Beyond Bombs and Bullets in Pakistan (CNN)
CGD president Nancy Birdsall was interviewed by CNN's Global Public Square about the Center's new report on U.S. aid to Pakistan.
From the Article
The following is a transcript of my interview with Nancy Birdsall, President of the Center for Global Development. We discussed the Center's latest report: Beyond Bombs and Bullets: Fixing the U.S. Approach to Development in Pakistan. The Center brought together a wide variety of experts and policy-makers from the U.S. and Pakistan to examine how the $7.5 billion of U.S. aid over five years is being spent - and what the main challenges are.
Tim Lister: Would it be fair to say that the overall tone is somewhat gloomy?
Nancy Birdsall: I would say the overall tone is gloomy about what’s happened so far but there is a possibility that it could get better going forward subject to a lot of serious thinking going on inside the government.
There is potential in Pakistan - it is a democratically elected government; there is an independent judiciary and a free press; there’s a very large, sophisticated urban middle class…I think in some ways it’s ahead of where Egypt is today.
The potential is there but the challenges are enormous in terms of demographics.
Well, the biggest challenge is this youth bulge at a time when the economy is not growing any more. And that’s really a problem for job creation. If you are not able to address politically the need for structural reforms, then a youth bulge can be a very dangerous thing, especially in a country where the sense of frustration and injustice is fuel for religious extremism.
What about the problem of education in Pakistan?
The sad thing about Pakistan is that education has been unattended for two decades now. For every 100 children that start school in Karachi (Pakistan’s biggest city) only one graduates from secondary school.
There have been some changes - in Punjab, reforms have gone quite deep and there’s potential for them elsewhere. In the big cities almost half the children are in private schools, and they are primarily organized and run by women who did manage to get some education a generation ago. That’s a huge change because it shows there’s very active demand. At least now there’s a situation where families want their children to get to school.
