What We're Reading

Politico: Protection for women a top foreign policy priority (Op-Ed, Sen. John Kerry)
A group of policymakers and NGO leaders, including Senator John Kerry and Executive Director of Amnesty International, Larry Cox, argue that women around the world should not have to accept abuse and extreme poverty. To combat this critical issue, a bipartisan coalition will introduce the International Violence Against Women Act (IVAWA) today, which the article authors believe “supports the efforts of President Obama and Secretary Clinton to rightly put women at the very center of a broad global security agenda that factors in the great challenges of our decade and invests in the world’s peacemakers.” The article concludes with the powerful statement that the “IVAWA is the first step in making women a central focal point in U.S. foreign policy and allows the United States to join with them in their struggle to stop the violence.”

Reuters: New malaria vaccine shows promise in children
U.S. researchers said Wednesday that a new vaccine showed promise at protecting young children from malaria, offering a potential new weapon against a disease that kills at least one million people each year. Reuters reports that in a study of 100 West African children, the experimental vaccine produced immune responses similar to or even higher than those of adults infected by malaria all their lives. The vaccine, which uses an immune system booster called an adjuvant, targets the malaria parasite as it is actively infecting red blood cells and causing fever and illness, which researchers believe helps to prime the children’s immune system to develop a robust response.

AllAfrica.com: Continent Ripe for Citizen-Led Development Plan (Op-Ed)
Anti-corruption campaigner, John Githongo and ONE Executive Director, Jamie Drummond, argue that Africa can continue to achieve sustainable development by establishing a new citizens’ compact. According to the authors, this bottom-up approach would ensure that development is devolved and that the integrity of leaders and governance institutions firmly take centre stage. Githongo and Drummond lay out three measures for Africa, including budget transparency and private investments, which they believe “can increase the effects of much-needed new investments to boost education, agriculture and health and fight infectious diseases and climate change.”

Huffington Post: In Rebuilding Haiti, Fighting HIV/AIDS Must be a Top Priority (Op-Ed)
Executive Board Member of the Elton John AIDS Foundation, David Furnish, argues that the earthquake left nothing untouched in Haiti, including the significant progress that has been made in the fight against HIV/AIDS. According to Furnish, treatment and testing clinics were leveled, medical staff was tragically killed, and congested roads have made it difficult for what life-saving supplies remain to reach the people who need them. However, the author argues that the process of rebuilding Haiti is an opportunity to address the longstanding health and social challenges that have resulted in still-too-high infection rates. Said Furnish, “Without confronting these challenges, HIV/AIDS prevalence could increase to previous levels and compromise all other rebuilding and recovery efforts.”

The National Post (Canada): The unconscionable global toll of death during childbirth (Op-Ed)
Despite there being well-known solutions to some of the most catastrophic maternal health issues, Canadian Liberal MP and physician, Dr. Keith Martin argues that the area receives little attention and resources from international donors. Martin applauds the Canadian government’s recent announcement that maternal and child health will be on the agenda at this summer’s G8 Summit in Ontario, but emphasizes that “the summit cannot be just another milquetoast, feel-good document.” Rather, the doctor calls for leaders to announce a comprehensive International Action Plan to reduce childhood and maternal mortality, which includes strategic investments in access to primary care and funding to train skilled workers in countries with the greatest needs.

Ethiopian Review: World Bank, Microsoft Sign Agreement to Promote Development in Africa
Ethiopian Review reports that the World Bank and Microsoft have announced a new partnership that will seek to reinforce social and economic development in Africa by leveraging information and communication technology (ICT). Under the agreement, the World Bank and Microsoft will develop programs to support several of the World Bank’s core development priorities across Sub-Saharan Africa, including science and technology, developing the local software economy and local ICT skills, enhancing remittances technology, and building Sub-Saharan Africa’s disaster response capabilities. Said the World Bank Vice President for Africa, “Our goal is to help bring the region into today’s knowledge society and build its own internal resources to support the creation of competitive local economies.”

The Wall Street Journal: Liquid Asset
The Wall Street Journal explores the politically sensitive issue of putting a price on water, arguing that “realizing the true value of mankind’s most precious resource might be the best way of ensuring the world doesn’t run dry.” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon recently called the issue of water scarcity one of the greatest threats to health, safety, economic growth, human rights and national security. However, according to Piet Klop, senior fellow at the World Resources Institute, a Washington D.C., think tank, the fact that “water is way too cheap” is another problem that is often overlooked. Klop argues that in most of the world, the price of water is a far cry from what its scarcity value suggests it should be, which encourages wastefulness and means there is not enough revenue to invest in water infrastructure.

