Implications for Aid Practice - From the Citizen Perspective and The Global Perspective

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I have been having an ongoing discussion on leveraging social media on behalf of the Millennium Development Goals in one of the End POVERTY / Fim POBREZA forums. I am not claiming to be an expert in this area, just an interested participant. This blog is basically my ongoing personal attempt to marry Web 2.0 to global activism. Below are other online resources found in my web-trekking. They are very extensive and expansive resources so rather then trying to post fully about them here I am including then under Learning More About the Issues and Supporting Millenium Development Goals "In the Trenches".

Development Gateway Foundation and dgCommunities are sites created with professionals in mind, but they are also great educational resources, including the article Millennium Development Goals at Midpoint: Where do we Stand and Where do we Need to go?

The Development Gateway Foundation is an international nonprofit organization that provides Web-based platforms to make aid and development efforts more effective around the world.

It envisions a world in which the digital revolution serves people everywhere – creating greater opportunity through increased access to critical information; greater reliance on local capabilities; and more effective, better coordinated international aid.

dgCommunities is both a place to find knowledge resources focused on development issues and an interactive space where you can share your own work, participate in discussions, find people with similar interests and more. We have more than 36,000 members worldwide - and over half are in developing countries.

Web-Based Platforms for Effective Aid and Development

The foundation provides Web-based platforms for more effective aid and development efforts around the world focusing on three areas where even small investments in information and communications technology can make a major difference:

• Effective government – enabling better aid management and coordination, and more efficient and transparent government procurement.
• Knowledge sharing and collaboration – leveraging the Internet for online communications among development practitioners worldwide.
• Local partner programs in nearly 50 countries – connecting developing country organizations into a global network to empower them to use information and communications technologies to bolster local development efforts.

Areas of interest are the focus on Aid Effectiveness and Best Practices, which included the article that first brought me to this online resource, Implications for Aid Practice: Taking a citizen’s perspective (pdf).

Memo to Obama Transition Team and World Re: Environmental To-do List

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I am a a member of the group Eco20/20 at Diigo.com. The most prolific member of that group is Energy Net. Below are just some of the links he has made available recently. These are the ones I thought had a particular tie in with the Millennium Development Goal 7. Environmental Sustainability.

• Eco-Report to Obama Transition Team - Add comment Diigo Tags: energy energy.news ecology
• Gore's Poznań speech is online: "We cannot negotiate with the facts." - Add comment Diigo Tags: energy energy.news climatechange gore
  
• Old Coal Mines Adapted to Generate Geothermal Energy - Add comment Diigo Tags: energy energy.news geothermal coal
  
• Green Car Congress: Report: China to Put 60,000 New Energy Vehicles Into Trials in 11 Cities - Add comment Diigo Tags: energy energy.news cars
  
• Climate Control: Germany Reaches Kyoto Emissions Commitments - SPIEGEL ONLINE - Add comment Diigo Tags: energy energy.news kyoto germany climatechange
  
  

World Wide AIDS the Tragedy

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Today is is World AIDS Day and Bloggers Unite once again across the globe to focus attention on this issue. This is truly a millennium challenge for the planet, 6. Combat HIV/AIDS and other diseases. Fellow Blogger Unite of the blog Leftorium, il blog Riformista provided the synopsis below which clearly demonstrates the global impact of this disease.

Today there are about 33 million people living with AIDS worldwide. This virus affects both the more developed countries and those in developing countries. This virus affects both the more developed countries and those in developing countries. In the latter, however, are not available in any way, the expensive treatments and therapies used in richer countries. In the latter, however, are not available in any way, the expensive treatments and therapies used in richer countries. This is why the mortality rate is not only very high but, in fact, increases every year that passes. This is why the mortality rate is not only very high but, in fact, increases every year that passes. AIDS is now considered a real pandemic in Africa, India and South-East Asia. AIDS is now considered a real pandemic in Africa, India and South-East Asia.[translated from Italian by Google Translator]

All posts on this blog are explorations in learning, there isn't any claim to expertise or knowledge. These posts will explore current trends in this area using the resources made available by this blogsite. TED is one resource for inspiration, sometimes through poetry, sometimes through shock, sometimes both. Leftorium correctly describes the problem in one sense, but Kristen Asburn in the TED video does so in a far more poignant sense giving us a sense of what we trying to overcome.

In this moving talk from TED, documentary photographer Kristen Ashburn shares unforgettable images of the human impact of AIDS in Africa. (Recorded February 2003 in Monterey, California. Duration: 4:36.)

It is important to remember that for much of the developing world, AIDS is only one threat and often, such as AIDS and tuberculosis, they can strike together. So what is being done about on a global basis? Not enough according to EurActiv.com on 11/14/08, which reported on the story EU urged to fund research on 'terrible triangle' of disease. According to the story, the European Commission is failing to pay its "fair share" in funding research into the main poverty-related killers HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, according to health NGOs.

Speaking at a conference on poverty-related diseases on 13 November, EU Research Commissioner Janez Potočnik acknowledged that "sitting in our comfortable European homes, with well-developed healthcare systems, it is all too easy to forget about the pernicious impact that infectious disease has across the world".

This is one area where one needs to credit the United States and George Bush for actually having made some improvement, while still remembering that America has not met its Millennium Devleopment Goal promises yet.

The problem doesn't stop with governments not doing enough. Pharmaceutical companies are also not stepping up in many cases as this Oxfam report and video below demonstrate.

Oxfam, an international NGO, deplored that "after years of scientific progress, still less than 10% of all medical research is being dedicated to diseases afflicting more than 90% of the world's population". "R&D that focuses on the developing world's urgent needs is still highly dependent and driven by intellectual property, even though this system is demonstrably failing the poor," noted Oxfam's policy advisor Rohit Malpani.

