Hillary Clinton

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November 30, 2011 | 11:41 AM | By

What’s the haps in Busan

Flickr, juanjolostium

Busan street market

Busan is the second largest city in South Korea and one of the world’s biggest port cities.

If you knew that, maybe you already know about the big “high-level” meeting there this week featuring folks like Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and thousands of other top officials from around the world.

But you probably didn’t. I suspect many Americans likely haven’t even heard of Busan, or much about the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness conference going on there through tomorrow.

This may stem from the fact that many, if not most, Americans fail to understand why civilized, developed nations do foreign aid and overseas development — let alone why top world leaders, activists and others would attend such a wonky sounding meeting in some far-flung Asian city.

My job is to help you understand. It can be difficult, I agree, in part because the language of foreign aid and development is, frankly, awful. Deadly. Dull. Yes it is. But what we’re talking about here is not. This is often about life and death, peace versus war, hope versus despair. How we get a better world.

So I’ve been following the discussions at this meeting, remotely, and largely via The Guardian’s excellent coverage. As Sec. Clinton said in Busan, we do foreign aid and development because it is in our national interest to do so:

“Countries with growing economies are less likely to send refugees streaming across their borders or traffic in arms, drugs or people.”

That’s the standard U.S. political sound-bite anyway: Foreign aid makes us safer.

True enough, but isn’t this a sad state of affairs — that this is the case American politicians think they have to make?

Given the push right now by some in Congress to cut foreign aid (which is only about 1 percent of the budget), it often seems like our leaders shy away from saying this is about helping the world’s poorest. Why is that such a tough case for our government to make? It’s not a tough case for British conservatives or most European leaders to make. I wonder ….

This is the moral imperative angle, which I would say actually has a lot of support in the greater Seattle area where a substantial humanitarian aid and development community is big and getting bigger.

At the Busan meeting, Oxfam is among a number of organizations trying to shame governments and donors to keep their promises on foreign aid. Here’s a great video Oxfam made to make its case for how best to improve foreign aid:

But there are other non-shaming arguments to be made as well in favor of aid and development, such as the economic one. Here’s one such, initially confusing, case that was made by Tony Blair, writing in the Washington Post, on how improving foreign aid can help put an end to foreign aid:

Fifty years ago, the scene in Busan, South Korea, would have been a familiar image of international aid: sacks of grain stacked precariously on a crumbling dockside. The backdrop would have been a country emerging from war and dependent on outside assistance to meet the most basic needs. But when national and development leaders gather in Busan this week to discuss the future of aid, they will see a very different place: the fifth-busiest commercial port in the world, transporting advanced technologies around the globe. This, writ small, is the Korean miracle — the transformation of a country from aid-dependent to aid donor.

This isn’t rocket science. It should be obvious that it is in our economic interest to help other countries improve their lot. Yet, again, for some reason, even this remains a hard sell in the U.S. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Politics, development, foreign aid, Hillary Clinton, Oxfam
November 8, 2011 | 2:05 PM | By

Clinton calls for “AIDS-free generation,” signs Ellen DeGeneres up to help

In a speech at the National Institutes of Health today, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said it is time for the world to “usher in an AIDS-free generation,” calling it a new “policy priority” for the U.S.

Clinton said scientific advances have made it possible to strive for a generation in which “virtually no children” are born with HIV. She added that a “wide range of prevention tools” can help prevent the spread of the virus and that access to treatment can prevent people who are HIV-positive from passing the virus on to others.

Flickr, Gobierno de Guatemala

“Now, HIV may be with us well into the future. But the disease that it causes need not be. This is, I admit, an ambitious goal, and I recognize I am not the first person to envision it,” Clinton said, according to a transcript of today’s speech, which was described by the State Department as the first in a series of remarks from Obama administration officials leading up to World AIDS Day.

