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281. Much Ado about Nothing? On the European Union's fight against corruption in developing countries under Aticles 9(3) and 97 of the Cotonou Agreement

Author:
Morten Broberg
Publication Date:
11-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
The Cotonou Agreement is the European Union's most important legal measure in the field of development assistance covering 79 developing countries in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific (ACP countries). It empowers the European Union to sanction 'serious cases of corruption' where this corruption is related to economic and sectoral policies and programmes to which the European Union is a significant financial partner. During the negotiations leading to the adoption of the Cotonou Agreement the ACP countries strongly objected to the inclusion of the possibility of sanctioning corruption. In practice the European Union has only sanctioned one single case of corruption under the provision, however. Whereas this does not necessarily mean that the sanctioning clause is without an impact, the fact that sanctions have been imposed in only one situation is a strong indication that its impact is rather limited. It is suggested that more effective means of preventing corruption are considered.
Topic:
Corruption, Development, Humanitarian Aid, Treaties and Agreements, and Foreign Aid
Political Geography:
Africa, Europe, and Caribbean

282. Not Just Aid: How Making Government Work Can Transform Africa

Author:
Tony Blair
Publication Date:
12-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
Country ownership has become the new watchword in development. The problem for traditional donors is that ownership is too often code for convincing developing country governments to adopt the donors' agenda as their own: a way of securing influence without imposing conditionality. What is really needed is genuine country leadership. As President Obama said when he announced the United States' new development policy at the UN Millennium Development Goals summit in New York in September, “We will partner with countries that are willing to take the lead. Because the days when your development was dictated in foreign capitals must come to an end.”
Topic:
Development, Human Welfare, Humanitarian Aid, and Foreign Aid
Political Geography:
Africa, United States, New York, and United Nations

283. Giving Money Away? The Politics of Direct Distribution in Resource Rich States

Author:
Alexandra Gillies
Publication Date:
11-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
The governments of resource rich states have several options for how to allocate oil and mineral revenues, including the direct distribution of revenues to their citizens. This paper discusses the political feasibility and political implications of such cash transfers in the specific context of resource-rich states. Identifying the contexts in which this policy is mostly likely to emerge, and understanding the potential governance risks and benefits, will help policymakers to consider the desirability of cash transfers as an allocation choice.
Topic:
Development, Humanitarian Aid, Poverty, Foreign Aid, and Foreign Direct Investment

284. Think Long Term: How Global AIDS Donors Can Strengthen the Health Workforce in Africa

Author:
Nandini Oomman and Christina Droggitis
Publication Date:
09-2010
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
For the past decade, global AIDS donors—including the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEFPAR), the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (the Global Fund), and the World Bank's Multi-Country HIV/AIDS Program for Africa (the MAP)—have responded to HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa as an emergency. Financial and programmatic efforts have been quick, vertical, and HIV-specific. To achieve ambitious HIV/AIDS targets, AIDS donors mobilized health workers from weak and understaffed national health workforces. The shortages were the result of weak data for effective planning, inadequate capacity to train and pay health workers, and fragmentation and poor coordination across the health workforce life-cycle. Ten years and billions of dollars later, the problem still persists. The time has passed for short-term fixes to health workforce shortages. As the largest source of global health resources, AIDS donors must begin to address the long-term problems underlying the shortages and the effects of their efforts on the health workforce more broadly.
Topic:
Development, Globalization, Health, Human Welfare, Humanitarian Aid, and Foreign Aid
Political Geography:
Africa

