Swiss francs, or $35 billion, last year, said it would cover the "reasonable costs" of the recall, but so far, patients or HIV treatment programs have had to make up the difference in cost." (thanks yasmine)

Is it only me or does this sound like a plan to scare people away from cheap drugs and force them to buy the expensive stuff? Another conspiracy against the poor? Read the IHT article, apparently, Roche hasn't been very helpful in providing information that would help safeguard public health.

Land and nomadic people

"However, pastoralism has never been recognised by conventional thinking on development. There have been erroneous views that pastoralists should settle into modern farms; privatise and individualise land, keep fewer livestock etc.

But recent research on pastoralism by Roger Blench, Adrian Cullis, Charles Lane, Jeremy Swift and our own Prof. Mamhood Mamdani etc, have found out that this is a way of life, a scientific practice, a rational and efficient low-intensity stock rearing production system suited to the fragile environment that the pastoralists live in. It is therefore not by accident that pastoralists straddle the semi-arid areas in Africa, from Ankole to Karamoja, Turkana, Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea etc.

The mobility of pastoralists is not a backward practice, but a rational adaptive strategy. Mobility also prevents overgrazing and environmental degradation. Besides, there are grass species and salt licks that are scattered over space and time and can only be accessed through mobility. There are about seven million pastoralist communities in Uganda in 27 districts. .

Many governments have tried without success to change pastoralists. In Iran, from 1910-45, the government used gunships to bomb the Qashqa'I into settlement and even tried to change their language, culture and dressing by force. It failed.

In Kenya, in Kitengela sub-location near Nairobi, Maasai pastoralists in the 1980s were encouraged by a government programme to divide their communal lands into individual ownership. It did not work as the pastoralists whom I visited in 2005 have now fallen back to grazing their livestock communall disregarding their individual borders because of the fragile ecosystem that cannot sustain livestock in small land holdings.

Conversion of communal lands in grazing areas to individual ownership have not only benefited a few rich, but even those who have done so have either failed to sustain individual ranches, and if they have sustained them, it is at very high cost."

The corrupt telling the corrupted...

"The ratings of the United States and Italy on corruption have significantly worsened since 1998, and Chile, a middle-income developing country, now performs as well on this measure as the United States, according to the report. In fact, a dozen emerging economies, including Chile, Botswana, Uruguay, Costa Rica, Latvia and Lithuania, scored higher on the rule of law and controlling corruption than some industrialized countries, like Italy and Greece.

"It begins to challenge these long-held popular notions that the rich world has reached nirvana in governance," said Daniel Kaufmann, an author of the report who heads global programs at the World Bank Institute, the bank's knowledge-sharing and training arm.

After Paul Wolfowitz, then president of the World Bank, became mired in scandal this year over charges of favoritism, bank staff had to fight for the institution's own credibility in judging governance in the developing countries it serves.

Kaufmann said countries rightly asked the bank: "What right do you have of rating the world when you first have to rate yourselves? It has to start at home.""(thanks Yasmine)

Market is not the only way

"Last week's employment outlook from the west's leading economic thinktank, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), said that globalisation had become a "potentially important source of vulnerability for workers", and that the past 25 years had not only seen labour's share of national income decline but also the distribution of income become more unequal.

Does it have to be this way? Not according to the OECD. "It has been claimed by some that only countries which emphasise market-oriented policies (characterised by limited welfare benefits and light regulation) may enjoy both successful employment performance and strong labour productivity growth simultaneously. This claim is not supported by the evidence, however."

It added that "other successful employment performers (which combine strong work incentives with generous welfare protection and well-designed regulation) had, on average over the past decade, similar GDP per capita growth to that recorded in more market-reliant countries". Both the minimum wage and family-friendly employment policies were good for productivity."

Passion (turn left)

"Senior BBC figures have acknowledged that the corporation could suffer from "groupthink" which tended towards a liberal world view and had led to certain opinions being under-represented on subjects such as Europe and immigration.

Stephen Whittle, a former controller of editorial policy, pointed to a "lack of intellectual curiosity", while former political editor Andrew Marr said there was "an innate liberal agenda".
The report, entitled From Seesaw to Wagon Wheel to reflect the move from a left-right axis to a variety of uneven and contrasting views, also warned that impartiality should not equate to political correctness or "insipid" programme-making. "Impartiality is a coat of many colours, not of a uniform beige. It must always have space for strong and passionate opinion," it said."

Insipidity and lack of passion. This is a disease afflicting many NGOs and civil society groups, including some I am involved with. The reason is a need to please (Western) donors by trying to appear liberal, open-minded, non-confrontational, in short, "moderate". However it is also due to the fragmentation in political opinions that exist within the same group, which is often brought together by campaining around a single issue. Such groups rarely initiate ideological debates and as aresult, only tend to agree over operational issues needed to operate the campaigns. This may result in successful activities, but I dont see it contributing to change.