Another reality of undeveloped and developing countries not found to anywhere near the same extent in developed countries is that AIDS substantially impacts children.

Children and HIV and AIDS

Over twenty-five years into the acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) epidemic, the children in its path remain at grave risk. In 2007, it was estimated that 2.1 million children under 15 years old were living with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), and 290,000 children died of AIDS and 420,000 children were newly infected. Over 15 million children under 18 have lost one or both parents to AIDS, and millions more have been made vulnerable. Children affected by HIV and AIDS may experience poverty, homelessness, school drop-out, discrimination, loss of life opportunity, and early death.

This is only one pathway one could take to learn of the suffering caused by AIDS and the problems of facing the challenge. Hundreds of others will be taken by others on Bloggers Unite.

Related posts
World Wide AIDS Day Business Struggles Business Answers
World Wide HIV/AIDS Looking For Solutions

World Wide AIDS Day Business Struggles Business Answers

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This blog holds the belief that it will be impossible for governments or with entities substantially dependent upon governments to succeed alone in meeting any of the Millennium Development Goals. It also holds the belief that implementing global health care systems to address challenges such as HIV/AIDS will require sound business practices. Those business practices in turn require global reach into some of the poorest countries and that can be provided through United Nation resources, many of which are highlight within these posts. It is going to require a partnership, it is going to required thousands of partnerships.

One of the resources of this website is the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, found under Global News Sources, which reports on both the good and bad acts of businesses around the world. The articles below are a sampling taken from their site.

They reported on 11/28/08 that Levi Strauss & Co. Commemorates World AIDS Day 2008 by making a grant to the HIV Collaborative Fund to support people living with HIV/AIDS around the globe in their fight for treatment, care and support.

The role of businesses in addressing AIDS is not limited to large American companies. While we may think of AIDS in Africa being an affliction of the absolutely destitute, business enterprises in Ethiopia are also exploring means of addressing the challenge by translating intent into action in Ethiopia 11/27/08.

The Ethiopian Business Coalition against HIV/AIDS(EBCA) [a subsidiary of , GTZ Engineering Capacity Building Program, the World Bank Institute and the Rapid Results Institute implemented a pilot programme to achieve rapid HIV results within businesses in Ethiopia in 100 days Tadesse Tekallign of Crown Cork and Can Share Company [said],The pilot project is creating new best practices on HIV in Ethiopia's private sector. The companies are finding their own solutions and tackling challenges quickly.

This article is from Tanzania. 18 media houses launch HIV/Aids policies [Tanzania] 16 Nov 2008.

A landmark step in the fight against HIV/AIDS in Tanzania's media industry is to be marked today when 18 media houses launch their workplace policies on HIV/AIDS…The policies…[will address] prevention, treatment, care, support and reduction of stigma and discrimination within the media houses.

This report from two days earlier on 11/26/08 is on the views of a United Nations Development Programme expert on HIV/Aids in the Arab region who urged a private sector role in Aids awareness [Qatar]. UNDP Regional HIV/Aids and UNAIDS Joint United Nations Program on AIDS are two of many programs of the United Nations addressing global health and HIV/AIDS.

Speaking at a Qatar Petroleum HIV/Aids workshop, HARPAS UNDP Regional HIV/Aids [of the UNAIDS Joint United Nations Program on AIDS] programme co-ordinator for Arab states Dr Khadija Moalla said it is high time for the private sector to get 'smart' and make interventions on HIV in order to halt the spread of the disease among young adults social and health planning adviser at Dr Laila Ishrair the General Secretariat for Development Planning hinted that a draft law on human rights of people living with HIV will be sent[to] the Minister of Health, the law include[s] rights to work, to housing, to treatment as well as protection against discrimination.

Again, these are only some of the examples that can be found on the web. Other avenues of inquiry could include what is the economic impact of fighting against AIDS in a developing country. Jeffrey Sachs chaired a World Health Organization commission looking at the links between epidemic disease and economic stagnation, and to play a part in the setting up of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria. Here are other HIV/AIDS articles from the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre.

Related posts
World Wide AIDS the Tragedy
World Wide HIV/AIDS Looking For Solutions

World Wide HIV/AIDS Looking For Solutions

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This final post in the series looks at global resources available to help overcome this challenge. The resources cited below were found at SciDev.Net of Science and Development Network, which "is a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to providing reliable and authoritative information about science and technology for the developing world."

AIDS Education Global Information System

AEGiS, a non-profit organization that is a web-based reference for HIV/AIDS information. AEGiS is a virtual HIV/AIDS library containing reference materials and late-breaking information from HIV/AIDS-specific publications and news sources from around the world. [I must admit to having seen an article on SciDev which raised some ethical concerns, but I can't find it now]

International AIDS Vaccine Initiative

IAVI’s mission is to ensure the development of safe, effective, accessible, preventive HIV vaccines for use throughout the world. IAVI is a global not-for-profit, public-private partnership working to accelerate the development of a vaccine to prevent HIV infection and AIDS. Founded in 1996, IAVI researches and develops vaccine candidates, conducts policy analyses, and serves as an advocate for the field with offices in Africa, India, and Europe.

The World Health Organization's approach to HIV/AIDs is to recommend that Universal voluntary testing, immediate treatment can reduce HIV cases

26 November 2008 | GENEVA -- Universal and annual voluntary testing followed by immediate antiretroviral therapy treatment (irrespective of clinical stage or CD4 count) can reduce new HIV cases by 95% within 10 years, according to new findings based on a mathematical model developed by a group of HIV specialists in WHO. The findings were published in The Lancet¹ today to stimulate discussion, debate and further research.

