The Comprehensive Spending Review: sticking to promises on aid The Overseas Development Institute’s Claire Melamed reviews the new Tory-Lib Dem (well Tory controlled) promise to stick to raising UK aid, even amidst a huge budget deficit. Bravo says the development supporters, but be careful of where the aid is spent. The UK public of course shakes their fists in anger.
Why Ring-fencing UK Aid May Hurt DfID Dev Ex’s Ma Rizza Leonzon casts doubts on the ring fencing of UK aid and the aim to reach the coveted 0/.7% of GNI spending. I agree that increasing aid and having a discourse of “results based” aid doesn’t mean development on the side of the recipient.
Where Have All the MCC Public Board Members Gone? The (slightly neo-liberal) Center for Global Development’s Sarah Staats reveals the missing organisational structure of the neo-liberal Millennium Challenge Account–a sizeable number of bard members missing. Personally, it doesn’t matter if the members are missing. What matters is that this second aid organisation is causing havoc internally amongst the US aid agenda and externally by casting neo-liberalism back on its clients.
UNDP Releases 2010 Human Development Index The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) launched its twentieth Human Development Report (HDR) titled The Real Wealth of Nations: Pathways to Human Development. This was something I gave feedback to earlier this year at a conference at St. Edmunds College, Cambridge. While the UNDP has its flaws, the HDRs stick out as a small counterweight to the hegemonic control of the World Bank over development ideas.
BBC Apologises To Band Aid For Arms Claims The BBC apologises to aid proponent and rock star Sir Bob Geldof over inaccurate claims that his aid from Live Aid went to arms. Apologies aside, this doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t be a monitoring of aid giving.