The Wall Street Journal: Haiti Needs to Be Built, Not Rebuilt (Op-Ed)
Director of the UNC Global Research Institute, Dr. Peter Coclanis, argues that the “Marshall Plan for Haiti” that is being touted as a potential recovery plan for the earthquake-ravaged country, has little chance of succeeding. According to Coclanis, what is required to put Haiti on sound economic footing is much different than what Europe or Japan faced in 1948. Instead, Coclanis urges policy makers to focus on creating the conditions—economic, political, public health, educational and cultural—necessary to put Haiti onto the first foothold of the development ladder. Said Coclanis, “Before the quake there were more than 10,000 nongovernmental organizations in Haiti feeding the poor, providing health services and much more. This fact alone should give the world pause. Haiti doesn’t need to be rebuilt. It needs to be built from the ground up.”

The Independent (Uganda): One Year of Obama: Any Change for Africa?
The Independent assesses how Obama’s presidency has served Africa one year into his first term in office. The paper argues that “as an American with a Kenyan father, Obama’s foreign policy could have been expected to hold Africa as a greater priority than previous administrations,” however, “thus far, no intrinsically new solutions have been articulated by the Obama administration.” The Independent highlights the recently released Africa Policy Outlook 2010, which underlines poverty, climate change and HIV/AIDS as the major challenges for America’s 2010 Africa policy. The paper concludes by saying, “Let us hope President Obama will rise to those challenges.”

Reuters: World Bank hops on China’s African express
World Bank President Robert Zoellick said Tuesday that the World Bank is working with China to develop a manufacturing sector in Africa and potentially transform the economies of the poorest continent. According to Zoellick, developing a domestic factory sector would go a long way towards cutting these costs, as well as creating jobs and accelerating industrialization. Despite his praise for China’s investment in Africa, however, Zoellick said too many projects tended to rely on imported Chinese labor to the detriment of African skills development. Said the Bank President, “We’ve wanted to work with both Africa and China so that people get the full benefits.”

Reuters: Haiti aid operation still has way to go, U.N. says
Top UN relief official John Holmes said Tuesday that the aid operation in Haiti has been complicated and frustratingly slow, but is making significant progress, particularly in getting food to quake survivors. According to Holmes, providing shelter to an estimated 1 million homeless is first priority now that search and rescue efforts have ended and most life-threatening injuries have been treated. He also emphasized that overall the situation in the devastated capital is calm, apart from “isolated incidents of looting or attacks on convoys of food.” Said the UN official, “We still have a significant way to go before reaching everybody who needs food, and on the shelter side as well. This is a potentially volatile environment and we have to make sure it doesn’t degenerate from fights over food into more serious civil unrest.”

The Wall Street Journal: White House Proposes 9% Increase in Global-Health Funding
The Wall Street Journal reports that the Obama administration proposed a nine percent increase in funding for global health needs in its fiscal 2011 budget, pledging to spend more to combat preventable diseases and reduce deaths among women and children. The proposal was accompanied by the release of a set of ambitious targets to be achieved by 2014, including getting 1.6 million more people into drug treatment for HIV/AIDS, cutting the prevalence of malaria by 50 percent, and reducing the number of deaths of mothers and children under five years old. Officials emphasized that while the requested contribution to the Global Fund is less than the amount given last year, it is $100 million more than the amount requested last year.

The Washington Post: A crisis in Sudan (Op-ed, Jimmy Carter)
Humanitarian and former U.S. president Jimmy Carter brings attention to the renewal of nationwide violence in the Sudan, calling it one of “the most urgent responsibilities the international community faces.” President Carter’s own organization, the Carter Center, has been working to instill peace in the nation for more than 20 years, however, he fears that recent disputes over insufficient government funding, border lines and the permanent division of oil wealth and infrastructure, threaten to undo all of the progress from the past two decades. President Carter calls for the international community to intercede in order to ensure “sustained support for the faltering progress toward peace and democracy.”

Reuters: Bill Clinton to coordinate Haiti relief efforts
Reuters reports that former U.S. President Bill Clinton, currently the U.N. special envoy to Haiti, will be named international coordinator for relief efforts in the earthquake-devastated country. Speaking on condition of anonymity because the decision has not been formally announced, U.N. diplomats and officials said Clinton was the most obvious choice to coordinate aid and reconstruction in the impoverished Caribbean nation. The former president has been actively involved in the Haiti relief effort from the beginning and has already visited the country to witness the destruction for himself. Clinton called for short and long-term funds while meeting with global leaders in Davos, Switzerland last week.