Finally, what of the future? One perspective comes from the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), Health equity, the financial crisis and Obama: Where next?

Amartya Sen put it succinctly when he commented on the report; ‘this WHO Commission has concentrated on the badly neglected causal linkages that have to be adequately understood and remedied’.

Global health debates too often focus on biomedical aspects of health and those working in this area rarely have space, place, opportunity or desire to link up with those working on the social science aspects.

During his campaign, for example, Obama pledged to increase spending on child and maternal health, and not at the expense of related important areas like HIV and AIDS. These policies are reinforced by a focus on health infrastructure (see the policy for Global Health Infrastructure by 2020), which will be vital to ensure equitable and context-specific service delivery. Another area in which the Obama administration is singing in tune with the Commission’s report is the focus on improving health-care systems to prevent the ‘brain drain’ of health human resources i.e. health professionals leaving the South for better pay in richer countries.

Finally, a story on a private/public partnership with community-based focus as a model for the future to address global health care. DHL partners with UNICEF to empower communities to improve child survival in Maharashtra via India Press Release by R & PM Edelman on 11/18/08. DHL's grant will fund a three-year UNICEF project to empower communities to improve child survival rates in 1,000 villages in Maharashtra.

"The partnership with DHL is a good example of the private sector taking the initiative to champion developmental concerns in rural India complementing the Government's commitment to 'inclusive growth'," said Mr.Vijay Satbir Singh, Secretary of Women & Child Development in Maharashtra, at the partnership ceremony launch.

"Community involvement is the key to sustainable development. If we are serious about improving child survival and reducing maternal mortality, we must give youth and their families the tools that will enable them to survive and lead healthy lives," said Karin Hulshof, UNICEF Representative in India.

Related posts
World Wide AIDS the Tragedy
World Wide AIDS Day Business Struggles Business Answers

Dec. 1st Bloggers Unite Blog for World Aids Day

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Bloggers Unite is taking on another issue affecting millions. On December 1st, 2008, BlogCatalog members will be joining with the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of HIV/AIDS Policy's AIDS.gov for Bloggers Unite For World AIDS Day. Their basic approach: We Need Your Help! As this campaign is directly related to the Millennium Goal No. 6. Combat HIV/AIDS and other diseases, this blog will be taking a global perspective on this issue. There are an estimated 33 million people with AIDS worldwide. It affects every country, city, and town in the world. And, the most frightening thing about it is that is going largely unchecked. In fact, that is one of the reason that worldaidscampaign.org is continuing its "leadership" theme, which it developed after learning that many leaders who promised to support AIDS were not keeping their promises. Unlike most campaigns where we hope awareness led to action, this is one campaign where awareness is action! If even just 10 percent of our members get involved, we can reach an estimated 4 million blog readers. And if half of our members participate, we can reach 20 million. And if all bloggers participate, we can reach the entire world. The BlogCatalog Team
BlogCatalog.com · 7162 Eckhert Road · San Antonio, TX · 78238

Millennium Project on Trade Fair & Free

Sphere: Related Content Rav Casley Gera, late of the African Development for the Completely Bloody Ignorant blog, did a post on back on 1/28/08, which is about how late he has been. Rav provides policy suggestions from the U.N. Overview Report A Practical Plan to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals section 3. Recommendations for the international system to support country-level processes. (pdf). I am paraphrasing here, as usual you can go to his article for more indepth information.

Rav recognizes what the UN argues in their 2004 report on strategies to meet the Millennium Development Goals that the "the slogan 'trade, not aid' is misguided." (p46). "Trade, not aid" is a common refrain used by conservatives arguing against increasing aid to Africa, but also by an increasing number of social entrepreneurs seeking to move beyond government foreign aid which is not sustainable. The debate is no less intense as two past posts from my other blog indicate. A Question of Nets Malaria and Social Aid A Question of Nets Malaria and Social Aid 2

Trade and aid are not mutually exclusive. Trading with other countries has helped transform Asian developing economies and slashed poverty. It is not the whole story and it is not a choice of either supplying aid to help keep people alive or compelling trade to force developing countries to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. First, you have to have boots.

The report is also explicit in its belief that, "in the long term, free trade is in everyone's best interest", meaning that both free trade and fair trade must be realized to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. Putting these two concepts together in the same beaker may be more difficult than combining the concepts of private trade and public aid. Rav provides an example by pointing out that the UN report is at odds with the Commission for Africa, whose own report emphasized poor countries' right to protect their economies (pdf). I won't deny the need for poor countries to protect their economies, which is one of the premises of fair trade, the challenge will be in creating the correct balance, the argument will be on where the point of balance is.

Abolish agricultural subsidies. They are both expensive and harm poor countries by making exports from rich countries cheaper than goods grown at home! (p46). Rich countries are being neither fair nor free in their practice. For the first I will turn to to this Stigliz article from the Ghana Graphic Online and for the second to my favorite Libertarian-light economist Tyler Cowen – Kill the Farm Bill.

Manufactured goods made in poor countries when exported to rich countries face crippling import tariffs that make them too expensive to succeed. Because rich countries have agreed various free-trade initiatives through groupings like the EU, many place higher tariffs on goods from poor countries than on goods from other rich countries.

Barriers placed by developing countries are meant to prevent goods flowing in from rich countries, also act as trade barriers between fellow poor countries - preventing, for example, trade between neighboring African states, which could both help those economies grow, but also help reduce conflict between African states. The UN report calls for a quick reduction to zero of tariffs on imports of nonagricultural goods proposing a deadline of 2025 for the removal of their barriers for developing countries and 2015 for rich countries. (p46-7). Meaning that there is a ten (10) year gap before fair trade and free trade are effectively blended together. Prior to that time they are likely to be an admixture of competing policies and philosophies.

