Download or read book Dead Aid written by Dambisa Moyo and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2009-03-17 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Debunking the current model of international aid promoted by both Hollywood celebrities and policy makers, Moyo offers a bold new road map for financing development of the world's poorest countries.
Download or read book War Games written by Linda Polman and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2010-04-19 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Rwanda to Afghanistan, from Sudan to Iraq, this brilliantly written and at times blackly funny work of reportage shows how the humanitarian aid industry, the media and warmongers the world over are locked in a cycle of mutual support. Drawing on her decades of first-hand experience, Linda Polman�s gripping narrative introduces us to the key players in this twisted game, to the aid-workers and the warlords themselves. Among many others, there is the Bible-bashing one-man NGO who rescued two Sierra Leonean girls from life in an amputee camp � only to change his mind and try to send them back again; the director of the World Bank in Kabul who estimates that 35�40 per cent of all aid in Afghanistan is looted or lost; and the rebel soldier who explains that war does not mean fighting: 'W.A.R. means Waste All Resources. Destroy everything. Then you people will come and fix it.' War Games is a controversial expos� from the front lines of the humanitarian aid industry by one of the most intrepid and brilliantly incisive journalists of our times.
Download or read book Making Aid Work written by Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2007-03-23 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An encouraging account of the potential of foreign aid to reduce poverty and a challenge to all aid organizations to think harder about how they spend their money. With more than a billion people now living on less than a dollar a day, and with eight million dying each year because they are simply too poor to live, most would agree that the problem of global poverty is our greatest moral challenge. The large and pressing practical question is how best to address that challenge. Although millions of dollars flow to poor countries, the results are often disappointing. In Making Aid Work, Abhijit Banerjee—an "aid optimist"—argues that aid has much to contribute, but the lack of analysis about which programs really work causes considerable waste and inefficiency, which in turn fuels unwarranted pessimism about the role of aid in fostering economic development. Banerjee challenges aid donors to do better. Building on the model used to evaluate new drugs before they come on the market, he argues that donors should assess programs with field experiments using randomized trials. In fact, he writes, given the number of such experiments already undertaken, current levels of development assistance could focus entirely on programs with proven records of success in experimental conditions. Responding to his challenge, leaders in the field—including Nicholas Stern, Raymond Offenheiser, Alice Amsden, Ruth Levine, Angus Deaton, and others—question whether randomized trials are the most appropriate way to evaluate success for all programs. They raise broader questions as well, about the importance of aid for economic development and about the kinds of interventions (micro or macro, political or economic) that will lead to real improvements in the lives of poor people around the world. With one in every six people now living in extreme poverty, getting it right is crucial.
Download or read book The Political History of American Food Aid written by Barry Riley and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 593 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American food aid to foreigners long has been the most visible-and most popular-means of providing humanitarian aid to millions of hungry people confronted by war, terrorism and natural cataclysms and the resulting threat-often the reality-of famine and death. The book investigates the little-known, not-well-understood and often highly-contentious political processes which have converted American agricultural production into tools of U.S. government policy. In The Political History of American Food Aid, Barry Riley explores the influences of humanitarian, domestic agricultural policy, foreign policy, and national security goals that have created the uneasy relationship between benevolent instincts and the realpolitik of national interests. He traces how food aid has been used from the earliest days of the republic in widely differing circumstances: as a response to hunger, a weapon to confront the expansion of bolshevism after World War I and communism after World War II, a method for balancing disputes between Israel and Egypt, a channel for disposing of food surpluses, a signal of support to friendly governments, and a means for securing the votes of farming constituents or the political support of agriculture sector lobbyists, commodity traders, transporters and shippers. Riley's broad sweep provides a profound understanding of the complex factors influencing American food aid policy and a foundation for examining its historical relationship with relief, economic development, food security and its possible future in a world confronting the effects of global climate change.
Download or read book Does Foreign Aid Really Work written by Roger C. Riddell and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008-08-07 with total page 531 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provided for over 60 years, and expanding more rapidly today than it has for a generation, foreign aid is now a $100bn business. But does it work? Indeed, is it needed at all? In this first-ever, overall assessment of aid, Roger Riddell provides a rigorous but highly readable account of aid, warts and all.
