| Updated January 27, 2010
Development Assistance & Foreign Aid | Health & Infectious Diseases | Humanitarian Assistance | 2010 Earthquake in Haiti
The Millennium Development Goals Report 2009
United Nations, December 2009, online edition, 60p
"Nine years ago, world leaders set far-sighted goals to free a major portion of humanity from the shackles of extreme poverty, hunger, illiteracy and disease. They established targets for achieving gender equality and the empowerment of women, environmental sustainability and a global partnership for development. In short, they adopted a blueprint for a better world – and pledged to spare no effort in fulfilling that vision. We have made important progress in this effort, and have many successes on which to build. But we have been moving too slowly to meet our goals. And today, we face a global economic crisis whose full repercussions have yet to be felt."
This annual report presents the most comprehensive global assessment of progress to date, based on data provided by a large number of international organizations within and outside the United Nations system. The report is coordinated and published by the Statistics Division of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. Fulltext H1/01-10
What Aid Can Do?
Skarbek, David B.; Leeson, Peter T.
Cato Journal, Fall 2009, v29, #3, pp391-398
"Under normal conditions, devoting more resources to X's production produces more X. This follows from the nature of the physical world, which positively relates quantities of outputs to quantities of inputs used in their production. In principles of economics classes, it is common to highlight that this relationship has nothing to do with the economic problem. Solving the economic problem determines whether a country's economy develops. It is strange, then, that professional economists have had trouble distinguishing the positive relationship between inputs and outputs from solving the economic problem when it comes to evaluating foreign aid. The purpose of this article is to make this distinction, and in doing so to clarify what aid can and cannot do. Economic progress requires economic efficiency: resource allocations that maximize resources' value to society. Economic efficiency improves when economic actors move resources from less-valued uses to more-valued ones."
David B. Skarbek is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Economics at George Mason University. Peter T. Leeson is BB&T professor for the Study of Capitalism at the Mercatus Center, George Mason University. Fulltext H2/01-10
Peter Bauer and the Failure of Foreign Aid
Shleifer, Andrei
Cato Journal, Fall 2009, v29, #3, pp379-391
"Peter Bauer was one of the greatest development economists in history. He was an advocate of property rights protection and free trade before these ideas became commonplace. Bauer's writings are remarkable for their deep humanity and commitment to the welfare of the people in the developing world, but without the fake sanctimony that characterizes much of the modern rhetoric. Bauer is perhaps best known as a persistent and articulate critic of foreign aid. The failure of foreign aid is all the more remarkable once people remember that, in the last quarter century, the world has experienced an enormous spurt of economic growth and social development. As this piece is being written, foreign aid is expanding rapidly. The foreign aid establishment has won the battle for the hearts, minds, and wallets of Western taxpayers. Peter Bauer's prescient warnings and 50 years of evidence notwithstanding, the West is about to spend another trillion dollars on foreign aid in the next couple of decades."
Andrei Shleifer is a Russian American economist. In 1999, Andrei Shleifer was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal, awarded every two years to the most promising US economist under 40. Fulltext H3/01-10
Changing Aid Regimes? U.S. Foreign Aid from the Cold War to the War on Terror
Flecka, Robert K.; Kilby, Christopher
Journal of Development Economics, March 2010, v91, #2, pp185-197
"This paper explores how U.S. bilateral economic aid has changed over time, focusing on how the recent era–in which the War on Terror has played a prominent role in the Bush administration's aid policy–differs from previous eras. In particular, has the renewed geopolitical role of aid coincided with a reduction of aid to the poorest countries or less weight on need in U.S. aid allocation decisions? The paper starts with an analysis of annual U.S. aid budgets from 1955 to 2006. Controlling for domestic political and economic conditions, we find that the War on Terror's effect on the aid budget is significantly larger than is immediately apparent. To explore how the emphasis on need may have changed over time, we use country-level panel data on aid allocations to 119 countries across the same time period. This shows that U.S. aid flows–for the poorest as well as other developing countries–increased with the War on Terror. However, after rising for 35 years, the emphasis placed on need has been falling steadily for core aid recipients during the War on Terror."