285. UNRWA and the Refugees: A Difficult but Lasting Marriage

Author:
Jalal Al Husseini
Publication Date:
09-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
Over the last sixty years, UNRWA's relationship to the Palestinian refugees it serves has undergone profound changes. Faced with the difficult task of adapting a humanitarian regime to a highly politicized environment, the agency has had to thread its way through the diverse and sometimes conflicting expectations of the international donor states, the Arab host countries, and the refugees themselves, who from the start were deeply suspicious of UNRWA's mandate as inimical to the right of return. Against this background, the article traces the evolution of the agency's role from service and relief provider to virtual mouthpiece for the refugees on the international stage and, on an administrative level, from a disciplinary regime to emphasis on community participation and finally to the embrace of a developmental agenda. Although UNRWA's presence, originally seen as temporary, seems likely to endure, the article argues that financial and political constraints are likely to thwart its new agenda. SINCE BEGINNING OPERATIONS in May 1950, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) has emerged as the main stakeholder in the Palestinian refugee issue. The traditional provider of education, medical care, relief, and social services to the Palestine refugees (today numbering almost 5 million in UNRWA's five fields of operation), it has more recently assumed new responsibilities in infrastructure and camp improvement. As the only existing UN agency created to serve a single national refugee population, its main institutional specificity lies in its unparalleled exposure to that population, with the vast majority of its local staff being refugees themselves. UNRWA's close proximity to Palestinian refugee society has lent itself to controversial and contradictory assessments. On the one hand, it has enabled its staff to adapt efficiently to the refugees' evolving needs and made for impressive operational achievements, including the spread of literacy throughout the entire refugee population, the absence of epidemics, quick responses to emergency situations, and vocational and other training for tens of thousands of refugees. In so doing, it has actively helped “prevent conditions of starvation and distress among refugees and to further conditions of peace and stability” in the Middle East. On the other hand, this very proximity has led to charges, especially in the United States and Israel, that the agency has become hostage to the refugees' political claims, thus contributing to perpetuating the problem. UNRWA's constant efforts to guarantee the politically neutral nature of its activities while adjusting its mandate in keeping with the refugees' changing needs and aspirations have been a defining characteristic of its sixty years in operation. Over the years, it has gradually endeavored to promote the refugees' self-reliance either as actors integrated into the host economies or as partners in the delivery of various services, particularly in the refugee camps. More recently, expanding this participatory emphasis, it has started to apply a human development approach to the full range of its activities as a means of helping the refugees achieve their full potential. UNRWA's programs, as well as the operational norms and regulations it has adopted in order to structure its working relations with the refugees, have been greatly affected by its evolving perceptions of them, as will be seen below. THE POLITICAL LIMITATIONS OF ECONOMIC APPROACHES TO THE REFUGEE ISSUE UNRWA's approach to the Palestine refugees long bore the stamp of the first phase of its operations in the 1950s, when it endeavored to fulfill the goals ascribed to it by UN General Assembly (UNGA) Resolution 302 (IV) of 8 December 1949. Article 7 states that UNRWA was to “carry out in collaboration with local governments the direct relief and works programs as recommended by the Economic Survey Mission (ESM).” The ESM's recommendations involved giving the refugees, mostly unemployed farmers and unskilled workers, the opportunity to work “where they were” by involving them in a program of temporary small-scale public works (terracing, afforestation, road construction, irrigation works, and other engineering schemes) that would help them become self-reliant. This program, fully funded by UNWRA, was to constitute a first step toward their “reintegration” into the host state economies, according to the ESM; their longer-term integration required large-scale economic development schemes that could only be borne by the interested governments themselves. In the meantime, UNRWA was to consult with these governments “concerning measures to be taken by them preparatory to the time when international assistance for relief and works projects is no longer available.” As early as mid-1951, UNWRA had shifted to a new approach, emphasizing more ambitious development schemes designed in cooperation with the host governments to directly “resettle” or “re-establish” the refugees in those countries. This would be achieved by expanding the latter's absorptive capacity through various medium- to large-scale housing, agricultural, and infrastructural projects; loans or grants for the establishment of small enterprises; training for occupations where there was a shortage of indigenous trained workers; and assistance for migration abroad. By 1957, however, the failure of the approach was clear: the number of refugees who had become fully self-supportive since 1950 stood at a mere 24,000, whereas 933,000 persons were still dependent on UNRWA services.
Topic:
Humanitarian Aid
Political Geography:
United States and Middle East

