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A friend of mine recommended this book to me a while back, but I never got around to it. Today it showed up on William Easterly’s Aid Watch. Sound like a good winter break read to me! =)
Post by Laura Freschi, Aid Watch
When Jacque
line Novogratz, founder of the Acumen Fund (and author of The Blue Sweater), was in her early twenties, she turned down a promotion on Wall Street and went to the Cote d’Ivoire to open a new branch of the African Development Bank focused on microfinance for women. But the West African women she was supposed to work with shunned her. They talked about her derisively in her presence, letting her know exactly what they thought of an untested, unmarried, American woman with poor French skills being sent to lead them. They intimidated her, locked her out of the office, and (Novogratz suspects) actually gave her food poisoning to scare her away. It worked.
On her next assignment, in Nairobi, she spent hundreds of hours analyzing the loan portfolio of a young microfinance organization. Presenting her results, she recommended a drastic restructuring. A week later, she found her handwritten report had been “lost,” and all her work destroyed.
Any other 24-year-old might have gone home. For Novogratz, these heartbreaking episodes led to some profound revelations:
“I wanted to help,” she writes, “but that didn’t matter to anyone but me.” “Donors could convince themselves to give to nonperforming organizations based on a few good stories. The world needed something better than that.”
Just watched a great segment on Democracy Now! Watch the full segment here: WTO Chief Pascal Lamy: Free Trade and Independence Help Promote Freedom, Human Rights and Civil Liberties.
Ten years ago this week, tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets in Seattle, WA to shut down WTO ministerial meetings and prevent further negative impacts of the organization’s neoliberal trade agenda. Protesters succeeded in the former, but not in the later.
Yesterday, the WTO convened again in Geneva, Switzerland for its seventh ministerial meeting and a new push at a global free trade treaty. Investigate journalist Greg Palast went to Geneva to interview WTO Chief Pascal Lamay.
While Lamay insists that open trade and interdependence between nations promotes freedom, human rights, and civil liberties, Palast challenges this picture.
Recently, the EU and U.S. have secretly been using the WTO to demand that emerging economies open their borders to trade in things like financial services, derivatives and credit default swaps. Why would developing countries want to open their economies to toxic assets of the West? Because if they don’t (or if they do and change their mind in an effort to protect themselves in circumstances like the recent U.S. stock market crash), they can expect to face massive penalties.
For example, if Ecuador tried to bar U.S. banks, under WTO rules, the U.S. can retaliate by imposing tarriffs on every single Ecuadorian-produced banana, easily ruining the entire Ecuadorian economy.
Martin Kohr, Executive Director of the South Centre–”defender of 51 banana exporting and other poor nations”–claims it’s time for the U.S. to learn a few lessons itself, lay off the developing countries, and fix its own domestic financial markets before trying to force replication of a “dysfunctional” model on the rest of the world.
Hope you’ll watch the full segment!
Ten months into his administration, President Obama finally announced his nominee for top USAID administrator—Dr. Rajiv Shah.
This morning, I joined
a packed room of dark suits on the fourth floor of Dirsksen for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s nomination hearing.
The Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network had sent out the nomination notice a few weeks ago, so I had already read Dr. Shah’s credentials—currently Under Secretary for Research, Education and Economics and Chief Scientist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, leading the Department’s participation in the President global food security initiative and managing 10,000 staff worldwide; former Director for Agricultural Development at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where he managed the foundation’s $1.5 billion vaccine fund; trained doctor, former health care policy adviser for Al Gore’s presidential campaign, Masters in health economics, etc.
While excited to see an appointee with such extensive experience in both agriculture and medicine, I thought, “how exciting can this guy really be? He’s probably some stuffy top-down bureaucrat who’s never even spent a day in the fields.”
But today’s hearing brought me hope.
Dr. Shah, a mere 36 years old, graciously fielded questions regarding his vision for USAID, changes he would implement both short- and long-term, balancing development and defense, conflict resolution, education, gender integration, food security and Afghanistan.
Post by Haley Dillan, originally posted on GlobalEnvision.org
Security in Iraq is undoubtedly improving, but rising unemployment threatens to increase instability and worsen corruption, according to Iraq expert Frank Gunter.
Gunter, who’s done two tours in Iraq as an economics adviser, points out in a recent op-ed in the New York Times that 51 percent of the population — and an even greater percentage of young people — is either unemployed or underemployed.
