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Begin New Search Topic Humanitarian Aid Political Geography Africa

41. Making Aid Effective: An Anti-Corruption Agenda

Publication Date:
06-2011
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Transparency International
Abstract:
Aid flows provide developing countries with an important source of financing that can be used to help build schools, staff hospitals, construct roads and provide clean water. In 2010, aid totalled more than US$ 128 billion, one-fifth of which went to Africa.Yet aid, also known as official development assistance (ODA), has not always been effective at achieving results with the inputs provided. Corruption and mismanagement result from low levels of transparency, accountability and integrity by donor and partner countries.
Topic:
Corruption, Development, Humanitarian Aid, Foreign Aid, and Governance
Political Geography:
Africa

42. Making Peace When Disaster Strikes: Sri Lanka, Aceh and the 2004 Tsunami

Author:
Howard B. Schaffer
Publication Date:
12-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University
Abstract:
On the day after Christmas 2004, a powerful 9.0 magnitude earthquake under the Indian Ocean off of northern Sumatra sent massive waves crashing against the coastlines of countries as far away as Kenya and Madagascar. This tsunami killed or left missing some 226,000 people and displaced an estimated 1.7 million more in fourteen Asian and African countries.1 Damage to property—infrastructure, residences, government buildings, and commercial establishments—was enormous. Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, and the Maldives were the most seriously affected. Dramatically filmed on the cameras and cell phones of local inhabitants and the many western tourists caught up in the catastrophe, the tsunami attracted instant and extensive worldwide attention and sympathetic response. Foreign governments, international agencies, and international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) alike quickly undertook what became a global effort to assist local authorities to rescue and rehabilitate the victims and begin rebuilding the extensive stricken areas.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Humanitarian Aid, Peace Studies, Poverty, Natural Disasters, and Foreign Aid
Political Geography:
Kenya, Africa, India, Asia, and Sri Lanka

43. West African Experience with the World Rice Crisis, 2007–2008

Author:
Vijaya Ramachandran, Peter Timmer, Steven Block, and Jenny C. Aker
Publication Date:
02-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
Rice production in Africa has tended to be low-yielding, geographically dispersed, and uncompetitive against low-cost Asian imports, even when protected by high freight costs and substantial trade barriers. Skyrocketing prices in world markets in 2007—08 were a shock to African consumers, producers, and governments alike. When international rice prices were relatively low, rice imports did not pose economic or political problems for West African governments. Extremely expensive imports reverse that equation. This paper addresses the response to that reversal first by presenting a historical review of trends in the West African rice sector and, second, by assessing the effect of world rice prices on domestic prices, primarily at the consumer level.
Topic:
Humanitarian Aid and Food
Political Geography:
Africa and Asia

44. Dilemmas of Regional Peacemaking: The Dynamics of the AU's Response to Darfur

Author:
A. Sarjoh Bah
Publication Date:
03-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center on International Cooperation
Abstract:
The African Union's (AU) peacemaking efforts in Darfur exposed the limits of implementing its ambitious peace and security agenda, and the absence of an effective international system to support regional peacemaking efforts. This paper contends that the AU's efforts brought to the fore three critical issues: first, the gap between the AU's mandate to intervene in situations involving war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide as provided for in its founding charter, the Constitutive Act, and its capacity to do so; second, the absence of an international system to support regional peacemaking, especially when it involves deploying complex multidimensional peace operations; finally, it brought into sharper focus the inherent tensions and contradictions surrounding existing norms and emerging concepts such as sovereignty, the responsibility to protect (R2P) and internationalized justice through the International Criminal Court (ICC). The paper focuses on the AU's two pronged strategy in Darfur: Political and Military/peacekeeping.
Topic:
Security, Genocide, Human Rights, Humanitarian Aid, and Peace Studies
Political Geography:
Africa

45. MINURCAT Withdrawal: The Risks to Civilian Protection and Humanitarian Assistance in Eastern Chad

Author:
Erin A. Weir
Publication Date:
11-2010
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
United States Institute of Peace
Abstract:
Chad hosts over 249,000 refugees from the Darfur conflict and 168,000 internally displaced persons who were relocated after instability caused by Chadian rebel groups. The U.N. Mission in the Central African Republic and Chad has been reduced to 1,900 as of October 15, 2010. It will withdraw completely by December 31, 2010. There are concerns about the capacity of the Chadian security forces to adequately protect the population.The government of Chad and the international community must work to ensure the security of the population and humanitarian workers.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Security, and Humanitarian Aid
Political Geography:
Africa and United Nations

46. Somalia: A New Approach

Author:
Bronwyn E. Bruton
Publication Date:
03-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Somalia has been a failed state for the better part of two decades; bereft of central government, cantonized into clan fiefdoms, and wracked by deadly spasms of violence. Repeated efforts to create a viable national government have failed.1 For the United States, the principal concern, especially since 9/11, has been the fear that Somalia might become a safe haven for al-Qaeda to launch attacks in the region and even conceivably against the U.S. homeland. U.S. efforts to prevent that from happening, however, have been counterproductive, alienating large parts of the Somali population and polarizing Somalia's diverse Muslim community into “moderate” and “extremist” camps. Several indigenous militant Islamist groups have emerged and grown stronger in recent years. One coalition, headed by a radical youth militia known as the Shabaab, now controls most of southern Somalia and threatens the survival of the Transitional Federal Government (TFG)—the latest UN-brokered effort to establish a functioning authority in the capital city of Mogadishu.
Topic:
Humanitarian Aid, Fragile/Failed State, and Governance
Political Geography:
Africa

47. 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

48. 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

49. 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

50. 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