Robert K. Flecka teaches at the Department of Agricultural Economics and Economics, Montana State University. Christopher Kilby teaches at the Department of Economics, Villanova School of Business, Villanova University, Villanova, PA. Order article H4/01-10
The State of Food Insecurity in the World: Economic Crises – Impacts and Lessons Learned
World Food Program, Food and Agriculture Orgabization of the United Nations, October 12, 2009, online edition, 61p (PDF)
"The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2009 is FAO’s tenth progress report on world hunger since the 1996 World Food Summit (WFS). This report highlights the fact that, even before the food crisis and the economic crisis, the number of hungry people had been increasing slowly but steadily. With the onset of these crises, however, the number of hungry people in the world increased sharply." Fulltext H5/01-10
The Evolving HIV/AIDS Response And The Urgent Tasks Ahead
Bertozzi, Stefano M.; Martz, Tyler E.; Piot, Peter
Health Affairs, November/December 2009, v28, #6, pp1578-1592
"AIDS continues to outpace the science, financing, prevention, and treatment efforts of the past quarter-century. There have been different epochs along the evolutionary timeline of the global AIDS response, from the discovery of HIV to the threat posed by the current economic crisis. This timeline serves as a reference to how we have arrived where we are today, in the hope that understanding our past will help us set the course for a more efficient and effective future response."
Stefano Bertoni was, at the time of this writing, director of the Center for Evaluation Research and Surveys, National Institute of Public Health, in Cuernavaca, Mexico. He is now HIV director at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle, Washington. Tyler Martz is a research assistant at the Center for Evaluation Research and Surveys. Peter Piot is director of the Institute for Global Health, Imperial College London. Fulltext H6/01-10
Critical Choices In Financing The Response To The Global HIV/AIDS Pandemic
Hecht, Robert; Bollinger, Lori; Stover, John; McGreevey, William et al.
Health Affairs, November/December 2009, v28, #6, pp1591-1606
"The global response to the AIDS pandemic aims for universal access to treatment and for pursuing every possible avenue to prevention. Skeptics, doubting that the huge increases in current funding levels needed for universal treatment will ever happen, would scale back antiretroviral treatment in favor of more cost-effective preventive interventions. Economics, politics, and science figure in this debate. But there is also a question of ethical principle: Is there a moral imperative to emphasize treatment, even if emphasizing prevention would save more lives? The authors examine moral arguments that address this question, and come down on the side of saving the most lives via prevention."
Robert Hecht is a managing director of the Results for Development Institute in Washington, D.C. Lori Bollinger is vice president of the Futures Institute in Glastonbury, Connecticut. John Stover is president and founder of the Futures Institute. William McGreevey is an associate professor in the Department of International Health at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. Fulltext H7/01-10
Investing To Meet The Scientific Challenges Of HIV/AIDS
Fauci, Anthony S.; Folkers, Gregory K.
Health Affairs, November/December 2009, v28, #6, pp1629-1632
"Despite extraordinary scientific advances over more than twenty-five years, the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) continues to exact an enormous toll worldwide. Given the limitations of current HIV treatment and prevention interventions and the financial and logistical impediments to delivering them, new and potentially transforming interventions are needed if the HIV/AIDS pandemic is to be significantly slowed. Serious scientific challenges remain in the realm of developing potentially curative therapies and a safe and effective HIV vaccine, and in developing, assessing, and validating other new prevention modalities. Substantial funding of the research enterprise must be maintained."
Anthony Fauci is director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. Gregory Folkers is health scientist and chief of staff in the Immediate Office of the Director, MAID. Fulltext H8/01-10
Turning Neglected Tropical Diseases Into Forgotten Maladies
Musgrove, Philip; Hotez, Peter J.
Health Affairs, November/December 2009, v28, #6, pp1691-1707
"Because they afflict mostly poor people in poor countries, killing relatively few compared to the many who suffer from severe chronic disabilities, a large cluster of infections deserve the label of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). That is changing as these diseases' enormous health, educational, and economic toll is better understood, including how they interact with HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other illnesses. Several NTDs could be controlled or even eliminated within a decade, using integrated, highly cost-effective mass drug administration programs together with nondrug interventions. Research is needed to provide additional means of control for these conditions and make elimination feasible for still others."
Philip Musgrove is a deputy editor of Health Affairs. Peter Hotez is Distinguished Research Professor and chair of the Department of Microbiology at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. He is also president of the Sabin Vaccine Institute in Washington. Fulltext H9/01-10
Health Care Problems Heat Up: Climate Change and the Public's Health
Levi, Jeffrey et al.
Trust for America’s Health, October 26, 2009, online edition, 60p (PDF)
"This report finds that only five states have published a strategic climate change plan that includes a public health response. This includes planning for health challenges and emergencies expected to develop from natural disasters, pollution, and infectious diseases as temperatures and sea levels rise. The report examines U.S. planning for changing health threats posed by climate change, such as heat-related sickness, respiratory infections, natural disasters, changes to the food supply, and infectious diseases carried by insects."
