INSIDE DEVELOPMENT
In this section:
Fight Against Corruption Becomes Part of Foreign Aid Strategy
More Kids in School but Education Quality Declines,
Report Says
OTI Rapid Post-Conflict Aid Was Effective, Harvard Study Says
World AIDS Experts Back ‘ABC’ Strategy
in Lancet Article
Fight Against Corruption Becomes Part of Foreign Aid Strategy
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USAID Anticorruption Strategy
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Corruption costs the world about $1.5 trillion a year, reducing
countries’ growth rates by as much as 1 percent per year,
according to the World Bank. Corruption is big business, and
the poorest citizens in these countries bear the burden.
To address this problem, USAID recently released an Agency-wide
anticorruption strategy that challenges the Agency to think
of new and better ways to address corruption. It also urges
missions to develop a common vocabulary and a vision of how
to address corruption across their programs.
Administrator Natsios urged mission directors to “speak
out more visibly on this issue” and “coordinate
more closely with the embassy and other donors.”
In Cambodia, USAID commissioned a report on corruption that
was released to the public in November. U.S. officials have
met with high-ranking government officials to discuss the
findings—mainly the lack of political will by government
elites to tackle the issues of impunity and lack of rule of
law in the country.
The issues have been widely discussed in the media. And because
of this, international donors have increased scrutiny over
aid to Cambodia this year.
“This is the kind of coordinated public diplomacy that
we are just beginning to see,” said Jerry O’Brien,
an anticorruption specialist with USAID.
For years, even talking about corruption was taboo. It was
often referred to as a “cultural” issue, and economists
argued that “greasing the wheels” through bribes
was economically efficient. Citizens everywhere agreed that
it is just how things are done in their homelands.
This has changed in the last decade. Transparency International
(TI) was born, with a focus on the effect of corruption on
development. In 1995, the group released its first Corruption
Perceptions Index, ranking 41 countries on how corrupt
they were perceived to be on a scale of one to ten.
This ranking—which immediately singled out countries
like Indonesia and the Philippines as highly corrupt—made
corruption a legitimate topic on the agenda in countries and
institutions around the world.
“Governments that have sought to brush this debate aside
can no longer do so, as the whole world sees how their nations
rank,” said Peter Eigen, TI’s chairman.
More Kids in School but Education Quality Declines, Report Says
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Children in Guinea benefit from having textbooks in
the classroom.
Laura Lartigue, USAID/Guinea |
While more children are going to school, the quality of the
education they receive is faltering, according to a report
issued at the Education for All (EFA) conference in Brazil
in November.
In one-third of the 160 countries that are part of EFA, more
than 25 percent of students never reach grade 5, said the
EFA Global Monitoring Report.
“The pace of change…is insufficient to achieve
the set goals” of improving the quality of education
by 2015—one of the six goals first set out at the World
Education Forum in Dakar in 2000—said the EFA in a statement.
Many classrooms are excessively overcrowded. Elsewhere, teachers
are dying of HIV/AIDS faster than they can be replaced. Poorly
trained teachers, ill equipped schools, and corruption also
add to the misery.
However, the report cited successful efforts to improve education,
such as distance learning and multiple-grade classrooms, which
are sponsored by the Agency.
“USAID, in addition to being a large funder, has repeatedly
been a major source of innovations to assure that quality
is not lost with quantity,” said Dr. John A. Grayzel,
director of USAID’s Office of Education.
The Agency also pays five technical advisors at the U.N.
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO),
who work to advance EFA goals.
In Burkina Faso, communities built schools at half the cost
of a government-built school and maintained them better, said
James T. Smith, Deputy Assistant Administrator for Economic
Growth, Agriculture, and Trade. Students at less costly, community-built
and -run schools in Mali had test results as good as students
in government schools. Business partners brought a results-oriented
culture to schools in Nicaragua and in other countries, USAID
supports.
Another innovation is the Global Learning Portal, a pilot
public-private effort that allows 6,000 educators from six
countries to share strategies and innovations over the web.
The system aims to reach all 32 million educators in developing
countries, said Buff Mackenzie, who is also with EGAT’s
Office of Education. The portal—a growing alliance founded
by USAID, the Academy for Educational Development, and Sun
Microsystems—plans to invest an additional $1 million
to expand the website for Arabic speakers.
For the first time in the four years since EFA was created,
several side events ran concurrently, including UNICEF’s
Girl’s Education Initiative, the global Fast Track Initiative,
a teacher’s parliament, a discussion on child labor,
and a session on public-private partnerships hosted by the
World Economic Forum.
USAID was the lead agency for the U.S. delegation to the
conference, which this year focused on quality.
The Agency has been among the champions of this collaborative
approach to finding solutions, said Dr. Gregory P. Loos, team
leader for Basic Education and Technical Leadership.
Today, USAID’s basic education investment is nearing
$300 million, of which $56 million last year leveraged $120
million in partner assets by involving businesses, foundations,
and other funding sources.
“It has been working,” he said. “I think the
message is starting to settle in that nongovernment resources
can be found to support basic education.”
OTI Rapid Post-Conflict Aid Was Effective, Harvard Study Says
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Reaching people in outlying regions has been a key
objective for the OTI program in Afghanistan.
OTI/Afghanistan |
Initial findings in a Harvard University study of the first
10 years of USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives
(OTI) concludes that “overall, OTI has done extremely
well,” said study director Robert Rotberg at a symposium
in Washington, D.C.
The OTI 10-year legacy was examined in the Harvard study
of programs in six countries: Sierra Leone, Peru, Kosovo,
Macedonia, East Timor, and Indonesia.
The study was funded by OTI.