Download or read book How the Aid Industry Works written by Arjan de Haan and published by Kumarian Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why is aid contested?. The aid industry defined. How the thinking about aid and international development has evolved. Development projects: rationale and critique. Hard-nosed development: reforms, adjustment, governance. Country-led approaches and donor coordination: can the aid industry let go?. Development's poor cousins: environment, gender, participation, rights. How does the industry knows what works and what doesn't. Challenges for the 21st century
Download or read book Why We Lie About Aid written by Pablo Yanguas and published by Zed Books Ltd.. This book was released on 2018-02-15 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Foreign aid is about charity. International development is about technical fixes. At least that is what we, as donor publics, are constantly told. The result is a highly dysfunctional aid system which mistakes short-term results for long-term transformation and gets attacked across the political spectrum, with the right claiming we spend too much, and the left that we don't spend enough. The reality, as Yanguas argues in this highly provocative book, is that aid isn't – or at least shouldn't be – about levels of spending, nor interventions shackled to vague notions of ‘accountability’ and ‘ownership’. Instead, a different approach is possible, one that acknowledges aid as being about struggle, about taking sides, about politics. It is an approach that has been quietly applied by innovative development practitioners around the world, providing political coverage for local reformers to open up spaces for change. Drawing on a variety of convention-defying stories from a variety of countries – from Britain to the US, Sierra Leone to Honduras – Yanguas provides an eye-opening account of what we really mean when we talk about aid.
Download or read book The River written by Edward Hooper and published by Back Bay. This book was released on 2000 with total page 1118 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A British medical journalist offers a meticulously researched look at HIV and its potential source, discussing the history of this lethal epidemic, analyzing a number of theories concerning its origins, and investigating current scientific inquiries into HIV, AIDS, and the search for a cure. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.
Download or read book And The Band Played on written by Randy Shilts and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2000-04-09 with total page 666 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An investigative account of the medical, sexual, and scientific questions surrounding the spread of AIDS across the country.
Download or read book Development Aid Confronts Politics written by Thomas Carothers and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2013-04-01 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new lens on development is changing the world of international aid. The overdue recognition that development in all sectors is an inherently political process is driving aid providers to try to learn how to think and act politically. Major donors are pursuing explicitly political goals alongside their traditional socioeconomic aims and introducing more politically informed methods throughout their work. Yet these changes face an array of external and internal obstacles, from heightened sensitivity on the part of many aid-receiving governments about foreign political interventionism to inflexible aid delivery mechanisms and entrenched technocratic preferences within many aid organizations. This pathbreaking book assesses the progress and pitfalls of the attempted politics revolution in development aid and charts a constructive way forward. Contents: Introduction 1. The New Politics Agenda The Original Framework: 1960s-1980s 2. Apolitical Roots Breaking the Political Taboo: 1990s-2000s 3. The Door Opens to Politics 4. Advancing Political Goals 5. Toward Politically Informed Methods The Way Forward 6. Politically Smart Development Aid 7. The Unresolved Debate on Political Goals 8. The Integration Frontier Conclusion 9. The Long Road to Politics
Download or read book The Crisis Caravan written by Linda Polman and published by Metropolitan Books. This book was released on 2010-09-14 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A no-holds-barred, controversial exposé of the financial profiteering and ambiguous ethics that pervade the world of humanitarian aid A vast industry has grown up around humanitarian aid: a cavalcade of organizations—some 37,000—compete for a share of the $160 billion annual prize, with "fact-inflation" sometimes ramping up disaster coverage to draw in more funds. Insurgents and warring governments, meanwhile, have made aid a permanent feature of military strategy: refugee camps serve as base camps for genocidaires, and aid supplies are diverted to feed the troops. Even as humanitarian groups continue to assert the holy principle of impartiality, they have increasingly become participants in aid's abuses. In a narrative that is impassioned, gripping, and even darkly absurd, journalist Linda Polman takes us to war zones around the globe—from the NGO-dense operations in "Afghaniscam" to the floating clinics of Texas Mercy Ships proselytizing off the shores of West Africa—to show the often compromised results of aid workers' best intentions. It is time, Polman argues, to impose ethical boundaries, to question whether doing something is always better than doing nothing, and to hold humanitarians responsible for the consequences of their deeds.