UNreliable

"Sadly, the UN family is better at making goals than meeting them. In 1977 in Mar del Plata, Argentina, the world urged itself to provide safe water and sanitation for all by the end of the 1980s. In 1990 the UN renewed the call, extending the deadline to the end of the century. In 1978 in what is now Almaty, Kazakhstan, governments promised “health for all” by 2000. In 1990 in Jomtien, Thailand, they called for universal primary schooling by 2000, a goal pushed back to 2015 ten years later. Kevin Watkins, the lead author of the UN's yearly Human Development Report, worries that the pledges the UN mints so readily may become a “debased currency”. In the summer of 2005, at the height of a campaign to “make poverty history”, only 3% of Britons thought the world would meet the 2015 goal of halving poverty, defined as the proportion of people who live on less than the equivalent of a dollar a day."

...and the author of the economist article goes on to tell us that all is well and uses Mali's example to show that if you're a good boy/girl, then money will pour in. This looks like it has been concocted from donor reports.

The Bank's recipe book

"But pundits and policy makers should reflect on the fact that many nations, notably in the Middle East and in Latin America, have failed to make this vital transition. “There are three main elements of the new strategy,” Dr. Matin noted. “The first is moving from diversified to more specialized structures. The second is moving from a strategy of accumulation to a strategy of innovation which means working smarter. Third, is the need to move from an emphasis on basic skills to advanced skills, thereby producing workers that can produce innovative products and processes.”"

Transparency Inc.

Al-Akhbar ran a small article today, but I cant find the link, on the recent aid package received by Lebanon from the US. Wheat (from the US surplus) for a value of $5millions was sent. The purpose is to sell the wheat on the local market, and use the money for agricultural development projects, managed by US NGOs and Lebanese partners. According to al akhbar, the requirements for the Lebanese NGOs is to have been operational for at least 5 years. There are no similar requirements for the US NGOs. The Ministry of Economy and Trade (Haddadamus) is to oversee the program. Al Akhbar also mentions the fine prints: That the decisions of who to grant the money to are the prerogative of the ministry and do not have to be justified.

Court Marshall

"A Muslim Marshall Plan will be as effective and as successful as our experts can make it. However, first we need the political will to make it a reality, and then we need to hire some new experts, because the current set is lazy, intellectually bankrupt, and complicit; these experts are focused on giving hand outs to dictators (and upon not seeing results agitating for invasion). That is the extent of their plan.

A Muslim Marshall Plan for the non oil-producing Muslim nations. That is the direction we must go."

Aid is good for poverty: it maintains it

"Foreign aid has sometimes been a very good thing. It has been rightly credited with solid contributions, such as in boosting post-war recovery in Western Europe, Taiwan and South Korea; rolling back somenasty tropical diseases; and (arguably) helping usher in majority rule in South Africa. Without foreign aid and the geostrategic interests driving it, such outcomes would probably not have been reached as rapidly or as smoothly."

But on the huge canvas of late-20th century history, it's hard to detect many more cases of sustained success, certainly on the poverty front. Indeed for over the past couple of decades, a major problem has been dogging foreign aid: where its leading institutions hold sway, poverty tends to get worse, not better...."

Aid appears to be no better at improving governance than tackling poverty. Indeed a number of studies indicate that the greater the intensity of aid, the worse the quality of public institutions and democratic politics. Aid revenues can undermine public politics just as oil revenues do. They enable elites to survive and prosper thanks to closed-door relationships with powerful institutions abroad; at the same time they help political classes avoid the headaches of managing political contracts of reciprocity with citizens at home." (Thanks Aiman)

How true. How very very true.

Lebanon rose

Roses, very special ones, are cultivated in the small village of Ksarnaba in the Bekaa. They are very fragrant and are used to make rose water, a cure-all extract used in making sweets and in folk medicine. Very high quality stuff, most of it is exported. Would it surprise you if I told you that the governments of Lebanon never gave any importance to this product? And that it provides for the livelihoods of hundreds of small farmers. Arabic article

The one thing the Lebanese agree on

When the foes agree on marginalizing social issues (arabic article)

Broken promises: good title for a new song, bob!

"So who are the villains? Well, it's a change from the usual story of US infamy because the core of this problem lies in Europe. It was European countries which made the biggest promises and which are proving so lamentably bad at implementing them. That's why what happens in Heiligendamm - the last G8 in Europe for several years - is so crucial. If Germany comes up with some money then it will pile the pressure on the worst offenders - France and, above all, Italy. Aid fell in the latter by 16% last year and unless something changes fast, it will deliver a paltry $1.4bn of the $9.5bn it promised by 2010. France's shortfall is running at 50% of its 2010 aid promise. Even the UK, which prides itself on its exemplary commitment to the developing world, is falling behind. If European countries got their act together, the Gleneagles agreement would be back on track."

Sir Bob and Mr. Bono fail to make poverty history. They still get invited to the Queen's birthday.