| August 2006
Development Assistance & Foreign Aid | Health, HIV/AIDS & Infectious Diseases | Humanitarian Issues |
H1 - A Primer on Foreign Aid
Radelet, Steven
Center for Global Development, working paper, 07/24/2006, online edition, 24p
"Controversies about aid effectiveness go back decades. Some experts charge that aid has enlarged government bureaucracies, perpetuated bad governments, enriched the elite in poor countries, or just been wasted. Others argue that although aid has sometimes failed, it has supported poverty reduction and growth in some countries and prevented worse performance in others. This new working paper Steve Radelet examines aid magnitudes and who gives and receives aid. It discusses the multiple motivations and objectives of aid, some of which conflict with each other. It then explores the empirical evidence on the relationship between aid and growth, which is divided between research that finds no relationship and research that finds a positive relationship (at least under certain circumstances). It also examines some of the key challenges in making aid more effective, including the principal-agent problem and the related issue of conditionality, and concludes by examining some of the main proposals for improving aid effectiveness." Steven Radelet is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development. Fulltext
H2 - The Least Developed Countries: The Tyranny of a Definition
Rajapatirana, Sarath
AEI, Development Policy Outlook, #3, 2006, July 14, 2006, online edition, 9p
“Every three years, the Committee for Development Policy (CDP) of the United Nations designates a group of least developed countries (LDCs), which today form a group of fifty states. In theory these countries are the poorest of the poor. As such, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development ( UNCTAD), the lead agency charged by the UN to work with the LDCs, has sought to secure various forms of special treatment for them, in particular preferential market access to developed countries. Unfortunately, this experiment has not been successful.” This report outlines the reasons why the LDC programs have not been successful and offers new approaches to the problems of LDC. Sarath Rajapatitirana, a visiting scholar at AEI, explains why this approach has failed. Fulltext
H3 - AIDS in Africa
Cook, Nicholas
CRS Report, July 27 th, 2006, online edition, 24p
“Sub-Saharan Africa (“ Africa” hereafter) has been more severely affected by AIDS than any other part of the world. In 2005, the United Nations reports, there were in the range of 24.5 million HIV-positive persons in the region, which has just over 11% of the world’s population but about 64% of the worldwide total of infected persons. The overall adult rate of infection in Africa in late 2005 was 6.1%, compared with 1% worldwide. Nine southern African countries have infection rates above 10%. Ten African countries with the largest infected populations account for over 50% of infected adults worldwide. By the end of 2005, an estimated 27.1 million or more Africans had died of AIDS since 1982, including 2 million in 2005. AIDS has surpassed malaria as the leading cause of death in Africa, and it kills many times more Africans than war. In Africa, about 59% of infected adults are women. “Nicolas Cookis Specialist in Foreign Affairs Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division with the Congressional Research Service. Fulltext
H4 - Reading , Writing, and Refreshments: Are School Finances Contributing to Children’s Obesity?
Anderson, Patricia M.; Butcher, Kristin F.
Journal of Human Resources, August 2006, online edition, 28p
“Over the last two decades the proportion of adolescents in the United States who are obese has nearly tripled, and schools, citing financial pressures, have given students greater access to “junk” foods, using the proceeds to fund school programs. This article examines whether schools under financial pressure tend to adopt potentially unhealthful food policies and whether students’ Body Mass Index (BMI) is higher where they are more likely to be exposed to these food policies. We find that a 10 percentage point increase in potential exposure to junk food in schools leads to about a 1 percent increase in students’ BMI.” Patricia Anderson is Professor of economics at Dartmouth College a researcher for the National Bureau f Economic Research as well as coeditor of the JHR. Kristin Butcher is a researcher at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. Fulltext
H5 - Human Trafficking and the Impact on National Security for the United States
Keefer, Sandra L.
US Army War College, August 2006, online edition, 20p
“Human trafficking, like prostitution, has been around for many years. It is a fact that more money than one can imagine has been made selling humans to the highest bidder. It is also a fact that money made from human trafficking finds its way into the hands of drug lords. Drug lords than turn around and give the money to support terrorist activities. This could not have been made more evident to the United States than on September 11, 2001. What can the United States’ with the help of the United Nations do about countries actively involved in human trafficking?” Sandra L. Keefer is Colonel with the United States Army. Fulltext
H6 - Whoops, I Committed Genocide! The Anomaly of Constructive Liability for Serious International Crimes
Nersessian, David L.
Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, Summer 2006, v30, #2, pp81-106
In this article, the author tackles one of the most serious challenges in international law: How to establish culpability of senior leaders in war crimes such as genocide. While traditional cases of criminal responsibility require proof that the perpetrator acted with a specific intent, the concept of “constructive liability” as utilized in international law, allows for conviction of individuals in leadership positions even if they may not have been directly involved in the planning or execution of a criminal act. However, argues the author, constructive liability as at best too broad a concept to be legally useful; at worst, it may result in assigning an unfair measure of blame to negligent leaders unaware of unlawful acts perpetrated by members of their regime. The author recommends a new a new approach on how to determine the guilt of government leaders in order to better isolate those with clear intent to allow genocide to proceed on their watch. David L. Nersessian is a Supreme Court legal fellow. Order Article
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