Rav also looks at free trade in services being a controversial idea, "with many arguing that poor countries could be forced to sell off their remaining public services and to remove regulations on things like banking to fulfill the requirements of the World Trade Organization's GATS initiative". UNESCO has raised the issue of education, university quality and mobility in the past. The GATS initiative is another example of a practice I need to learn more about where developing countries struggle with their own economic engines, but developing countries get to write the owner's manual. I am not saying it is necessarily wrong just needs to be studied more. More on that and other issues raised by Rav in another post.

The Darker Side of Biofuel

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Ending hunger is usually the first thing one thinks about when thinking about the Millennium Development Goals. Another important goal is environmental sustainability. What happens when they are put into conflict with each other?

Biofuels: Burning Food? via Allianz Knowledge / Latest Articles on 10/20/08 asks,

Are biofuels responsible for higher food prices and a growing number of hungry people? Terri Raney, senior economist at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), explains the links between food and fuel.

"Biofuels demand is likely to keep basic food commodity prices 10 to 15 percent higher than they would have been otherwise."

Terri Raney, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

Business & Human Rights Resource Centre on 10/20/08 introduced us to an even darker side with The Gates of Hell - Jungle takes a look at the lesser known side of the ethanol boom.

My task is to translate, photograph, film and get permission to accompany the Brasilian government's Mobile Group on a rescue mission to release men, women and children being forced to work in sub-human conditions...[by] unscrupulous land owners...since 1995, 30,000 slaves have been freed.

Other earlier posts from my blogs dealing with biofuels have included:

• Good Intentions: Biofuels / Bad Consequences: Worse Than Gasoline And Better As Food?
• Energy And Politics Bio-Fuels And Barack
• Financial Fears * Global Challenges * Some Potential Answers

Tear up the Myanmar junta's insurance

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This blog's latest online action was with the Bloggers Unite campaign in support of refugees. Another group that has had a number of worthwhile campaigns has been Avaaz. Here are some past campaigns supported by this blog Using the Web to take action is Change, Adding your voice to a cause is Change and What the world including me is saying to Obama. Burma has also been a topic for this blog with Refugees Across the Globe - A Millennium Problem, Open Architecture Network - Making a difference with the Web and Triangular Scale and with my other blog, Pathways to New Paradigms Even In A Digital World It Takes Real Heart To Make Change, Revisiting The Past Creating the Future and Burma Burning. Below is the latest action from Avaaz concerning Burma.

Dear friends, Myanmar

Burma is far from the headlines - but we've found a real pressure point, the insurers who prop up the junta's economic interests. Read the email and take action now!

A year after their crackdown, Burma's military dictators remain entrenched, propped up by dealings with Western companies. But the Burmese democracy movement has found a powerful pressure point -- many of the Generals' West-linked business ventures depend on one insurer: Lloyd's of London.[1]

Lloyd's is the world's oldest, most respected insurer, and cares a great deal about its global reputation -- by pointing out Lloyd's blameworthiness as key insurance deals come up for renewal, we can shift their cost-benefit calculations on support to the Burmese regime.

If enough of us email and call key decision-makers at Lloyd's this week, we could shame them into pulling out of this dirty trade, undermining the hardliners and creating pressure for human rights and the release of political prisoners like democratically elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Follow this link to lend a hand to the Burmese people.

Lloyd's of London is the umbrella and overseer for hundreds of specialist insurance syndicates, and it can stop their dirty trade if it so chooses. Already many big global insurers have stopped insuring junta-linked businesses – after Lloyd's, the generals will start to run out of options. We'll ramp up the pressure by alerting the media to our campaign, specialist insurance publications included. Even the British government has begun to ask Lloyd's to cease its business with the Burmese military junta.[2]

If we win, the regime will be thrown onto the back foot, Burma's people will be immensely heartened, and the UN Secretary-General will have a greater chance of securing the release of Aung San Suu Kyi and other prisoners this December.[3] Together, our individual small acts are becoming irresistible. We can't forget Burma.

With hope and determination,

Paul, Alice, Iain, Graziela, Ricken, Pascal, Paula, Brett, Veronique, Milena -- the entire Avaaz team

Sources:

1. The Observer: "The baron who holds Burma's purse strings", 2 November 2008

Reinsurance Magazine: Big insurers including Marsh, Swiss Re, AON pull out:

Arab Insurance Group and XL also pull out

2. "Foreign Office warns Lloyd's over Burma"

3. As Ban Ki-Moon prepares to visit, Asia-Europe summit in Beijing calls for release of political prisoners:


ABOUT AVAAZ
Avaaz.org is an independent, not-for-profit global campaigning organization that works to ensure that the views and values of the world's people inform global decision-making. (Avaaz means "voice" in many languages.) Avaaz receives no money from governments or corporations, and is staffed by a global team based in Ottawa, London, Rio de Janeiro, New York, Paris, Sydney and Geneva.

Click here to learn more about Avaaz's largest campaigns.

Bloggers Unite For Refugees Aftermath

Sphere: Related Content Bloggers Unite For Refugees

On Monday November 10th, the BlogCatalog community came together like never before. According to BlogPulse, blog posts about refugees nearly doubled. According to Google search, more than 12,000 bloggers wrote about Bloggers Unite For Refugees. More than 2,500 included our program partner Refugees United (refunite.org), which provides refugees with an anonymous forum to reconnect with missing family.

This was my first time participating with this group. They are now featured as a permanent widget on the right-hand column. Aira of the blog It'll be alright organized the majority of the posts under one thread and tied the whole affair together rather nicely in her own post.