The New York Times: Countries Submit Emission Goals
The New York Times reports that the climate change accord reached at Copenhagen in December passed its first test on Monday after countries responsible for the bulk of climate-altering pollution formally submitted their emission reduction plans, meeting the agreement’s Jan. 31 deadline. Most major nations — including the United States, the 27 nations of the European Union, China, India, Japan and Brazil — restated earlier pledges to curb emissions by 2020, some by promising absolute cuts, others by reducing the rate of increase from a business-as-usual curve. However, analysts said that even if all nations met their promises, the world would still be on a path to exceed the Copenhagen agreement’s central goal of limiting global warming to less than 3.6 degrees above the pre-industrial era.

BuaNews (South Africa): UN to Hold MDG Summit
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has announced that the UN will hold a summit on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in September, according to South Africa’s BuaNews. The summit is to take place along with the opening of the General Assembly, where leaders of the 192 UN Member States meet each year at its Headquarters in New York. The Secretary General pledged to mobilize support to tackle the critical challenges threatening peace and prosperity across Africa, including extreme poverty, economic and social well-being, and the ravages of climate change. Said Ban Ki-Moon, “We have made great strides toward the Millennium Development Goals, but there is not much time to the 2015 deadline, and still much distance to travel.”

The Huffington Post: Narrowing Down Davos: Targeting Chronic Disease and Empowering Women in Developing Nations (Op-Ed)
CEO of Tupperware Brands Corporation Rick Goings reports on his experiences at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland last week, highlighting the need to help women and children in the developing world. According to Goings, it is women and girls who can lead countries out of poverty, emphasizing that it is women who are “much more likely to think ‘we’ instead of ‘me.’ The CEO calls for businesses to play a bigger role in supporting women, offering the idea of developing more corporate health initiatives as a potential way to get involved. Said Goings, “Chronic disease and the fate of women in developing nations are epic issues. But separate them from the far larger issues of global health and gender parity and they at least seem manageable and surmountable.”

The Wall Street Journal: War on AIDS Hangs in Balance As U.S. Curbs Help for Africa
The Wall Street Journal reports that the growth in U.S. funding, which underwrites nearly half the world’s AIDS relief, has slowed dramatically, while at the same time, the number of people requiring treatment has skyrocketed. Under the Bush administration, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) set aggressive goals for fighting HIV/AIDS, eventually enrolling some 2.4 million by the end of last year. The Obama administration, however, has signaled nearly flat budgets through fiscal 2011, which have critics questioning whether the administration doesn’t plan to use the full $48 billion authorized by Congress by 2013. Eric Goosby, President Obama’s AIDS czar, said the president is committed to the AIDS fight despite the global economic decline.

The New York Times: Haiti Is Again a Canvas for Approaches to Aid
According to The New York Times, the fact that Haiti was mired in dysfunction well before the earthquake, despite having received more than $5 billion in aid over about two decades, is fueling a contentious debate on whether a grand reconstruction plan can finally fix the country or would be doomed to repeat previous failures. One side argues that Haiti should be temporarily taken over by an international organization, which would govern it and oversee its rebuilding. On the other extreme, minimalists fervently believe that years of failed, foreign-imposed aid projects underscore that this time Haitians need to develop and implement their own plans. And in between are those who argue for a joint Haitian-international reconstruction agency to administer a kind of Marshall Plan.

The New York Times: Orphaned, Raped and Ignored (Op-Ed, Nicholas Kristof)
Author and New York Times columnist, Nicholas Kristof highlights the harsh and disturbing reality for women and girls in the Congo, a war-ravaged African country where the use of rape as a weapon of war is common place. Kristof recounts the experiences of a nine-year old girl named Chance, whose entire family has been killed, often before her eyes, by the extremist Hutu militia — remnants of those who committed the Rwandan genocide. Kristof concludes his piece by calling for readers to stay tuned as he continues to report from the Congo in the coming days, hoping that the stories of survival he recounts “can inspire world leaders to step forward to stop this slaughter. It’s time to show the same compassion toward Congo that we have toward Haiti.”

The Wall Street Journal: Strategy Shifts on Global Health
The Wall Street Journal reports that the Obama administration is expected to propose in its fiscal 2011 budget Monday new funding to combat preventable and tropical diseases, malnutrition and other conditions afflicting the world’s poor, as part of a strategy to broaden its approach to global health. The strategy also seeks to work more closely with individual countries to help strengthen their own health-care systems, and to integrate programs that are now focused on individual diseases, with the ultimate hope being to make care more efficient and easy. Advocates said they would be watching closely on Monday for details of the new plan. A broader global health strategy is “great, but not at the expense of AIDS spending,” said the executive director of the Global AIDS Alliance.

