| September/October 2006
Development Assistance & Foreign Aid |
Health, HIV/AIDS & Infectious Diseases
H1 - World Development Report 2007: Development and the
Next Generation
The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development
/ The World Bank, Web-posted September 16, 2006, various pagings
According to the World Bank, here are now more than
1.3 billion young people in the developing world -- the largest
number ever in history. The report says the sheer number of young
people can stretch the capacity of governments to deliver services
and jobs, a situation that poses serious risks for their countries
and the world at large. According to the report, specific areas
for attention include:
* Many, if not most, young people in the developing world, lack
adequate education.
* Nearly half of all unemployment in the world today is among
young people.
* Unemployment rates for youth are two to three times those of
adults.
* 500,000 young people under the age of 18 are recruited by military
and paramilitary military groups.
* Some 300,000 young people under the age of 18 have been involved
in armed conflict in more than 30 countries worldwide.
* 13 million adolescent girls give birth each year.
* Young people account for nearly half of all new HIV infections.
The authors urge governments to invest capital in these young
people, not only to preclude serious social tensions, but also
because they represent a large population of potential new workers
to help bring about positive transformations in nations' economic
well-being. Fulltext
H2 - Building on Success:The Next Challenges
for Microfinance
Wendt, Henry; Eichfeld, Robert
AEI, Development Policy Outlook #4, September 19, 2006, online
edition, 7p
The growing microfinance sector has had astonishing success
in harnessing capital markets to alleviate global poverty where
it exists. Expanding microfinance and integrating it with the
global banking system has the potential to open doors of economic
opportunity for hundreds of millions and unite communities in
civil society networks. Henry Wendt,
a trustee emeritus at AEI and former trustee of the Trilateral
Commission, spent nearly four decades in the pharmaceutical industry.
Robert Eichfeld’s career in international banking with Citibank
spanned thirty-three years. He is a board member of Grameen Foundation.
Fulltext
H3 - Global Poverty, Weak States, and
Insecurity
Rice, Susan E.
The Brookings Institution, August 2006, online edition, 15p
"The world’s weakest states are poor states that lack the
capacity to fulfill essential government functions, chiefly: 1)
to secure their population from violent conflict; 2) to competently
meet the basic human needs of their population (i.e. food, health,
education), and; 3) to govern legitimately with the acceptance
of a majority of their population. The Brookings-CGD project defines
weak states as poor states that suffer from significant “gaps”
in security, performance and legitimacy. We classify states as
“weak” if they meet the “low income” standard and exhibit “gaps”
in at least two of the three fundamental government functions.
This paper identifies fifty-two weak states in the world, and
expounds on the multifaceted reasons this weakness poses a global
security challenge. These states are high-risk zones that in a
rapidly globalizing world may eventually, often indirectly, pose
significant risks to far-away countries. Transnational “spillover”
from these states includes conflict, terrorism, disease, and environmental
degradation. Efforts to illuminate the complex relationship between
poverty and insecurity may be unwelcome to those who want assurance
that global poverty and U.S. national security are unrelated.
However, we ignore or obscure the implications of global poverty
for global security at our peril." Susan E. Rice is a
Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy Studies, Global Economy & Development.
Fulltext
H4 - The Millennium Challenge Account (MCA): A Different
Approach to Foreign Assistance
Vital Speeches of the Day, August 2006, v72,#20/21, pp586-589
"The author arugues that the MCA is an approach
to foreign assistance that isn't just new -- it is bold. The MCA
is a fresh approach that aims to improve aid effectiveness by
requiring recipients to make difficult policy reforms that are
necessary for successful development, he explains. He discusses
some of the innovative aspects of the MCA -- funding is performance-based;
MCA provides incentives to change policies for the better; countries
who qualify can lose funding if their scores fall; recipient countries
control MCA development efforts, from deciding which projects
to pursue to implementation. He also talks about some of the challenges
MCA has faced, noting that results have been slow in coming, and
the negative perceptions many Americans have about foreign aid
and its effectiveness; the MCA has not yet received full congressional
funding. Hackett remains optimistic about MCA's potential to make
a real difference, but also notes that while it is an innovative
and important advancement in foreign aid, it will never be a panacea."
Ken Hackett is President of Catholic Relief Services and member
of the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) Board of Directors.
Fulltext
H5 - Demystifying Doha
Clapp, Jennifer
Harvard International Review, October 2006, web exclusive
"Both the United States and the European Union have
been reluctant to agree to provisions that developing countries
would like to see in an agricultural trade deal. But if the Doha
Round is to be revived and still be considered a “Development
Round,” it must include measures to rectify the current agricultural
trade imbalances that have had especially harmful effects on developing
countries." In this article the author argues that any new
agricultural trade agreement should allow developing countries
to develop their own agricultural export sectors, to protect the
livelihoods of their small scale and subsistence farmers, and
to provide food security for their populations. Jennifer
Clapp is a CIGI Chair in International Governance
and Associate Professor, Environment and Resource Studies, at
the University of Waterloo. Fulltext
H6 - Assessing the Impact of Pandemic Flu
A Brookings Economic Studies and Global Economy & Development Briefing, October 19, 2006, online edition, 51p
Governments worldwide are spending millions of dollars to plan emergency responses for an influenza pandemic that could kill millions of people and cripple the global economy. Brookings scholars addressed the potential impact of an outbreak and the critical factors for an effective response. Fulltext
|