It seems a small thing, I know. But the net itself is made of small pages, like mine and like the web pages of the over 10 thousand bloggers part of the Bloggers Unite. Ten thousand stories and thoughts for giving voice to 40 million refugees, for making known an association that help people for real. And to put in practice an expression I read on the Refugees United’s page and – with its simplicity – seemed to me such fundamental: spread the world.

I have signed up both with the current group and for an invitation to be part of the launching of Bloggers Unite as it's own social cause event site where bloggers and social cause organizers will be able to communicate and rally around causes. These efforts do have an impact.

With the average contributing blogger reaching 200 readers, the plight of refugees may have reached as many 2.5 million readers, many of whom took action on Monday by writing letters to government officials and making donations to several worthwhile nonprofit organizations. The volume of posts also attracted the attention from Ode Magazine in California to the blog of Raju Nrisettiof, who writes for the The Wall Street Journal in India. This excludes the ongoing coverage of refugees by traditional media, which has been covering the estimated 100,000 refugees currently trapped in the Congo.

Despite current economic climate Science moves forward Will USA provide leadership for a better world?

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One reason for maintaining my support for the free enterprise system despite the current economic crisis, which I blame on what I am calling uber-capitalism, is that I still see free enterprise as the best means of fueling innovation, including scientific innovation. That may be in part why SciDev.Net calls for the United States to take a lead role in advancing science as a means of addressing the challenges of the Millennium Development Goals.

SciDev.Net says that according to an editorial in Nature,science is on the rise. "Science and innovation continue to grow in developing countries, despite the current economic climate."

Quotes: Science on the rise, despite current economic climate - SciDev.Net

• According to a report published by TWAS, The Academy of Sciences for the Developing World, even smaller countries such as Chile, Malaysia, Rwanda and Vietnam are prioritising investment in higher education and technology.
• Whereas countries borrowing from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank were previously told to cut back on government spending, now there is talk of rebuilding and strengthening public institutions. And this is likely to be the case for both richer and poorer nations. Read more »

The same SciDev.Net makes the case that the world's poor deserve better US leadership. Not just more funding, but the vision of leadership. "The US election has implications for science and foreign aid policy, and so for the poorest people across the developing world."

Quotes: The world's poor deserve better US leadership - SciDev.Net

• Enhancing efforts to tackle global poverty will be particularly important; not just by providing direct assistance like food aid, but also by helping poor countries improve their science and technology capacities.
• The more that the United States becomes identified with such efforts, the less it will be accused of merely pursuing its own commercial and military interests. And the more that such countries generate sustainable economic growth, feed their people and create new jobs, the less they will become breeding grounds for fundamentalist-driven protest. Read more »

To do this the US science office must promote global collaboration according to SciDev.Net."The White House science office must boost science and technology for international cooperation on many fronts, says Rodney W. Nichols."

Quotes: US science office must promote global collaboration - SciDev.Net

• In November 2008, a report from the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington DC (OSTP 2.0) outlined best practices for global responsibilities in the OSTP. These include: leading international S&T policy and activities in organisations such as the G8, World Bank, and all major bilateral and multilateral S&T initiatives; and working with the State Department and USAID, as well as other parts of the US government, to put S&T at the heart of development strategies.

• In the United States, as in most developed countries, tight science budgets are subject to increasingly stringent tests to justify their contribution to national wealth or productivity — leading to international cooperation being seen as either "giving away knowledge" or a "humanitarian luxury". Such scepticism is unwarranted. A rising tide of international research collaboration — for example to develop safe and reliable nuclear power — will help lift all the national boats of economic development. Protectionism and hyper-nationalism are the enemies of the world's scientific progress. Almost all private companies — from General Electric to Microsoft, from Intel to Pfizer — realise that cross-national collaboration in research, development, manufacturing, marketing and distribution is essential. It is time the government does too.

• Modern research and development (R&D) toward socio-economic goals absolutely demand global links, and this need intensifies every day.
• The government's next big hurdle is reforming the entire ensemble of US foreign aid, which totals almost US$25 billion, to infuse S&T into all goals aimed at improving the lives of people in the developing world. Read more »

Obama best for the Globe according to Europe

Sphere: Related Content The following two articles from EurActiv.com are both from before the election, but they still indicate where we now stand in relation with Europe on the global stage. According to the first article, Obama seen as best to deal with global woes, "both Americans and Europeans agree that Barack Obama is better suited than his rival John McCain to addressing global issues such as the financial crisis and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a new study shows ahead of US presidential elections on 4 November."

Quotes: EurActiv.com - Obama seen as best to deal with global woes

• Obama is seen as the better candidate, both by Americans and Europeans, to deal with the financial crisis and its impact on the economy, which both sides cite as the most urgent issues the new US president should address, ahead of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. But Americans are far more concerned about their own economy (85%), while Europeans instead worry about the global situation. Read more »

One point of possible contention could be trade and globalization. I still lean towards globalization in my views but with Fair Trade policies enacted. Whether that is actually doable is another matter. It was some of Barack Obama's early perspectivies on Free Trade that sealed my support for him. He did change the rhetoric during the campaign, but as John Glenn of the German Marshall Fund told EurActiv in an interview, Barack Obama is unlikely to convert his protectionist rhetoric into concrete policies.

Quotes: EurActiv.com - Scholar: Obama protectionism mere 'election talk'

• But I think that it would be a mistake to see him as sort of traditional Democrat who is driven by concerns over, say, the vote of trade unions and would be dramatically different because I think that we are really talking about a different person than say, President Clinton, who really shifted the Democratic party in terms of trade. I think this is a difference of degree over a hardened approach to trade rather than a fundamental approach. Read more »

What the world including me is saying to Obama

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Hi, I have sent a message to new US president Barack Obama which is going up on the Avaaz's Global Message-to-Obama Wall in Washington DC-- people all over the world are sending messages and photos.