Politico: How to rebuild Haiti (Op-Ed, Robert Zoellick)
The rebuilding of Haiti requires common sense, strategy and long-term commitment, according to the President of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, who maintains that when the cameras depart — as they are already beginning to do — donors must not depart with them. According to the World Bank President, “Haiti fatigue” has been as great an impediment to development as natural disasters. However, Zoellick is very optimistic, arguing that “We can support the transition from humanitarian aid to reconstruction through food or cash-for-work programs, so Haitians can be paid for clearing and rebuilding infrastructure and planting trees. Community projects can improve conditions for small-scale farming, which over time can supply and then replace food assistance programs. With modest investments in supplies and equipment, Haiti can build labor-intensive construction businesses.”

Reuters: Scientists say crack HIV/AIDS puzzle for drugs
Scientists say they have solved a crucial puzzle about the AIDS virus after 20 years of research and that their findings could lead to better treatments for HIV, Reuters reports. British and U.S. researchers said they had grown a crystal that enabled them to see the structure of an enzyme called integrase, allowing them to begin to fully understand how integrase inhibitor drugs work, how they might be improved, and how to stop HIV developing resistance to them. Said one of the researchers, “Despite initially painstakingly slow progress and very many failed attempts, we did not give up and our effort was finally rewarded.”

The Washington Post: Gates makes $10 billion vaccines pledge
The Washington Post reports that The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will donate $10 billion over the next decade to research new vaccines and bring them to the world’s poorest countries. Calling upon governments and business to also contribute, Bill Gates said the money will produce higher immunization rates and aims to make sure that 90 percent of children are immunized against dangerous diseases such as diarrhea and pneumonia in poorer nations. Gates noted the announcement comes on the 10th anniversary of the foundation’s partner GAVI Alliance, which he praised for its work in immunizing children against killer diseases. Said Gates, “We must make this the decade of vaccines…Innovation will make it possible to save more children than ever before.”

The Huffington Post: A People’s Plan of Action to Fight Extreme Poverty (Op-Ed)
John McArthur, CEO of Millennium Promise and Johann Koss, President of Right to Play, argue that government leaders cannot solve global challenges on their own anymore and that “everyday people…have the potential to be the world’s big new problem solvers.” Referencing the coordinated relief efforts in Haiti, McArthur maintains that the same mindset of partnership, urgency, and “all hands on deck” is also required to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, the world’s integrated targets for tackling extreme poverty by 2015. According to the authors, “individuals, companies, and non-governmental organizations need to stand alongside their governments to advance the best solutions to extreme poverty, to sustain public engagement, and to hold their governments accountable. The Goals are too important to wait on politics. World leaders urgently need our help. It is time for a people’s plan of action.”

The Economist: Haiti two weeks after the earthquake – Scrabbling for survival
The Economist explores the situation in Haiti two weeks after a magnitude 7.0 earthquake ravaged the impoverished island country. After the country’s initial shock and grief, tempered by the urgent need to save lives, the search-and-rescue operations are official over, forcing Haitians to “confront the devastation wrought on their perennially troubled land.” According to the Economist, despite homelessness continuing to be a problem, the past week has seen remarkable progress, with outside help beginning to make a difference. The Haitian Culture Minister is optimistic about her country’s chances of dragging itself back to its feet. Said the Minister, “This time is different. The national palace, the cathedrals and the ministries have been destroyed, and everyone has lost someone. In their name, we are obliged to rebuild. Otherwise, we’re not a real people.”

New America Media: Africa a Challenge for Obama in 2010
A new report from a pair of Africa policy think tanks says that President Obama is “missing a historic opportunity” to improve lives across Africa. The annual report release by Africa Action and Foreign Policy in Focus urges the president to create a new, “people-centered” strategy in Africa to tackle major ongoing challenges including HIV/AIDS, poverty, human rights violations, and climate change. Despite his bold commitments to human rights during his campaign, the report states that the Obama administration has failed to increase funding for HIV/AIDS programs, bolstered the much maligned International Monetary Fund (IMF), and tripled the budget for the U.S. Military Command in Africa (AFRICOM) — all actions that will further entrench poverty on the continent rather than improving the lives of African people.

AFP: Food crisis threatens millions in West Africa: aid official
The European Commission Humanitarian Aid organization (ECHO) said Thursday that millions in Niger and across West Africa face food shortages after erratic rains hit farming in countries in the Sahel region south of the Sahara desert. According to ECHO’s regional sector head, Brian O’Neill, the crisis is centered in Niger, where an estimated 2.7 million people are expected to experience a severe food crisis. O’Neill emphasized that strong leadership would be required from the United Nations and the rest of the international community to mobilize aid, saying that “”If we work fast enough, early enough, it won’t be a famine. If we don’t there is a strong risk.”