Jeffrey Levi is the executive director of Trust for America’s Health and associate professor in the Department of Health Policy, The George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services. Fulltext H10/01-10
Secondhand Smoke Exposure and Cardiovascular Effects: Making Sense of the Evidence
Institute of Medicine, Report Brief, October 15, 2009, 4p
"Smoking bans are effective at reducing the risk of heart attacks and heart disease associated with exposure to secondhand smoke, says a new report from the Institute of Medicine. The report also confirms there is sufficient evidence that breathing secondhand smoke boosts nonsmokers’ risk for heart problems, adding that indirect evidence indicating that even relatively brief exposures could lead to a heart attack is compelling." Fulltext H11/01-10
Rescuing Children
Kiener, Robert
CQ Researcher, October 2009, v3, #10, pp257-284
"The numbers are grim: Every day more than 25,000 children under age 5 — the equivalent of 125 jetliners full of youngsters — die from hunger, poverty or easily preventable illnesses, such as diarrhea and malaria. Millions of others are abandoned, trafficked into prostitution, forced into armed conflict or used as child laborers -- mostly in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe. While governments and nongovernmental organizations struggle to help, aid cutbacks due to the world economic crisis could trigger 200,000–400,000 additional child deaths each year. Meanwhile, experts and policy makers disagree over how best to combat AIDS among children, and whether more foreign aid would do more harm than good. Others question whether the United States should ratify the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. The United States is the only nation besides Somalia that hasn't adopted the treaty."
Robert Kiener is an award-winning writer whose work has appeared in the London Sunday Times, The Christian Science Monitor, The Washington Post, Reader’s Digest, Time Life Books, Asia Inc., and other publications. Order article H12/01-10
2010 Earthquake in Haiti
U.S. Government’s Haiti Earthquake Response
U.S. Department Of State, January 2010"
We are trying to meet the humanitarian needs in this period, while at the same time working with the Haitian Government, the UN, and other countries and organizations to plan for the longer term."
--Secretary Clinton, Jan. 26, 2010
Haiti's Recovery: What Comes Next?
Mendelson Forman, Johanna
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), January 25, 2010, online edition, 30p
“The United Nations estimates that with almost a third of Haiti’s population of 10 million affected by the quake, the humanitarian dimensions of this disaster will require at least six months to a year of emergency food and shelter assistance, and more than a decade to rebuild a nation that has at best been a fragile state. So what will it take to rebuild Haiti?”
Johanna Mendelson Forman is a senior associate with Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.
Mission to Haiti
Donnelly, Thomas
The Weekly Standard, February 1, 2010, online edition
“The U.S. military effort alone will soon have 33,000 troops ashore or in direct support of the relief operations. Private donations and international pledges of aid are in the billions. The question now is not about the level of effort, but how it can be organized and sustained.”
Thomas Donnelly is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
Beyond Emergency Relief for Haiti: The Challenge of Effective Development Assistance
Kaufmann, Daniel
Brookings Institution, January 19, 2009, online edition
“The devastation, death toll and suffering in Haiti pain us all. With the exception of the tsunami in Asia, the extent of this tragedy is unprecedented for a country not at war. With current technology the scope of human and physical destruction has been immediately transmitted and broadcast globally. Such technology has also facilitated the outpouring of private financial contributions to charity (like the ease by which one can contribute to the Red Cross by texting the number 90999 and typing “Haiti”).”
Daniel Kaufmann is a senior fellow in Brookings’ Global Economy and Development program.
Earthquake Propensity and the Politics of Mortality Prevention
Keefer, Philip et al.
The World Bank, January 19, 2010, online edition, 38p
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Governments can significantly reduce earthquake mortality by implementing and enforcing quake-proof construction regulation. The authors examine why many governments do not. Contrary to intuition, controlling for the strength and location of actual earthquakes, mortality is lower in countries with higher earthquake propensity, where the payoffs to mortality prevention are higher. Importantly, however, the government response to earthquake propensity depends on country income and the political incentives of governments to provide public goods to citizens." Philip Keefer is a Lead Research Economist in the Development Research Group of the World Bank.
Haiti Earthquake: Crisis and Response
Taft-Morales, Maureen; Magesson, Rhoda
Congressional Research Service (CRS) Report, Library of Congress, January 15, 2010, online edition
“The largest earthquake ever recorded in Haiti devastated parts of the country, including the capital, on January 12, 2010. The quake, centered about 15 miles southwest of Port-au-Prince, had a magnitude of 7.0. A series of strong aftershocks followed. ” The focus of this report is on the immediate crisis in Haiti as a result of the earthquake and the U.S. and international response to date.
Maureen Taft-Morales is a specialist in Latin American Affairs and Rhoda Margesson is a specialist in International Humanitarian Policy at CRS. Fulltext articles and reports H13/01-10
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