Dear President Obama:

As citizens across the world, we congratulate you on your election, and celebrate your campaign commitments to sign a strong new global treaty on climate change, close Guantanamo prison and end torture, withdraw carefully from Iraq, and double aid to fight poverty. No one country or leader can meet the world's most pressing challenges alone, but working together as one world in a spirit of dialogue and cooperation, yes we can bring real and lasting change.

In just the first 24 hours, over 150,000 people (make that now over 220,000) from 189 countries (make that now 224 countries) have signed and sent a message for Barack Obama to our huge global wall in the centre of Washington DC, and it has been covered on CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera and in the US on front pages of two of the biggest newspapers and on the evening news!

If you haven't already, follow the link to see the Wall and send your message to friends and family who might want to join in:

With hope,

Ricken, Graziela, Iain, Brett, Paul, Alice, Milena, Paula, Ben, the whole Avaaz Team and tagging along with millions of others Brian Dowling.

Here are some key campaign promises made by Barack Obama:

• - Reduce the US's carbon emissions 80 by 2050 and play a strong positive role in negotiating a binding global treaty to replace the expiring Kyoto Protocol
• - Withdraw all combat troops from Iraq within 16 months and keep no permanent bases in the country
• - Establish a clear goal of eliminating all nuclear weapons across the globe
• - Close the Guantanamo Bay detention center
• - Double US aid to cut extreme poverty in half by 2015 and accelerate the fight against HIV/AIDS, tuberculoses and Malaria
• - Open diplomatic talks with countries like Iran and Syria, to pursue peaceful resolution of tensions
• - De-politicize military intelligence to avoid ever repeating the kind of manipulation that led the US into Iraq
• - Launch a major diplomatic effort to stop the killings in Darfur
• - Invest $150 billion over ten years to support renewable energy and get 1 million plug-in electric cars on the road by 2015

Refugees Across the Globe - A Millennium Problem

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The last few days have been filled with more learning, studying and research (as well as "real" life work) than in actually writing anything in either of my blogs. Today, however, is the 10th of November and I had committed to creating a post on Refugees on behalf of BloggersUnite. Their work is focusing on Refugees Unite. My post is going to tie this issue with that of the Millennium Development Goals.

There is the question of how many in the world are now refugees because the Millennium Goals have not, and in many of those countries more likely to have refugees populations, are not close to being met.

Refugees face all of the problems that the Millennium Development Goals endeavor to address. Those problems are made far worse because these families are without a country. Getting essential help to refugees is at a minimum difficult, because they are in remote and isolated locations often decimated by natural causes or war, and is in many cases dangerous.

I decided that for this post that I would see what was available from the resources I have connected to this blog. My research did find some successes as in this article from IRIN NEPAL: Bhutanese refugees find new life beyond the camps

Thousands of Bhutanese refugees in Nepal have been successfully resettled in seven countries, including the USA, Australia, New Zealand, Netherlands, Norway, Denmark and Canada, according to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR).

In other news from Business and Human Rights PricewaterhouseCoopers donates $4 million to educate Darfur's refugees. SciDev.Net cites the work of International Organisation for Migration

The IOM was established in 1951 as an intergovernmental organisation to resettle European displaced persons, refugees and migrants.

The news, however, is usually catastrophic as in this International Tribune story Congo refugee camp hit by cholera outbreak. Unlike many migrants in the world today, refugees did not make the choice to leave their homes, it was forced upon them. Sometimes by nature, but all too often by malignant force, IPS writes on the crimes against humanity including refugees by the Myanmar Junta.

An increasing number of refugees have been crossing over to northern Thailand from among the Karen ethnic community, the second largest ethnic group in Burma, or Myanmar. Many of them live in the mountainous Karen State, the territory where South-east Asia's longest --and largely ignored -- separatist conflict is being waged between Burmese troops and the armed wing of the Karen National Union (KNU).

''Myanmar's troops are overtly targeting civilians; they are actively avoiding KNU military installations. That is why we are describing the attacks as 'crimes against humanity','' says Benjamin Zawacki, South-east Asia researcher for Amnesty International (AI), the global rights lobby. ''The violations are widespread and systematic.''

We must also look to ourselves when blaming others for the blight of refugees. The Overseas Development Institute posted last year on the blight of Iraqi refugees.

The United Nations deals with these problems around the world. Thousands of refugees from Darfur remain along volatile border, Chad: UN distributes aid to refugees left homeless after camp, (more results from www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp), UNRWA: palestine refugees, or What's Going On?: Child Refugees in Tanzania are just a few examples.

There are dozens of more examples that could be found. What is made obvious is that these tragedies are prevalent across the globe and persistent in their nature. Unlike the Millennium Development Goals, which though consisting of 8 goals are seen interrelated and requiring comprehensive action, refugee crises seem to be seen as separate problems. If the world were a human body, the problem of refugees would be analogous to the symptoms of a disease such as cancer, but the challenges of the Millennium Development Goals would be analogous to the underlying disease itself. If you treat only the symptoms you will never address the underlying cause. If the Millennium Goals were now in place so that disasters and war were not as capable of pushing countries beyond the brink of disaster, then would that make the problem of refugees in the world so much easier to prevent and to address.

November 10th, Bloggers Unite for Refugees

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I received the following e-mail from the folks at blogcatalog.

This Nov. 10, all eyes will be on BlogCatalog members and bloggers who participate in Bloggers Unite For Refugees. Will you be one of them?

Ever since we started helping bloggers unite for different causes, we've proven that a little good can go a long way in making the world a better place.