The Huffington Post: Catholic Relief Services: New Focus at Davos: Rethink, Redesign, Rebuild in Haiti
Lesley Anne-Knight, the Secretary General of Caritas Internationalis looks at the relief effort in Haiti through the lens of this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos. She argues that the key to rebuilding Haiti is ensuring the nation is never placed in a similar state of vulnerability.

The Washington Post: First State of the Union speech by President Obama: ‘We face a deficit of trust’
The Washington Post reports that President Obama delivered an urgent plea for unity on Wednesday night during his first State of the Union address, seeking to recapture the energy that propelled him into office and to reverse his party’s trajectory after a series of recent setbacks. A year after entering the White House with a broad mandate, Obama reframed his agenda around a single, central mission: continuing the nation’s delicate economic recovery. He focused on jobs, casting himself as the advocate of average citizens, and acknowledged that his administration had “some political setbacks this year, and some of them were deserved.” Said the President, “what keeps me going, what keeps me fighting, is that despite all these setbacks, that spirit of determination and optimism — that fundamental decency that has always been at the core of the American people — lives on.”

Reuters: Haiti aid needs better coordination: president
Haitian President, Rene Preval said Wednesday that international charities pouring a jumble of aid into Haiti must work better together to reach and help survivors of the catastrophic earthquake. Preval also said Haiti would indefinitely postpone the February 28 parliamentary elections and that he would not seek to stay in office after his term expires in February 2011. That means his government will have just over one year to rebuild the earthquake-ravaged nation before handing off the task to new leadership. Said Preval, “I am not in a position to criticize anybody, not in the least people who have come here to help me. What I am staying is, what everybody is saying is, that we need a better coordination.”

The Globe and Mail: Making the World Safe for Childbirth (Editorial)
The Globe and Mail editorializes that the act of giving life should not be a fatal proposition and by taking up this vital yet long-neglected cause through the G8 presidency, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Canada could rally the richest countries’ resources to help turn back a needless and preventable tragedy. According to the paper, curbing maternal mortality is urgently needed, and absolutely attainable, as many development schemes targeted at a discrete problem with a known solution have indicated in the past. The Globe argues that by bringing critical Canadian leadership “to bear on behalf of the world’s mothers, especially the poorest and most disadvantaged, is a cause that will repay itself far beyond the dollars we spend.”

AllAfrica.com: South Africa: Huge Cuts in Aid Ahead for HIV/Aids Treatment
AllAfrica.com reports that South Africa faces potentially huge cuts in donor support for its HIV/AIDS program over the next five years, despite it needing a large increase in annual funds to reach all those who need antiretroviral treatment. According to the article, almost a million South Africans will soon be on lifelong antiretroviral treatment and this number will triple in the next decade if government keeps to its implementation plan. Yet the prospect of the government being able to meet its promise of treating 80 percent of those who need it by 2011 is being threatened by a lack of funds. Said one HIV/AIDS researcher, “We need to get more for our money and be more imaginative. We are an AIDS-afflicted country so we should develop an AIDS economy. We could be training two million people to assist those living with HIV.”

Business Week: Rotavirus Vaccine Could Save Millions of Children Worldwide
Two new studies conducted in South Africa, Malawi and Mexico found that vaccinating infants against rotavirus – the second-leading cause of death among kids in developing nations – could save the lives of millions of children worldwide who would otherwise die from the diarrhea-causing disease. In an accompanying editorial, Dr. Mathuram Santosham, a professor of international health and pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University, said the studies provide powerful evidence for instituting rotavirus vaccination programs in developing nations throughout the world. Said Santosham, “Rotavirus vaccine is a very powerful tool to combat one of the leading causes of childhood deaths – diarrhea. The challenge now is to make sure that every poor child in the world has access to this life-saving intervention.”

Bloomberg.com: Sierra Leone Expects 4.7% Growth This Year, Seeks More Aid
Finance Minister, Samura Kamara, said the economy of Sierra Leone, the third-least developed nation in the world according to the United Nations, may grow 4.7 percent this year, led by agricultural production. According to Bloomberg, Sierra Leone, which has been rebuilding its economy after a decade of civil war in the 1990s, has approved a new poverty reduction strategy backed by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Goals include improving the electricity network, developing transport links and improving health and education. Kamara said the government will probably seek a new IMF loan accord and also plans to ask the World Bank for emergency funding as part of a $1.3 billion facility that the institution set up to help the poorest countries mitigate the effects of the global economic crisis.

Huffington Post: What you, Bono, and African babies have in common (Op-ed by Dr. Orin Levine)
According to Dr. Levine, the answer to the titular question is, we were all once infected with rotavirus. Dr. Levine uses his column to discuss the impact of the rotavirus infection and what’s being done to fight it.