Almost half of the country’s labor force is paid by the government from its revenues from petroleum exports. With the exception of agriculture, legitimate private-sector employment is small — by my calculations, about 6 percent of the labor force. Most of the remainder of the Iraqi labor force is either unemployed or working in the underground economy.
Gunter further laments that any business faces either the inefficiencies of the underground economy or the corrupt ministries that regulate them. (Iraq was just listed among the top five most corrupt countries in the world.) The process to register a new business is expensive and complicated — a license costs $2,800 and requires approval from 12 different ministries.
“The potential for private sector job growth is great,” Gunter writes. So what needs to be done? The number-one thing, Gunter says, is to make it easier and less expensive to register a new business. He also recommends that provinces, rather than Baghdad, set rules for regulating businesses.
But whatever is decided, the government of Iraq is running out of time. It must either end its hostility toward private businesses — or accept that a sharply growing mass of unemployed will nullify the progress of the last three years.
Dan Reicher, director of climate change and energy initiatives at Google, summed the effort to pass a US climate change bill as an “epic, epic struggle”.
This summer the House of Representatives passed a climate change bill that aims to reduce carbon emissions and make investments in renewable energy. Recently the Senate has taken up the task of stitching together a bill and well, but real action has been postponed to the spring.
The positive and the frustrating aspects of the American political process are on full display. Climate change legislation languishes and wallows in several Senate committees, and is held captive by the vested interest of the few.
This would all be inconsequential if it wasn’t absolutely urgent for the US to get its act together before UN climate talks in December.
In December, 192 nations will meet in Copenhagen to forge one of the most difficult international agreements ever – a comprehensive climate change treaty that replaces the Kyoto Protocol. The Copenhagen conference is seen by many as one of the last opportunities for the world to lock in a process that reduces greenhouse gases in time to stave off disaster.
Copenhagen will not only be a historic gathering of world leaders, scientists, and thought leaders – it’ll be a critical one as well. The time that remains, the window that we have for a climate change deal for the world’s 6 billion people is closing.
Students at the University of Florida are working to help farmworkers battle for fair wages and basic human rights.
By Kristen Abdullah and Richard Blake
November 16, 2009
Migrant worker Jorge Rodriguez plays the “quijada,” in Immokalee, Fla. Farmworkers celebrated the recent decision by Taco Bell to accede to the demands of local tomato pickers, who led a four-year boycott against the restaurant chain, and pay a penny more for each pound of Florida tomatoes. (AP Photo/Alan Diaz)
As we made the four-hour journey south to tomato-town Immokalee, Fla., we ran through the itinerary for the long weekend to come and familiarized ourselves with the 40-plus pages of reading material that we were supposed to have completed three weeks before. The thick packet of literature included stories like “Immokalee family sentenced for slavery,” “Apartheid in America,” and “A more-complete definition of ‘sustainable.’” By the time we arrived in the desolate town, just after midnight, we felt confident in our school-child ability to recite the labor history of this town and felt briefed on the ultimate reason for our visit.
After becoming fed up with the impoverished condition that enslaved them, migrant workers started a grassroots organization called the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) in 1993. Consisting mostly of people from Mexico, Guatemala, and Haiti, these workers had already experienced both verbal and physical abuses since their arrival in the United States. Most of them could remember a time when, back in their own countries, they survived as subsistence farmers—selling crops and living off corn, squash, beans, and, most important, their own autonomy. They weren’t rich, but they were dignified.
But after the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was established among the United States, Canada, and Mexico, these small-time farmers could not compete with subsidized crops from the States. Before, Mexico was a major wheat exporter. Now, Mexico only exports cheap labor.
» Breaking News: New York Times article on our historic victory on front page of NYT website!
Just over a year ago, Russell Athletic announced it would close Jerzees de Honduras in response to workers’ organizing efforts. During that year, USAS organized the largest boycott in the history of modern student activism. Now, as a direct result of our efforts, we have won an unprecedented victory — the company has agreed to meet worker demands to reopen the factory and re-hire all 1200 workers, who have been without jobs for 10 months or more. View the details of the agreement here.
Landmark Victory: A Precedent is Set
This is one of the most significant youth-led campaign victories in recent times and one of the most significant campaign victories of the global justice movement. No one has ever forced a multinational corporation to reopen a facility it shut down in the global race to the bottom. This victory has also proven that together, we can successfully fight back when those in power take advantage of the economic crisis to attack working people. We should take strength and inspiration from the example of the workers of Jerzees de Honduras. We can fight back — and WIN — against policies that benefit a privileged few and hurt our communities.
Thank You!