“Now we know beyond a doubt if we take a comprehensive view of our approach to the pandemic, treatment doesn’t take away from prevention. It adds to prevention,” Clinton said. “So let’s end the old debate over treatment versus prevention and embrace treatment as prevention,” she added. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Health, AIDS, AIDS-free generation, Hillary Clinton, Pepfar
October 5, 2011 | 10:41 AM | By

How should U.S. respond when Somali militants threaten famine relief?

UN

Somali mother cradles her malnourished, ill child

The Al-Shabaab Somali militants affiliated with Al Qaida have vowed to continue their attacks on civilians after taking responsibility for a suicide bombing in Mogadishu that has killed anywhere from 70 to 100 people.

The UN refugee agency says this is likely to make the already difficult famine relief effort harder. An estimated 750,000 are at risk of dying from starvation and malnutrition.

CNN reports ‘scores dead’ and that many of those killed were students:

A truck filled with explosives barreled into a government complex in the heart of Somalia’s restive capital Tuesday, a brazen strike killing dozens of people, including students registering for an education program.

As the Boston Globe reports, many had thought the capital city was safe after the militants fled in August: Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Basics, Politics, famine, Hillary Clinton, Somalia, United Nations
March 10, 2011 | 9:09 AM | By

If Congress de-funds NPR, let’s create NGR — National Global Radio

photobucket

Okay, these might not be the best of times to be at NPR — unless you are an adherent of the PT Barnum school of promotion that believes: “Any publicity is good publicity.”

Now, I have my own opinion of everything from the Juan Williams’ sacking to the secret videotaping of an unfortunately outspoken NPR fund-raiser (not a journalist, mind you … an important distinction), to Vivian Schiller’s forced resignation as CEO in the probably vain hope it will reduce the political heat on NPR right now.

But given everything that’s going on, I probably shouldn’t offer my opinion. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Al Jazeera, CNN, Hillary Clinton, journalism, media, NPR
February 10, 2011 | 9:30 AM | By

The Guardian on mixing up defense and development

The Guardian examines the uneasy, risky, issues involved when we too closely try to combine foreign aid with foreign policy in the context of what’s happening now in Egypt.

Over the last two weeks, images emerged from Egypt revealing foreign aid as a crucial protagonist in the ongoing protests…. What the development economist William Easterly had called “the dirty secret” of the international aid system – the nonchalance of donors in the face of government repression in recipient countries – is now (nearly) front page news.

To be sure, US aid in Egypt has gone to fund programs focused on health, education and trade, but the vast majority of the multibillion-dollar US aid package to Egypt has been spent on military and domestic security initiatives. Whether intentional or not, foreign aid to Mubarak’s regime is widely seen to have strengthened the government’s ability to confront popular movements.

The British news organization also has this story on a report by Oxfam contending military goals are distorting foreign aid priorities and also endangering aid workers.

As I’ve noted here before, there’s a push by the Obama Administration, specifically Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to “re-invent” foreign aid. This push is aimed at making it dovetail even more with our foreign policy and security issues, which in Egypt is widely viewed as having been about propping up a dictatorship.

Perhaps it’s worth considering re-inventing foreign aid so that it is focused less on our international political and military agendas and more on simply providing assistance to those in need.

FILED UNDER: Politics, Arab revolt, Egypt, foreign aid, Hillary Clinton, Obama Administration
February 1, 2011 | 9:54 AM | By

Is foreign aid about helping poor people, or propping up dictators?

Egypt, now in political revolution, is one of the largest recipients of U.S. foreign aid, getting more than a billion dollars annually.

USAID

U.S. foreign assistance map

As this data from USAID’s excellent new Foreign Assistance Dashboard shows, nearly all of it has gone for “peace and security” — which is, of course, a euphemism for military spending.

Supporting Egypt’s outgoing (soon, yes) dictatorial president Hosni Mubarak has been the primary motive for that aid, partly because of Egypt’s relatively friendly stance as an Arab nation toward us and toward Israel. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Politics, Arab revolt, Egypt, foreign aid, Hillary Clinton, revolution, USAID
December 21, 2010 | 11:39 AM | By

Going Scrooge on foreign aid?