Washington Post: Obama to propose freeze on government spending
The Washington Post reports that under mounting pressure to rein in mammoth budget deficits, President Obama will propose in his State of the Union address a three-year freeze on federal funding that is not related to national security, a concession to public concern about government spending that could dramatically curtail Obama’s legislative ambitions. White House officials described the freeze as a critical component of a broader deficit-reduction campaign intended to restore confidence in Obama’s ability to control the excesses of Washington and the most lavish aspirations of his own administration. Said one senior administration official, “You can’t afford to do everything that you might have always wanted to do. That’s the decision-making process that the president and the economic team went through. We’re not here to tell you that we’ve solved the deficit. But you have to take steps to control spending.”

AFP: AIDS victims not forgotten in Haiti quake chaos
The AFP reports that despite the devastating earthquake in Haiti, one of the world’s first AIDS clinics, located in Port-au-Prince, continues dispensing AIDS treatments to the thousands of people whose lives depend on it. Supplied with medications by the Global Fund to Fight Aids, the US President’s Emergency Fund for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), and the Merieux Institute, the clinic – called Ghiesko (Haitian Group for Studies in Karposi’s Sarcoma and Opportunistic Infections) – has never suffered an interruption in its stocks of antiretroviral drugs. Said the clinic’s founder, “The war against AIDS, we are going to win it. The prevalence of HIV continues to fall in Haiti.”

The Globe and Mail: With plight of mothers, Harper seeks new G8 course
According to the Globe and Mail, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is highlighting the healthcare plight of mothers and infants in the developing world as a means of transforming the role of the G8 club of wealthy countries. Insisting the group should focus on development and international security issues now that the G20 has usurped its role as an economic forum, the Prime Minister is hoping maternal and child health will become Canada’s “signature” focus at the G8 meeting, underlining his government’s hope the group can find a lasting raison-d’être. Said Harper, “Members of the G8 can make a tangible difference in maternal and child health and Canada will be making this the top priority in June. Far too many lives and unexplored futures have already been lost for want of relatively simple health care solutions.”

The Financial Times: How to feed people and save the planet
The Financial Times reports that while governments, donors and the aid community have traditionally dominated food security discussions, the corporate and private sector has an increasing voice in the debate, including most recently in Haiti. Producing sustainable supplies of food is not only critical to the world’s rising population, but also provides opportunities in developing countries as well as in mature markets, where a growing band of ethical and health-driven shoppers are shaping food companies’ product development strategies. According to the Times, policymakers are looking more closely at how the private sector – from agribusinesses to supermarkets – can help ensure food security, reflecting a new move away from reliance on aid models to a broader approach that includes fostering the growth of the agricultural sector in developing countries.

Reuters: Gates Foundation says to raise Malawi health aid
Melinda Gates said Tuesday that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation plans to raise its health funding aimed to reduce maternal mortality in Malawi. During her two-day visit to the impoverished southern African country, Melinda Gates told Reuters that she was impressed with the progress made by Malawi in reducing maternal mortality, which is among the highest in the world. She did not say how much investment will be targeted toward the fight against maternal mortality. Said Gates, “If you asked me if we plan any more investment in reducing maternal deaths in Malawi, I would say yes because of the good progress being made in making sure that women go to clinics when they are pregnant and that is helping reduce the maternal mortality rate.”

News from Haiti:

The New York Times: Agreement on Effort to Help Haiti Rebuild
Concerned about corruption and wobbly Haitian leadership, international donors agreed Monday during a meeting in Montreal on a 10-year rebuilding effort for earthquake-damaged Haiti, one that would create an even better capital city and that the government said would cost $3 billion. According to the New York Times, the $3 billion figure “was not immediately embraced by the countries being called on to pick up the tab.” Haitian Prime Minister, Jean-Max Bellerive said that Haiti had made no specific requests for money or other assistance in Montreal because it was still assessing its needs. Despite the hesitation, the Haiti director for the United Nations program called it an opportunity, maintaining that “You can see opportunities in awful situations, and it is possible to rebuild a better Port-au-Prince.”

Financial Times: Haiti’s creditors urged to cancel its foreign debts
Haiti’s creditors were yesterday urged to cancel its remaining foreign debt as ministers from prominent international donor countries met in Montreal to consider the first steps towards rebuilding the country. Jean-Max Bellerive, the Haitian prime minister, told ministers, including US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, that his country would need “more and more and more in order to complete the task of reconstruction” after the earthquake. Lawrence Cannon, Canadian foreign minister and conference host, said the aim was to establish “a clear and common vision for the early recovery and longer-term reconstruction of Haiti,” and that yesterday’s meeting would be the first step.

