Foreign Aid

On September 21, 2010 The Global Assets Project hosted a book event for Just Give Money to the Poor: The Global Development Revolution from the Global South with co-author David Hulme and a panelists Paul Francis, Julie T. Katzman, and David Roodman.

That President Richard Nixon made his signature breakthrough to China with the help of "ping pong diplomacy" is one of the verities of U.S. diplomatic history. Since that achievement over forty years ago, those who would like to see an end to the long conflict between Cuba and the United States have often looked to baseball, both nations’ shared national pastime, as a bridge for mutual understanding. While baseball has done its part to bring both countries together on various occasions over the years, the diplomatic impasse remains.

Finally, someone in Cuba went eyeball to eyeball with the Castro brothers, and they blinked.

On July 7, Guillermo Fariñas, a dissident on a hunger strike for more than four months, achieved what no one has done before. Through a combination of careful confrontation, personal fortitude and international support, Fariñas forced Raúl Castro to negotiate with Cuba's Roman Catholic Church -- which led to the immediate release of five political prisoners, with 47 more to follow over the next four months.

When I touched down in Lagos, Nigeria, this week, the first thing I did was buy a cell phone. The city's Saka Tinubu district hosts dozens of mobile vendors arrayed in small shops, piled high with all the major brands: Nokia, Motorola, Samsung. Among them is Belle-Vista Phone Warehouse, which styles itself as a "Blackberry Outlet." Young professionals stopped by after working hours to scoop up the Storm, the Curve, and other popular smartphones nestled in the display cases.

What Is An Effective Policy Towards Failed States? What Should We Be Doing About Them?

An Israeli journalist named Eitan Haber recently made an intriguing proposal. When the next ship determined to puncture Israel’s blockade comes steaming toward the Gaza Strip, Israel should let it through on one condition: Its crew must bring food and supplies not only to the suffering people of Gaza, but to Israeli Staff Sergeant Gilad Shalit, who Hamas is holding captive. The activists should deliver the aid with a public demand: Release Shalit immediately, without conditions.

Summary

• Disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) and security sector reform (SSR) processes should be interrelated and mutually reinforcing. As DDR and SSR share the same objective--consolidation of the state’s monopoly of force to uphold the rule of law--they succeed or fail together and should be planned, resourced, implemented, and evaluated in a coordinated manner.

Of the 3 billion people today are under the age of twenty-five, half a billion live on less than $2 a day and less than 10% have access to financial services. Low income youth - one of the world's largest and most vulnerable populations - need new and effective tools to achieve social and economic development. This half-day forum – hosted by the YouthSave Consortium with the support of the MasterCard Foundation– explored whether savings accounts for low-income youth might be one such tool.

Three days after the 7.0 magnitude earthquake that sent Haiti from a developing nation to a flattened one, President Barack Obama addressed a statement directly to the people of Haiti: “You will not be forsaken, you will not be forgotten.” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who cut short a trip to Southeast Asia and traveled to Haiti over the weekend, appeared with Haitian President René Préval to declare: “We will be here today, tomorrow and for the time ahead.” But one week after the earthquake that claimed up to 200,000 lives and destroyed the backbone of Haiti’s infra

Schwartz Senior Fellow Peter Beinart has a provocative take on the United States' response to the earthquake in Haiti: "There’s a reason President Obama’s response to catastrophe has been so much better than Bush’s. It helps to believe in the power of government to aid lives."