Professor Rotberg, of the Belfer Center at Harvard’s
Kennedy School of Government, said Dec. 8 that his team of
researchers interviewed those who benefited from the OTI programs,
host country officials, NGOs, and USAID staff.
Calling the quick-acting OTI the equivalent of USAID’s
“special forces” for its ability to move swiftly
into crises after conflict ends, Rotberg said the primary
impact was to involve local officials and stakeholders with
civil society to resolve problems.
In Peru, OTI managed to “get the military and civil
society together to talk,” he said.
In Macedonia, to avert ethnic conflict OTI promoted civic
and town meetings to discuss real physical improvements that
built confidence.
In Kosovo, OTI discovered that “mixed projects”
undertaken by members of different ethnic groups were “less
likely to be destroyed” when conflict broke out.
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Rural communities join together to address common needs
in Serbia through OTI-supported activities.
Ana Adamovic |
“In all countries [studied], OTI initiated cross-societal
and inter-society conversations,” Rotberg said. Above
all, OTI projects were “run from the field, not the capital,”
he said.
Since OTI was established in 1994, it has operated in 29
countries as a flexible tool to respond to ethnic tension
and post-conflict issues, often working in fragile states.
It works to support democracy, rule of law, free media, and
civilian rule over the military, and to prevent retribution.
Rotberg said many efforts were successful but others fell
flat, sometimes due to the local culture: in Macedonia, OTI
had success but in Aceh, Indonesia, much less so.
“In Sierra Leone, OTI brought the parties to the table—there
would not have been a successful transition [from conflict
to peace] without OTI,” Rotberg said.
In Peru, the office successfully trained 25 public defenders;
and in East Timor, it had a role in negotiations with Australia
on oil rights and helped rebuild schools and roads after pro-Indonesian
mobs destroyed 70 percent of the capital, Dili.
“In many countries, OTI tried to fight the good fight
against corruption…but achieved little….It was outclassed
and out gunned” by corrupt local officials, Rotberg concluded.
The Harvard study group, which has not yet written its report,
found that “OTI performed extraordinary service by helping
to create newspapers and radio stations, training journalists,
and creating broadcast facilities and news agencies,”
Rotberg said.
“In Sierra Leone, everyone talked about the soap operas
on reconciliation” that OTI helped air on the radio,
he said.
“OTI has a legacy of which we can all be proud,”
said Rotberg.
World AIDS Experts Back ‘ABC’ Strategy in Lancet
Article
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A Youth Alert! peer education team visits a secondary
school in Malawi and presents a high-energy message
stressing abstinence and personal goal setting.
PSI |
Leading experts on AIDS recently signed a statement in the
influential medical journal The Lancet in support of
the strategy to prevent HIV transmission known as “ABC”:
Abstain, Be Faithful, and Use Condoms.
USAID is committed to the ABC approach as an effective way
to combat HIV/AIDS, which has claimed millions of lives around
the globe.
Some critics have doubted it is possible to persuade people
to abstain from sex or to be faithful. Others say condoms
are not foolproof and may encourage promiscuity.
However, more than 140 experts, advocates, and directors
of global institutions—including Archbishop Desmond Tutu,
representatives of the World Bank, The Global Fund to Fight
AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and five U.N. agencies—found
enough common ground to sign on to the commentary published
in the Nov. 27 issue of The Lancet.
The “ABC (Abstain, Be faithful/reduce partners, use
Condoms) approach can play an important role in reducing the
prevalence of HIV in a generalized epidemic, as occurred in
Uganda,” the statement said.
“All three elements of this approach are essential to
reducing HIV incidence, although the emphasis placed on individual
elements needs to vary according to the target population,”
a view held by the U.S. government.
The Lancet authors said: “We call for an end
to polarizing debate and urge the international community
to unite” to slow the spread of HIV/AIDS.
The commentary focused on preventing sexual transmission
of AIDS, the main path of infection.
It said prevention programs should be locally endorsed and
culturally relevant to targeted groups. It called for involving
religious and other organizations, care groups, health workers,
local media, and government leaders to “foster new norms
of sexual behavior.”
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Afghans in Mazar-e Sharif learn carpentry at a program
training former militia fighters and others in need
of jobs. The program, run by the International Organization
for Migration and paid for by USAID, offers classes
in literacy, carpentry, carpet weaving, agriculture,
welding, tailoring, auto mechanics, and other trades.
Ex-fighters get $30 per month to sustain their families
during training.
Ben Barber, USAID |
The authors also said new approaches such as microbicides,
vaccines, and male circumcision should be continuously explored.
“This is an unprecedented international statement, endorsed
by nearly all the leading HIV experts and service organizations,
and is very congruent with the official USAID and U.S. government
approaches to preventing HIV,” said Daniel Halperin,
who is with the Agency’s Bureau for Global Health.
Uganda is one example where ABC has decreased HIV infections
rates, and there are other countries—including Thailand,
Cambodia, and the Dominican Republic—where the ABC approach
has been effective.
UNAIDS executive director Peter Piot and U.S. Global AIDS
Coordinator Randall Tobias said in an article recently: “We
support the ‘ABC’ prevention strategy—Abstain,
Be Faithful, use Condoms—but know that AIDS cannot be
defeated by just these three means alone. Women are getting
infected more than men not only because they lack essential
AIDS information, but because they lack social and economic
power.”
According to UNAIDS and the World Health Organization, 39.4
million people are living with HIV/AIDS. New infections in
2004 came to 4.9 million; 3.1 million people died the same
year. Globally, women make up almost half of the adults living
with HIV/AIDS.
Since 1986, USAID has given more than $3.2 billion to HIV/AIDS
programs in nearly 100 countries. In 2003, President Bush
announced the $15 billion Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief,
an interagency effort led by the Office of the U.S. Global
AIDS Coordinator.
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