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Rethinking US Foreign Assistance Blog

The Rethinking US Foreign Assistance Blog complements CGD's Rethinking U.S. Foreign Assistance initiative. Both are for professionals interested in tracking US Foreign Assistance and its impact on developing countries.

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Top 10 Rethinking US Foreign Assistance Blogs in 2012

What were the most popular Rethinking US Foreign Assistance blog posts in 2012? White House development initiatives get a lot of attention. Major evaluation and learning efforts do too (think: MCC). Budget battles and the more troubling aid stories in aid get a lot of interest, too.

Take a look at our top 10 list below. We look forward to bringing you more analysis and commentary from our CGD experts in 2013. Leave a comment and tell us what you’d like to see more (or less of) in 2013.

Inspector General Gives USAID Failing Grade in Haiti

On September 26, the Office of the Inspector General for USAID issued a blistering evaluation of USAID's activities in Haiti.  The report focuses on implementation of the Haiti Recovery Initiative (HRI) which supports short- and medium-term reconstruction projects. Overall, the audit states that the work is “not on track” and identifies areas for improvement including: monitoring and evaluation, community involvement, technical assistance, and the need for environmental reviews.  These are some of the themes that we also highlighted in our CGD Policy Paper entitled "Haiti: Where Has All the Money Gone?" We proposed three solutions to improving the use of taxpayer dollars in Haiti:

Getting Greater Value from Post-Quake Aid to Haiti

The January 2010 earthquake that devastated Haiti, killed over 220,000 people, displaced several million, and flattened much of the capital, Port Au Prince, also unleashed a tsunami of outside assistance. In the 28 months since the earthquake official donors have disbursed almost $6 billion in aid to help the people of Haiti, the equivalent of $600 per person for a country where per capita annual income is just $670. Where has all the money gone? On the second anniversary of the quake we set out to answer this question; our new CGD policy paper is the result. The short answer is that the vast majority of the money so-far disbursed has been paid to international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and private contractors. And while many of these organizations do excellent work, there is shockingly little information on how they used the funds.

India Described as "Borderline Unstable" in Just-Released QDDR Powerpoint!

I am noting with some amusement that India is labeled "Borderline Unstable" on a map of fragile states, borrowed from Foreign Policy and the Fund for Peace, and asterisked with a "Not an official USG Product" (which I am not sure lets the State Department off the hook).  Borderline unstable? Really QDDR?

This is what President Obama said on his recent trip to India when he addressed the U.S.-India Business Council: