As attention shifts from traditional foreign aid to private and domestic sources of finance for development, recovering stolen assets is not only a matter of justice but increasingly a development issue in its own right. That’s why organizations like the StAR initiative (a joint effort of the World Bank and UNODC) and NGOs like Transparency International and Global Witness have been making these points and successfully pushing the agenda.
Yes, but not necessarily in the way most people think. Peter Reuter addressed this question at the Center for Global Development last week based on research in Draining Development? Controlling Flows of Illicit Funds from Developing Countries – a volume that he edited for the World Bank. It is clearly the most thorough assessment to date in assessing the channels by which illicit flows affect development.
While we are desperately trying to decode a strand of insight into US development policy in the Presidential debates, the British are having a full-throated debate about leadership on 21st-century global issues —and, frankly, making us look bad. In today’s Wall Street Journal, British Prime Minister David Cameron lays out his antipoverty vision in this op-ed. My three takeaways:
Corruption in aid programs is a cyclical topic. Every scandal generates headlines, political reaction, tighter controls and then, usually, silence until the next scandal erupts. Such cycles are not helpful and we never really find out if such corruption is large and systematic or small and isolated.
This is a joint post with Julie Walz.
The aid community is well-accustomed to pushing for transparency in foreign aid transactions. But are we missing another key flow of money?
A recent article by Geoffrey York, African bureau chief for the Globe and Mail, described a contract signed a few years ago by the Government of Rwanda with Racepoint Group, which was tasked with doing an image make-over for the Rwandan government for a monthly fee of over $50,000. The rationale was that public perceptions of Rwanda were dominated by the horrific genocide that occured in the 1990s, along with accounts of human rights abuses and media censorship. The contract with Racepoint reportedly aimed to increase the number of stories of Rwanda’s successes and block criticism of the government and its alleged human rights abuses. The effort landed more than 100 positive articles per month in newspapers from the New York Times to BBC, increased discussions of travel to Rwanda by 183%, and decreased discussion of the genocide by 11%, according to Racepoint.
When I last blogged about India's recent anti-corruption groundswell, a loose coalition of NGOs and citizens led by social activist Anna Hazare had just scored a crucial victory in the ongoing struggle to curb corruption in the world’s largest democracy. For months Anna's India Against Corruption movement (dubbed “Team Anna” by the press) had engaged in agitations meant to pressure the government of India int
Picture this: an Indian social activist from humble origins, dressed in homespun and espousing the virtues of non-violent civil disobedience, takes on his country’s corrupt overlords by launching an indefinite hunger strike to bring the government to its knees. Think you’ve seen this movie before? Think again. This time around, the year is 2011 and the man in question is 74 year-old Anna Hazare, a Gandhian social activist who is responsible for taking the anti-corruption fight to the Indian government’s doorstep with his leadershi
The latest Global Corruption Report from Transparency International (TI), launched May 5 in Dhaka, Bangladesh, tackles corruption and climate change. The message is stark: without better governance, transferring funds to developing countries to combat climate change could go awry. This would mean even less progress cutting the emissions of planet-heating gases, a squandering of scarce climate funds, and an intensified risk of dangerous, runaway climate change.
A new year calls for a development policy wish list. My wish list is about what the rich and powerful global actors– mostly but not solely in the United States – can do to improve lives among the poor and vulnerable around the world in the coming year.
Perhaps predictably, media coverage of the G-20 Seoul Summit focused on the currency wars, and assessments of impact of the meeting were decidedly mixed (though, interestingly, more negative in the United States than in the big emerging markets). But global imbalances were hardly the only item on the agenda. Three summit documents have the potential to become more important with the passage of time, especially if the development community seizes upon them as opportunities to press the big economies for pro-development policies and spreads the word.