Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
Everything you could ever need to know about the MDG. What are the key aid issues facing us? What are the best methods to ensure sustainable development? Are we making progress?
Annual report on sources and scale of private giving to developing world. Stated aim is to show that “the full scale of a country’s generosity is measured not just by government aid but by private giving as well”
Worst place in the world to get pregnant Sierra Leone has world’s worst child and maternal mortality rates. Donor nations discourage contraception, insist on fees for medical services
Millennium Development Goal of halving world poverty by 2015 is well within reach. But little thanks to the UN. Most of the improvement comes from growth in one country, China
Thoughtful (if belated) review of Dambisa Moyo's "Dead Aid". Good government produces growth, in which case aid may help. Coupled with bad government, aid can harm
Intelligent, informative review-essay about why development aid to Africa has been ineffective, even counter-productive. Pegged to Peter Gill's book, "Famine and Foreigners: Ethiopia Since Live Aid"
World's poorest countries will never recover unless international community provides basic public goods beyond typical aid agenda. Above all, security
US assistance for the world's poorest countries is utterly inadequate. Without dramatic reform, the US will increasingly be tarred as a country ready to invest in war, and perhaps in emergency relief, but not in peaceful development
Useful account of competing narratives taking shape around UN millennium development goals. (i) Answer is more money. (ii) Answer is more accountability. (iii) Problem is inequality, not absolute poverty
Aid agencies subsidise dictators, just as in cold war. Why? "War on terror” legitimates tyrants in central Asia, east Africa. Aid agencies exist to give aid: they'll find a justification to work with almost anyone
Fashionable notion of “sustainable development” hijacked by interest groups and the UN. Instead of helping the poor, they focus on producing meaningless checklists and incoherent policies. [nb this piece is behind a pay wall]
Development is something largely determined by poor countries themselves, and outsiders can play only a limited role. Deepest challenge for countries in the poorest parts of the world, especially Africa, is rapacious leaders
Economist argues for "charter cities" to accelerate development—enclaves within poor countries, governed by rich countries, as Hong Kong was under Britain
Instead of putting aid money into capital-intensive development projects, why not just give cash straight to poor people? They know best what they need
Obama is right to say that Africa's persistent poverty has been largely self-inflicted, and that US aid will be conditional upon decent governance. No point giving money to crooks
"Dead Aid" author says foreign-aid industry has not helped, may have retarded growth in Africa. Working on a new book about standard models of economic development
Academic paper. Many important MDGs suffer from lack of good data, including baseline data. We cannot hope to know if the desired trend of improvement is actually occurring
Pessimistic. “Delivery of official development assistance is slowing down. The Gleneagles commitments to doubling aid to Africa by 2010 will not be met. Doha Round stalled"
Moving the millennium development goalposts Rich nations have been defining-down the MDG pledges they made in 1990. But they’re nowhere near meeting even their reduced goals. Result: millions of needless deaths
.jpg)
The leading international economic adviser of his generation and special adviser to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon says we can reduce poverty by devoting just a modest fraction of our vast wealth to the effort
The actress and humanitarian activist says that in any genocide 95 per cent of us are capable of being led or enticed to a tipping point where we can pick up a machete and hack to death strangers and friends alike
The Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist selects his five books on Saving The World. Argues, amongst other points, that the cost of peacekeeping is cheap compared to the average cost of a war
Co-founder of Forum For The Future and one of the leading experts on climate change hammers home the need to encourage sustainable development technologies across the globe
The Wall St Journal reporter and member of The Chicago Council For Global Affairs talks on Hunger. Selects illuminating further reading on the subject including a technical analysis of micro-lending as well as the Bible
The UN veteran chooses books on the fate of children in the developing world and the Millennium Goals and says giving money to the poor works
The ODI research fellow discusses gender equality in the developing world and says that the authority to insist on safe sex and access to medical care is vital to establishing the most basic forms of gender equality
The former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and President of Ireland discusses Climate Change. Argues that countries whose economies benefit from emmissions have moral duty to aid the poor and vulnerable
The Bangladeshi campaigner for lifting women out of poverty says village life has been wrongly idealised. It is not a harmonious whole, with the elders looking after the interests of all the villagers alike