286. Hunger in the Sahel: A permanent emergency? Ensuring the next drought will not cause another humanitarian crisis

Publication Date:
12-2010
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Oxfam Publishing
Abstract:
In 2010, more than 10 million people, mainly women and children, were victims of the food crisis in the Sahel. Nearly 500,000 severely malnourished children were taken into care between January and November 2010 in Niger, Chad, Mali and Burkina Faso. Most livestock in the Sahel was decimated. The images and the stories of hunger harked back to the food crisis of 2005 and the famines in 1973-1974 and 1984-1985.
Topic:
Agriculture, Human Welfare, Humanitarian Aid, and Food
Political Geography:
Africa

287. Engaging with Communities: The next challenge for peacekeeping

Author:
Clea Kahn
Publication Date:
11-2010
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Oxfam Publishing
Abstract:
The protection of civilians from the worst ravages of war is a dilemma that international bodies have sought to address for decades. However, despite lessons learned from the atrocities of Rwanda and Srebrenica, among others, civilians are still not only adversely affected by armed conflict; they are too often directly targeted.
Topic:
Humanitarian Aid, Intelligence, United Nations, and Peacekeeping
Political Geography:
Sudan

288. Transcending the Past to Build Haiti\'s Future

Author:
Robert Maguire
Publication Date:
12-2010
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
United States Institute of Peace
Abstract:
Efforts to build a better Haiti following the catastrophic earthquake of January 2010 are complicated by the challenges of addressing urgent needs, including elections and the cholera outbreak, that run parallel to the rebuilding process and that present an enormous challenge to Haiti\'s under-resourced and weakened government. Enactment of the Haitian government\'s internationally-endorsed and ambitious action recovery plan is hindered by the apparent lack of an over-riding operational framework that will help to ensure not only implementation, but also coherence. Donors and other international actors would be wise to embrace Haiti as a country that has highly propitious fundamentals for successful economic growth, and to build on them. Without important shifts in political, economic and social paradigms, the prospect for Haiti\'s future as a better country that can sustain and expand progress and can improve prospects for all its citizens is clouded.
Topic:
Humanitarian Aid, Migration, Poverty, and Natural Disasters
Political Geography:
Caribbean and Haiti

289. The "new" Turkish foreign policy and its implications for Norwegian peacebuilding

Author:
Jean-Paul Marthoz
Publication Date:
12-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Norwegian Centre for Conflict Resolution
Abstract:
This paper is based on interviews with diplomats, experts and political analysts and provides an overview of Turkey's foreign policy, particularly in relation to peacebuilding. In the past year, Turkey has moved to the centre stage on the international scene. After making the headlines with its joint mediation initiative with Brazil on Iran's nuclear issue, in May Ankara clashed with Israel over the storming of the Gaza-bound “humanitarian flotilla”. Suddenly all eyes were on a country situated in this most turbulent and strategic region of the world – a country that had appeared at least until recently to be a reliable and predictable ally of the West, and of Israel. However, the country's actions and reactions should not have come as a surprise. Over the past ten years Turkey has been busy developing a very active foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East and Central Asia. It has reached out to countries traditionally considered as adversaries, such as Russia, Iran and Syria. Ankara has also not been afraid to express its differences and diverge from the West on certain issues, from Cyprus to Armenia to Palestine.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, and Humanitarian Aid
Political Geography:
Turkey, Middle East, Israel, Asia, Palestine, Armenia, Syria, and Cyprus

290. Cooperating for Peace: The Challenges and Promises of Partnerships in Peace Operations

Publication Date:
07-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Geneva Centre for Security Policy
Abstract:
In the over two decades since UN peacekeepers won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1988, the mechanisms and means for providing peacekeeping “supply” where it is needed continue to bedevil policy makers and those on the ground tasked with the difficult job of international intervention. Today, the peacekeeping agenda is packed with concerns such as the protection of civilians, peacekeeping when there is no peace to keep, managing spoilers, balancing humanitarian, peacebuilding and development imperatives, and the realization that vulnerability to relapse into conflict means that peacekeepers may be required for years and indeed decades to come.
Topic:
Humanitarian Aid, International Cooperation, Peace Studies, United Nations, and Peacekeeping