Flickr, art.crazed Ronald Searle)

Ebenezer Scrooge

Because of the hard economic times, or maybe it’s the holiday spirit, a number of folks are saying we need to cut U.S. foreign aid — as if it is some huge financial extravagance we can no longer afford.

The reality is, it’s not huge at all (see pie chart below) and not really an extravagance.

Nevertheless, on Fox News, Bradley Blakeman, a professor of politics at Georgetown University and former adviser to President George W. Bush calls for cuts to foreign aid, saying “Charity Begins at Home.” Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Politics, foreign aid, Hillary Clinton, USAID
December 16, 2010 | 10:25 AM | By

All abuzz about the QDDR. The what?

C’mon, they couldn’t come up with a better name for this thing?

On Wednesday, Sec. of State Hillary Clinton announced the Obama Administration’s proposal for transforming U.S. foreign aid and diplomatic policy. Here’s a video of the announcement from Dipnote (the State Department’s — also unfortunately named — blog):

Clinton and the Obama Administration could have called this proposed overhaul (and they actually do call it this, sometimes) the “Smart Power Initiative” or “Modernizing Diplomacy and Development” or just a “new strategy for foreign aid and diplomacy” … or maybe even “New Hearts and Minds.”

But no, Clinton’s wordsmiths at the State Department decided to dub it the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (mimicking military talk, I guess, after the Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defense Review).

For those in the know, it’s the QDDR and it’s the acronym du jour for the development community. The gist of it had been leaked earlier (not by Wikileaks, mind you, which did have something to say on how Clinton was transforming diplomacy and development in a different — not altogether positive — way), but Wednesday’s announcement provided the full monty.

There’s plenty of commentary and reaction out there to the QDDR, largely ranging from those celebrating the proposed changes that include beefing up staff and strengthening the role of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Foreign Policy’s Josh Rogin, for example, said the NGO community likes the QDDR but is worried about implementation (i.e., money mostly but also the practical reality of turning lofty phrases into a new reality). Says Rogin:

One huge issue is whether Congress, where power in the House is about to shift from Democratic to Republican hands, will properly fund the initiatives in the QDDR. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton … sees the QDDR as a document that can justify funding for diplomacy and development next year, while also rebuilding the capacity of USAID and reforming the way the State Department does business both at home and abroad.

One of the more important points, to my mind, was made by Paul O’Brian of Oxfam America:

“The QDDR is an important step in reaffirming the efforts to modernize USAID and further elevate it as ‘the world’s premier development agency. But the document leaves open the question of how the United States will resolve situations where diplomacy and development will require different approaches and tradeoffs.”

There’s lots of media coverage about the politics behind the QDDR, the funding challenges and any number of specifics in the reform proposal. But I think one of the issues that deserves the hardest looks is this potential conflict between our government’s political goals and the goals of foreign aid/development.

I’ve written about this before, when some of those present at Wednesday’s unveiling of the QDDR were in Seattle to talk about a subset of this new vision that they called “Smart Global Health” policy.

An article on the QDDR by Interpress also mentions the problem of mixing up foreign aid, development and international politics:

InterAction, a network of U.S.-based NGOs focused on global poverty, echoed O’Brien’s concern, though, by pointing out that the State Department would have some oversight over foreign assistance and development strategies and that this could, again, lead to political objectives overriding development ones.

The QDDR’s call for beefing up the U.S. government’s meager investment in foreign aid and development, along with efforts aimed to improve efficiency and coordination across agencies, is welcome news to many working on multiple fronts against poverty, inequity and poor health around the world.

But more attention likely needs to be paid to defining the difference between diplomacy and development, foreign aid and foreign policy, before we move too rapidly toward merging them together under one roof. And let’s hope the QDDR gets replaced by something a little less wonky.

FILED UNDER: Politics, foreign aid, Hillary Clinton, USAID