The Wall Street Journal: Haiti: Obama’s Katrina (Op-Ed)
Doctors from the Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City criticize President Obama’s response to the earthquake in Haiti, likening it to this administration’s Hurricane Katrina. The doctors maintain that the U.S. response to the earthquake “should be considered an embarrassment,” highlighting the lack of supplies and necessary means to deal with overwhelming number of patients. The doctors conclude by saying, “The death toll from Katrina was under 2,000 people. Deaths in Haiti as of yesterday are at least 150,000. Untold numbers are dying of untreated, preventable infections. For all the outcry about Katrina, our nation has fared no better in this latest disaster.”

Other News:

The Guardian: Fears Barack Obama will omit climate change from State of Union speech
The Guardian reports that global warming – a signature issue for Barack Obama – is at risk of getting the short shrift in Wednesday’s State of the Union speech, further shrinking the already slim prospects of getting a climate change law through Congress, environmentalists say. Environmental organizations believe some Obama aides are advising the president to downplay or even avoid mention of the words “climate change” and keep the speech tightly focused on jobs and the economy, especially after last week’s upset in Senate elections cost the Democrats’ their super majority in Congress. According to the Guardian, the uncertainty about climate change legislation spills over into the international arena, where US inaction could be used as an excuse by India and China to further delay action on global warming.

The Daily Nation (Kenya): Plan to fight mother-child Aids infection
The Daily nation reports that a three-year initiative – dubbed the Campaign to end Pediatric HIV and AIDS (CEPA) – has been launched, with the aim to reduce HIV transmission from mothers to children and scaling-up treatment to those infected. The campaign, which will initially focus on six countries, including Kenya, Tanzania and Nigeria, aims at increasing coverage rates for mother-to-child transmission from the average 30 to 40 percent to the globally-agreed target of 80 percent. According to the paper, leaders of the campaign plan to achieve these targets through “family-centered care and nutrition, early infant diagnosis and treatment, access to appropriate medications and adequate funding to scale up pediatric and maternal treatment.”

Voice of America: Global Financial Crisis Affects Remittances to Africa
Voice of America (VOA) reports that the global economic downturn is making it more difficult for Africans to send money home to relatives, which leads to further problems for those who depend on these crucial funds. According to the World Bank, remittances to developing countries are expected to fall from $305 billion in 2008 to $208 billion for 2009. The severity of the problem is seen in the fact that in many developing countries, remittances are reported to bring in even more money than direct aid. According to VOA, “remittances usually make up a significant chunk of the local economy,” with reports showing that in 2007 sub-Saharan Africa received almost $12 billion from Africans in the Diaspora.

News from Haiti:

The New York Times: Obstacles to Recovery in Haiti May Prove Daunting Beyond Other Disasters
According to United Nation officials, the relief effort in Haiti could end up being the most difficult, faith-testing recovery from a modern disaster. Haiti was barely showing signs of recovery from the 2008 hurricane season when the earthquake flattened its capital, crippling the country’s already weakened transportation and service delivery network. Local aid groups that would normally help guide international efforts were damaged themselves. Said one UN official, “You’re talking about a country that pre-earthquake had limited resources and capability, and what resources it did have were concentrated in the capital. This context helps explain why this emergency is probably the most complex in history, more than the tsunami, more than the Pakistan earthquake” of 2005.”

Reuters: RPT-Aid donors in Montreal to look beyond Haiti relief
Reuters reports that Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive and other key figures will begin planning on Monday how to move from immediate humanitarian relief for the lethal earthquake in his country to long-term reconstruction. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and other leaders will examine eventual debt forgiveness and a strategy to rebuild from a quake that killed up to 200,000 people. “We are all looking at the terrible situation in your country, and the task ahead of you is unimaginable. So you’re not alone. We’ll be working together at the conference tomorrow and in the weeks, months and years to come to rebuild your country,” Harper told Bellerive in Ottawa on Sunday.

Other News:

Reuters: Bill Gates worries climate money robs health aid
Leading philanthropist, Bill Gates, said on Sunday that spending by rich countries aimed at combating climate change in developing nations could mean a dangerous cut in aid for health issues. According to Reuters, Gates expressed concern about the amount of spending pledged at December’s Copenhagen global climate meeting, arguing that “taking the focus away from health aid could be bad for the environment in the long run.” Copenhagen participants agreed to a target of channeling $100 billion per year to developing countries to combat climate change by 2020. Gates said that amount represents more than three quarters of foreign aid currently given by the richest countries per year. “If just 1 percent of the $100 billion goal came from vaccine funding, then 700,000 more children could die from preventable diseases,” Gates added.