Your campus organizing, e-mails, faxes, phone calls, direct action and donations were essential to winning this campaign. We are standing on the shoulders of previous generations of activists. We built on top of USAS victories of the past twelve years, from the sit-ins in the late 1990s that resulted in supply chain transparency and university labor codes of conduct to the formation of the Worker Rights Consortium in 2000. As Russell and SITRAJERZEESH work to implement this agreement, please continue to support our efforts by making a tax-deductible donation to USAS. We need your continued support to sustain our movement.
The struggle continues! ¡La lucha sigue!
In solidarity,
United Students Against Sweatshops
“Who decides about food policies?”
“Who controls food producing resources?”
“How is food produced?”
“Who has/needs access to food?”
For the first time in history, the growing numbers of the hungry has surpassed the one billion mark. Such numbers pose a huge risk to world peace and security.
In order to keep the challenge of food insecurity on top of the international agenda, the FAO convened a World Summit on Food Security this past weekend in Rome.
But, while heads of state met in the stately buildings of the UN, just one Metro station away, hundreds of farmers, fisherfolk, pastoralists, indigenous organizations, women’s groups and urban poor organizations gathered at a parallel summit to demand a new framework for inclusive, grassroots food security–food sovereignty.
Representing 93 countries, the People’s Forum on Food Sovereignty offered stories about real hunger, land grabbing, eviction, discrimination because they are women and the neglect of their knowledge and their traditions. The forum
If we are to eradiccate of the roots causes of hunger and poverty, those most affected by hunger–food producers and their communities–must have a seat at the table.
Find out more
http://peoplesforum2009.foodsovereignty.org
http://www.grain.org/landgrab/
People’s Food Sovereignty Forum, Rome 13-17 novembre 2009 – video
Cross-post by Janet Redman, Institute for Policy Studies
Developed countries have an obligation to direct financial and technical support to developing nations to enable them to shift to low-carbon growth pathways.
It’s been a year since Barack Obama’s historic election as our first African-American president. That night, many Americans shed tears of joy, exchanged congratulatory embraces, and voiced high expectations for real change.
As the Obama administration’s first year draws to a close, we’re approaching another historic moment. The world’s nations are negotiating a deal to steer the planet away from catastrophic climate change. And by December, if an agreement is reached at a summit in Copenhagen, developed countries like the United States will have to step forward and put binding targets for reducing our greenhouse gas emissions on the table.
Yes, developing countries-with their increasing carbon footprints-should come to the table, too (and in fact, many are already making great strides at implementing renewable energy and energy efficiency programs). But the responsibility rests squarely on wealthy industrialized nations to own up to our historical role in causing the climate crisis and make the first move. And legally, developed countries have an obligation to direct financial and technical support to developing nations to enable them to shift to low-carbon growth pathways.
But our government says it can’t get out ahead of Congress and commit to anything internationally until lawmakers pass a domestic climate bill. Meanwhile, Congress says it’s waiting for the White House to send the right signals before pushing hard on targets and climate finance for poorer countries.
So instead of leading on climate, as he’d promised to do in campaign speeches, Obama’s administration has called for each country-rich or poor-to simply pledge its individual domestic climate commitment.
Cross-post from Labor Is Not a Commodity, by Steve O. Akoth, Labour Awareness and Resource Centre
When reports appeared in the media two years ago detailing failure in mortgage repayments in the United States, the government of Kenya alongside many others in Africa, claimed that that was a US affair. The treasury bureaucrats and politicians were quick to reassure Kenyans that our economy was safe. In fact, new projections of 2% annual growth were given. But this was nothing more than the usual political talk show and regular political performance that is not uncommon in Kenya. 
Our government, rather than deceive us, should appreciate that Kenyan workers know that they are part of a huge interconnected web. When a small scale farmer in Tigoni plants runner beans to sell to Homegrown for instance, she knows that the beans shall end up in the supermarket of Mars and Spencer in the United Kingdom. For that reason, the farmer is interested and is affected by the purchasing power of a consumer in the UK. Similarly, a worker on the stitching line in an Export Processing Zone (EPZ) in Ruaraka, knows that the garment shall be sold off through Wal-Mart’s shelves. The workers are therefore invested in the purchasing power of the average American who wants to buy a “cheap” designer garment from Wal-Mart. So the shrinking global market and the resulting economic nationalism in the northern countries in the name of bailout is an important subject for the worker in Kenya and trade unions engaged in Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) discussions in Kenya. In the long run, it is the working poor who experience the recession most, it does not matter whether it starts in China or the US.
