As the face of the NGO world in Thailand undergoes radical shifts and International NGOs begin handing over their mandates to locally established entities or phase out entirely, many NGO employees of such NGOs are being left with choices to make regarding their future.... 
There has been quite a bit of discussion online about the Financial Times article “How Aid got Smarter” featuring an interview with UNICEF’s Executive Director Tony Lake.
The quest for smarter aid is not new, and it will not be achieved overnight. Evidence based development work is more an ongoing journey rather than a destination. But the lights of Oz are looking a little bit brighter... 
In Honiara the differences are readily apparent: while much of the city lives crowded into informal settlements, most aid agency staff enjoy comfortable residences nestled the various hillside suburbs nestled behind the town (for the record this PhD student hasn’t quite made it into the hills but can be found in a very comfortable room, just a short dash from the cooling Pacific ocean).
The version of wrestling known as laamb in Senegal is immensely popular, attracting fans with its big stars, occult practices and huge paydays. 
Sudan and South Sudan agreed to restart talks next Tuesday with the aim of ending hostilities, both sides said Thursday. 
Bridgetown - May 22, 2012 - CARICOM member states which comprise the 
Until recently, there seemed plenty of reasons to be bullish on Brazil. Having posted record growth for a decade and weathered the financial crisis well, the country looked poised to become a global economic leader.
Yet this glowing image of Brazil rests on an extremely shaky premise: commodity prices. The country has grown largely in concert with surging demand for its stores of oil, copper, iron ore, and other natural resources. The problem is that the global appetite for those commodities is beginning to fall. And if Brazil does not take steps to diversify and boost its growth, it may soon fall with them. 
Interactive timeline showing US-China relations.
Since 1949, U.S.-Sino relations have evolved from tense standoffs to a complex mix of intensifying diplomacy, growing international rivalry, and increasingly intertwined economies... 
US senators subtracted $5 million from aid provided to Egypt on Wednesday, to reimburse the US Treasury for money it paid to bail out American pro-democracy activists facing charges there earlier this year.
The total value of US aid to Egypt is around $1.7 billion per year. 
The growing popularity of randomised control trials (RCTs) in the international development domain is not accidental. It reflects tensions within an economics profession humbled by the failure of standard development recipes. It is also the result of a well funded campaign aimed at raising the bar in development evaluation quality that has unfortunately backed the wrong horse.
The Spanish government announced this week it was cancelling all development aid to Latin American countries as a direct consequence of the financial strains the EU member is suffering, which is the worst in decades with record unemployment of 24%. There are many big and small discussions about international aid. If you are like me, you enjoy the really wonky debates over whether the latest randomized control trial shows if a tested intervention shows measured improvement in people’s lives. Alas, not everyone enjoys spending their days reading studies and debating external validity.
So, I have come up with five videos for those of you who are interested in aid, want to learn more, but are not keen on reading academic papers. Hopefully, these videos provide a challenge and fulfill your desire to not only do good, but do it right.... 
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development faces some tough calls as it tries to revive Egypt's economic fortunes
As the presidential election process gets under way in Egypt this week, an equally important debate has been going on in... |
The expropriation of nearly all of the Spanish company Repsol’s stake in Argentina’s energy producer YPF, announced in a vehement speech by President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, has raised legal alarms worldwide. In fact, the move will not resolve the country’s energy problems in the absence of enormous inflows of investment to the sector.... 
Since Lake took over the United Nations’ children’s charity in 2010, the amiable American has watched the so-called “evidence-based revolution” in aid. Finally, academics, donors and even some aid agencies have begun measuring what works. Very slowly, development is becoming a science. A nationwide real estate downturn, stalling exports and declining consumer confidence have produced what a Chinese cabinet adviser, quoted on the official government Web site on Thursday, characterized as a “sharp slowdown in the economy.” 
A new law allows an easier path to sex reassignment surgery and goes beyond similar legislation in places like Britain and Spain.
Argentina has put in place some of the most liberal rules on changing gender in the world, allowing people to alter their gender on official documents without first having to receive a psychiatric diagnosis or surgery... 
The food crisis in west and central Africa is affecting 18 million people across an area as wide as the US. Poor rainfall and rising food prices are to blame. This happened before when I was very young, and people still talk about those times today. I never expected it to happen again in the 21st century. But it has, and the communities I visited with Oxfam, in Mauritania and northern Senegal, and others throughout the Sahel are living on the brink.... 
How did one of the world's most promising democracies melt down so quickly? And what does Thailand's regression tell us about the strength -- or lack thereof -- of democracy in many developing countries?
Indeed, Thailand suffers from several of the problems that have plagued other emerging democracies, such as Pakistan, the Philippines, Russia, and Venezuela, and have led to their regression over the past five years -- a period that monitoring groups like Freedom House have marked as a global rollback of democracy... With the U.S.-India relationship in solid shape, India will be watching the U.S. presidential race for how the outcome will affect policies on China, Pakistan, and other issues crucial to Delhi.
The Indian chattering classes have always shown a keen but general interest in the U.S. presidential campaigns. With expanding Indian stakes in the United States, there is growing awareness of how political developments within the United States can affect Indian interest... 
This Independent Task Force asserts that Turkey is an increasingly influential regional and economic power and calls for the United States and Turkey to forge a new partnership. African banana producers are worried about the possible decrease in custom tariffs for exporters from Central America (Ecuador, Colombia and Costa Rica). According to Apibana (African Pineapples and Bananas Association), the African export to Europe will decrease by 15% whilst the American export will increase by 17% because of the changes....
According to Apibana it is important to invest in the African production and that this is improved. The organisation has been allocated an amount of 190 million euro (for three years) in order to improve its competitive position, especially by improving the infrastructure and working conditions of the producers. 
Participants at a follow-up meeting to the Busan conference on aid effectiveness have agreed a set of indicators that will provide the basis for a global monitoring framework for development assistance. The extent to which emerging donors will sign up to these indicators remains unclear, however, as their participation will be on a voluntary basis, as specified in last year's outcome document in South Korea. Pretrial discussions began on Wednesday in a rare public interest lawsuit whose plaintiffs include non-governmental environmental organizations.
There is nothing inherently good or bad about a currency going up or down, an economist argues.
As the Indian rupee continues to fall in global markets, many respected analysts contend that the weakening currency signals the failure of the economic policies of the Indian government. With all due respect to these eminent economists and others in the media who have been opining in a similar fashion, the charge that the rupee’s misfortune principally reflects the government’s policy failures cannot be decisively established on the basis of the evidence at hand.... |
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