The Wall Street Journal: China, India, Brazil, S Africa Agree To Disclose Mitigation Actions
The Wall Street Journal reports that Brazil, South Africa, India and China, the BASIC group of countries, said they will disclose their voluntary mitigation actions by January 31,2010 and called for developed countries to release $10 billion pledged for small developing nations to address climate change issues. The decision was made during a meeting of the BASIC climate ministers— four of the world’s emerging economies, which account for 30% of global greenhouse gas emissions – which was held in New Delhi Sunday to discuss their joint strategy for the United Nations climate negotiations.

The New York Times: Study Points to Disease as Main Killer in Darfur
With violence in Darfur in an extended lull, a new study has concluded that of the 300,000 people who died over the past six years, about 80 percent of them were actually killed by disease rather than violence. According to the study, while some fell prey to bandits who waylaid them as they fetched water and wood, “far more died of diarrhea spread by filthy water, pneumonia picked up in swirls of desert dust and fire smoke, malaria carried into their tents by mosquitoes and other maladies from years of rough living.”

News from Haiti:

The Guardian: We can turn Haiti around (Op-Ed, Kofi Annan)
Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan argues that the earthquake in Haiti has shed light on the need for structured support to be given to fragile states in the long term – not just when disaster strikes. Annan emphasized that it should not take a tragedy on this scale to focus on the reality that perhaps as many as a billion people live in fragile states. He also maintained that responding to today’s fragile states must go hand in hand with anticipating tomorrow’s. Annan concluded by saying, “We need to show the same courage and sustained commitment in our efforts to support fragile states overcome their problems. If we do, the prize will not simply be a better life for a billion of our fellow human beings, but more security and prosperity for all of us.”

The Economist: A plan for Haiti
The Economist argues that Haiti’s government is not strong enough at the moment to rebuild the country, which was destroyed more than a week ago by an earthquake. Rather, they maintain that temporary authority is needed in order to develop and establish a long-term strategy for rebuilding the small island nation. While Haiti’s government has already drawn up a blueprint recovery plan, the Economist warns that the “government is in no position to take charge, yet the country needs a strong government to put it to rights.” The magazine concludes by saying, “Some will object that this would undermine a democratically elected government. But there is not much left to undermine. Done well, it could create a state in Haiti able to do more than preside over chaos and corruption. Otherwise the suffering of the past ten days risks being repeated.”

Reuters: World Bank to waive debt payments for five years
The World Bank on Thursday announced it will waive payments on Haiti’s debt for the next five years, while the IMF said its proposed loan would be interest free until late 2011 to help the country rebuild. Reuters reports that such moves by the international institutions would help free up more resources for the impoverished country to spend on rebuilding from the devastating earthquake. The IMF has faced anger from anti-poverty groups that its loan will harm, not help, Haiti in the long-term because it will eventually have to be repaid by a country with so many needs.“We are working to find a way forward to cancel the remaining debt,” the World Bank said in a statement. Currently Haiti’s debt to the World Bank is about $38 million.

Other News:

The Economist: Reaching the poorest
The Economist explores the issue of global education, arguing that enrolling the world’s poorest children in school needs new thinking, not just more money from taxpayers. The magazine highlights a new report by the UN education organization, UNESCO, which found that progress in education “has been patchy,” with the numbers of un-enrolled school-age children dropping by 33 million in 2007, compared with 1999. The Economist gives two potential solutions that may increase enrollment rates, including more private-sector education in poor countries and performance-related pay for teachers.

WorldPress.org: AIDS Fight in Africa (Op-Ed)
World Press contributor, Chinua Akukwe, argues that South Africa and Nigeria need to continue leveraging their influence in continental and regional organizations to sharpen the fight against AIDS on the continent. According to Akukwe, with South Africa and Nigeria both holding a prominent political and economic position in Africa, it is their responsibility to step up to the challenges of the growing AIDS epidemic. Argues Akukwe, “Both countries can set examples for other African countries by vigorously tackling poverty, a major driver of HIV transmission. Poverty increases the likelihood of high-risk behavior, including adults taking calculated risks in order to put food on the table for young children and other dependents.”

Ghana News Agency: World Bank President to tour Africa
The Ghana News Agency reports that World Bank President Robert Zoellick will take an eight-day, three-nation Africa tour starting the last week of January 2010. According to Ghana News, the purpose of Zoellick’s visit is to bring attention to “African governments, development partners and private investors and the need to seize the opportunity for renewed momentum in economic growth to overcome poverty.” Zoellick emphasized that his visit to Africa will allow him to learn about how its people have coped with the global economic crisis and to see how the World Bank can work to improve prospects for economic growth and expanded opportunity.