Download or read book Foreign Aid written by Carol Lancaster and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-09-15 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A twentieth-century innovation, foreign aid has become a familiar and even expected element in international relations. But scholars and government officials continue to debate why countries provide it: some claim that it is primarily a tool of diplomacy, some argue that it is largely intended to support development in poor countries, and still others point out its myriad newer uses. Carol Lancaster effectively puts this dispute to rest here by providing the most comprehensive answer yet to the question of why governments give foreign aid. She argues that because of domestic politics in aid-giving countries, it has always been—and will continue to be—used to achieve a mixture of different goals. Drawing on her expertise in both comparative politics and international relations and on her experience as a former public official, Lancaster provides five in-depth case studies—the United States, Japan, France, Germany, and Denmark—that demonstrate how domestic politics and international pressures combine to shape how and why donor governments give aid. In doing so, she explores the impact on foreign aid of political institutions, interest groups, and the ways governments organize their giving. Her findings provide essential insight for scholars of international relations and comparative politics, as well as anyone involved with foreign aid or foreign policy.
Download or read book Aid to Africa Redeemer Or Coloniser written by Hakima Abbas and published by Fahamu/Pambazuka. This book was released on 2009-10 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The current global economic crisisresurges the debate on aid to Africathe largest global recipientandthis comprehensive volume explores the premise, history, and foundation upon which the concept of aid is based. It considers aid's relationship to the broader development discourse in Africa, the politics and power dynamics of aid mechanisms, and how the emergence of powers such as China and India are redefining the global aid architecture. Diverse perspectives are shown from African social commentators, academics, and activists, including Demba Moussa Dembele, Patrick Bond, Samir Amin, and Charles Mutasa."
Download or read book The Politics of Aid written by Lindsay Whitfield and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 2009 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The volume examines negotiations between rich countries and African governments over what should happen with money given as aid. Describing the history of aid talks the volume presents eight studies of the strategies of negotiation tried by particular African countries.
Download or read book Damned Nations written by Samantha Nutt and published by McClelland & Stewart. This book was released on 2011 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The extraordinary humanitarian Samantha Nutt gives a bracing and uncompromising account of her work in some of the most devastated corners of the world - and a new, provocative vision for changing course on growing militarisation. It is a brilliant distillation of Dr Nutt's observations over the course of 15 years providing hands-on care in some of the world's most violent flashpoints. Combining original research with her personal story, it is a deeply thoughtful meditation on war as it is being waged around the world against millions of civilians.
Download or read book Chasing Chaos written by Jessica Alexander and published by Crown. This book was released on 2013-10-15 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jessica Alexander arrived in Rwanda in the aftermath of the 1994 genocide as an idealistic intern, eager to contribute to the work of the international humanitarian aid community. But the world that she encountered in the field was dramatically different than anything she could have imagined. It was messy, chaotic, and difficult—but she was hooked. In this honest and irreverent memoir, she introduces readers to the realities of life as an aid worker. We watch as she manages a 24,000-person camp in Darfur, collects evidence for the Charles Taylor trial in Sierra Leone, and contributes to the massive aid effort to clean up a shattered Haiti. But we also see the alcohol-fueled parties and fleeting romances, the burnouts and self-doubt, and the struggle to do good in places that have long endured suffering. Tracing her personal journey from wide-eyed and naïve newcomer to hardened cynic and, ultimately, to hopeful but critical realist, Alexander transports readers to some of the most troubled locations around the world and shows us not only the seemingly impossible challenges, but also the moments of resilience and recovery.
Download or read book So Much Aid So Little Development written by Samia Waheed Altaf and published by Johns Hopkins University Press. This book was released on 2011-06-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pakistan has received more than $20 billion in external development assistance but has made little evident improvement in its social indicators. So Much Aid, So Little Development offers a fresh explanation for this outcome. The author, Samia Altaf, a physician and public health specialist, follows one major initiative, the Social Action Program developed by the Pakistani government in 1992 and funded by the World Bank to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. In an engrossing account that reads almost like a novel, at times hilarious, at others heartbreaking, she tells the story of the program’s shortcomings through a series of eyewitness vignettes. She begins with planning meetings in Islamabad, moves through layer after layer of the Pakistani bureaucracy down to the village health trainee, and then returns to Washington for the evaluation. At every stage, she finds skewed incentives, misplaced priorities, and inappropriate designs diverting the project from its original intentions and ambitions. In the process, Altaf introduces into the development conversation the human dimension that most frameworks have neglected to their detriment.