This time, because of our work to increase human rights awareness, many members chose to go one step further to raise awareness for refugees — people who are impacted by these issues. So, on Nov. 10, thousands of bloggers will write about the various challenges faced by the 11 million people who have no country to call home and the 40 million more who have been displaced because of war and natural disasters.

*YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE*

By writing just one post for this cause, you can help raise awareness about refugees and help our partner, Refugees United, connect with local non-government organizations (NGOs) to help refugees in their search for lost loved ones. Their goal is to reunite children with parents, husbands with wives, and family members with friends.

Participating is easy and you can learn more about this event at http://unite.blogcatalog.com. There, you will find action badges, source material for blog posts, and more information about these people who have no country to call home.

With you help, I know we can encourage thousands of more bloggers to get involved and make Bloggers Unite For Refugees as successful as our last event with Amnesty International. It's one of those events that even if we reunite just one family, then we have made an immeasurable impact on the world. Thanks so much for your continued support! We really look forward to reading your posts and the posts of your friends on Nov. 10!

Thanks,
The BlogCatalog Team

-------------------

P.S. We are launching a whole new Bloggers Unite in the coming weeks, make sure to stop by http://www.bloggersunite.org/ and sign up to be notified when it launches!

The site also offers some good resources.

• Learn more about this global problem

  Below are some great links and resouces to help get you started blogging.

  UK Refugee Services
  

  Lutheran Refugee Services
  

  Aotearoa-New Zealand Refugee Services
  

  United States Committee for Refugees and Immigrant Children
  

  Church World Service Immigrant & Refugee Program
  

  Women's Commission for Refugee Women & Children
  

  Additional Links/Resources
  http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/protect?id=3b8265c7a
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refugees
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statelessness
  http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/in_depth/world/2001/road_to_refuge/default.stm

• On November 10th get the word out and blog about Refugees.

• Spread the love, share your post in the Bloggers Unite Group.

Financial Fears * Global Challenges * Some Potential Answers

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The Center for Global Development on 10/19/08 wrote about an interview of CGD president Nancy Birdsall by National Public Radio regarding the financial crisis' impact on foreign assistance to poor countries - Experts Fear Financial Crisis Will Hurt World's Poor (National Public Radio).

'When a country is hit by a crisis, there will be a decline in aid in the subsequent couple of years," says Nancy Birdsall, who runs the center, which promotes policies to fight poverty. "There has been a return to trend in the past: Sweden's aid flows declined after its banking crisis in the early '90s, and Japan's aid flows declined when it had its problems in the '90s, but they have come back.'

One of the members of End POVERTY / Fim POBREZA, SpongeBob (likely not his real name) introduced me to this report from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). A "laundry" list of what the IFPRI is calling for covers a number of the Millennium Development Goals. The report and information on the IFPRI itself is provided below. The challenges raised by the IFPRI are only made greater by the outlook from the Center For Global Development. Even obtaining the most hopeful of outcomes in the American elections could still potentially mean a diminishing of the United State's future role, at least for a time, though it will likely be greater than what exists currently.

• The Challenge of Hunger 2008

  diigo tags: hunger, mdgs, mdg, GHI

  Combating the food crisis will require
  
  1. More food aid for poor people;
  2. Much greater investments in agriculture - especially the small farm sector;
  3. More investment in social protection programs and social sectors - education & health;
  4. Reforms to create a fair world trading system;
  5. Changes to biofuel policies;
  6. Measures to calm global food markets;
  7. Better data collection and improved monitoring of the food and nutrition situation;
  8. More support for nongovernmental organizations that work on behalf of poor people in developing countries.

• The 2008 Global Hunger Index (GHI) shows that the world has made slow progress in reducing food insecurity since 1990, with dramatic differences among regions and countries. In the nearly two decades since 1990, some regions — South and Southeast Asia, the Near East and North Africa, and Latin America and the Caribbean — have made significant headway in improving food security. Nevertheless, the GHI remains high in South Asia. The GHI is similarly high in Sub-Saharan Africa, where progress has been marginal since 1990.

• About the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

  tags: ifpri, hunger, mdg, mdgs

  • IFPRI's Mission: To Provide Policy Solutions That Reduce Poverty and End Hunger and Malnutrition

    This mission flows from the CGIAR mission: "To achieve sustainable food security and reduce poverty in developing countries through scientific research and research-related activities in the fields of agriculture, livestock, forestry, fisheries, policy, and natural resources management."

  • Two key premises underlie IFPRI's mission:

    1. Sound and appropriate local, national, and international public policies are essential to achieving sustainable food security and nutritional improvement.
    
    
    2. Research and the dissemination of its results are critical inputs into the process of raising the quality of food policy debate and formulating sound and appropriate policies.

SciDev.Net , found below under Global News Sources, on 10/16/08 provided three essays, published by the same International Food Policy Research Institute, offering if not final answers to the food crisis then insightful perspectives on the global food crisis and how to deal with it.

Joachim von Braun, director-general of IFPRI, discusses high priority policy responses including: expanding emergency responses and humanitarian aid; freezing biofuel production; eradicating export bans and investing in rural infrastructure and agricultural research.

Josette Sheeran, executive director of the World Food Programme (WFP), discusses WFP activities, including their food-for-assets programme used to train local populations, school feeding for around 20 million children and disaster-preparedness activities including canal-building and river bed restoration. Sheeran calls for more agricultural research and higher investment across the value chain.

Namanga Ngongi, president of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, discusses the policy implications of high food prices for Africa. Policies are needed, he says, to create sustainable food production driven by advances in productivity rather than by expansion of cultivated area.

Change Initiative to Empower Adolescent Girls Investing in the Girl Effect

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The Business & Human Rights Resource Centre featured an article back on 10/21/08 on the World Bank Launches Private-Public Initiative to Empower Adolescent Girls

The World Bank joined governments and the private sector today to launch the Adolescent Girls Initiative (AGI) to promote the economic empowerment of adolescent girls in poor and post-conflict countries...The AGI is being piloted in Liberia through a partnership between the Bank, the Nike Foundation...It will be expanded in the coming year to include Afghanistan, Nepal, Rwanda, South Sudan......Every global company should invest in the girl effect. Economists have demonstrated that it is the best possible return on investment, said Mark Parker, President and CEO of Nike...

Somebody else who was impressed with this campaign was Nathaniel Whittemore. He discusses the power of good design in social ventures and Social Entrepreneurship at Change.org and he was surprised by the video's upbeat tone:

1. How refreshing that the viral nonprofit video of the last few years doesn't have a single picture of war, poverty, disease and death, and its message fundamentally comes down to "the solution may not be simple, but the start of the solution is."

The approach has not, however, been without controversy.

The U.S. Election and Science and Hope

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The next event of major importance to the United States, and arguably to the world, is the American Presidential Election. My political leanings put me squarely in the Barack Obama camp and have from the beginning of the primaries. The question for us in the States is how will President Obama govern? Here is one possible paradigm.

Lynn Sweet Predicts the Senate Outcome if Obama Wins
Sweet recognizes Obama's allies in the Senate as a strength, but also asserts Obama goes by the numbers and may initially cater to Republican Senators.

The question for this blog is how does that relate to the Millennium Development Goals? The answer is significantly. The inquiry though goes beyond specific political choices to understanding how this affects our world and our ability to make beneficial changes in it. One important pathway for change has been science and one favorite source has been Scientific American. They recently had a special issue on the American Election. I am providing links that they sent me below.

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN MAGAZINE

In-Depth Report: Science and the U.S. Election

• The Big To-Do List--Scientific Challenges Facing the Next President
• Science Questions for Would-Be Presidents
• Will the Networked Generation Rock the Vote--Or Wreck It?

According to Avaaz, this election will change the globe -- it's as simple as that!It will determine if we see a timed end to the war in Iraq, whether America joins the global community in tackling climate change,how much the nation invests in renewable energy and whether America redoubles its commitment to fighting global poverty.

If you want to see if your views generally match the views espoused by this weblog take the U.S. Presidential Choice Quiz Now.

Other posts:
Barack Obama on Millennium Development Goals
Barack Obama and the Millennium Development Goals featuring a look at the impact of the American elections on Global Health asking "What would Barack do?" from Open Budgets Blog.

Outreach from Uttrakhand

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The reach of the World Wide Web continues to amaze me. I belong to the Orkut group End POVERTY / Fim POBREZA. The membership is primarily from India with a good number from Brazil (which has by far the greatest number of people on Orkut) and a few from Europe and America. I have credited the Orkut End Poverty group with getting me involved online with this cause before. Today I am highlighting another online connection.

PSSP ("Paryavaran Sanrakshan Samiti” Pati) an NGO, in Uttrakhand contacted me.

PSSP:

Hi, We are Uttrakhand (India) based NGO. We have FCRA registration, could you guide us how we can get fund from foreigin organisation.

They have overestimated my connections and influence. This weblog's objective is to educate myself as much as it is to educate and influence anybody else. One point of ignorance, I don't know what FCRA registration means in this context. I also can't vouch for them. I will though put their information out where I can and let the collective intelligence of the web take over.

Others within the Orkut community have said that they should identify themselves better, which they should, but I could see a situation where a NGO in a remote area, with limited resources was able to use the web to leverage connections across the globe. In order to do so, their connection would have to grow like crystals expanding. They would need others to take up their cause.

Reaping from Yesterday's Efforts Planting for the Future

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Both Blog Action Day - Poverty and Stand Up Take Action are now in the past. You can see the results of the Blog Action Day here. Stand Up Take Action will be holding their press conference tomorrow to talk about the results. I already provided input to both the folks at Blog Action Day about an idea for next year's Blog Action Day and my views to the Orkut group I belong to supporting EndPoverty2015.

I had two basic messages to the Orkut group. One was to send in what they had done as stories, pictures or links. This is actually a bit self-serving because I get so many useful and interesting resources this way. The other was to register online as having Stood Up Against Poverty Online if they couldn't make it to an actual event.

The idea of pushing Universal Education as a means of promoting the Millennium Development Goals has been running around my head for awhile. I did see one local event at a near by Long Beach magnet school on Understanding Global Poverty, then I realized that it was 6th to 8th graders. Now I am very happy that they are studying global issues, but it wasn't something I would want to attend unless I still had my own eighth grader. So I participated online with the the Australian Council for International Development Make Poverty History Campaign.

Looking over some of the other posts at Blog Action Day I found Lucy Barrow's EduBlog post on Blog Action Day - What does the world think about poverty? | ICT and TLC. I did not know what an ICT trainer was until now. Lucy's post lead me to a more interesting resources such as Edublogger, and the polling site Ask 500 People. The pertinent question was “Do you believe it is possible to make poverty history?” That led me back to to Make Poverty History.

Another new and interesting find was Blog Action Day posts by "association" bloggers courtesy of Lisa Junker via Acronym by on 10/17/08. I have to admit that I am not familiar with the use of the term Association as a profession, but it seems like they do great work and that there is a great deal to learn from them. The Bamboo Project seems to have a good deal to offer.

I particularly liked the insight from Kristin Clarke the day after October 15th “Blog Action Day”.

Can one day’s worth of blog posts fundamentally shift public discourse on a major social issue? All I can say is that issues definitely won’t be addressed if no one is talking about them.