More than half of Afghanistan’s population is under twenty-five, which shouldn’t be surprising since the average life span there is forty-nine. But the United States Agency for International Development looked at this group and decided it needed help because, it said, these young people are “disenfranchised, unskilled, uneducated, neglected—and most susceptible to joining the insurgency.” […]
One of the more bizarre mysteries of contemporary British politics is the ironclad, almost fanatical intensity of the government’s commitment to foreign aid spending and the activities of DFID, the Department for International Development. It is bizarre because the Prime Minister talks about foreign aid as if it’s all about famine relief and saving children’s […]
There’s been much discussion over British aid to booming India, but in the 19th Century a village in southern England was saved by aid coming the other way. It was the mid-1800s in southeast England, and a little boy was being beaten by his mother for drinking the last of the water in their house during […]
There’s a lot to learn in the aftermath of a natural disaster, especially about your elected officials, as anyone living in New York and New Jersey can tell you. Natural disasters separate effective policies from ineffective ones because those policies are suddenly required to work, and politicians are judged by how they respond and how […]
Critics often assert — now more than ever — that money spent on international development is money that is wasted. They argue that it’s squandered on bad projects, that it bypasses the neediest or is spent in countries with governments that don’t serve their people. But not all foreign aid is guaranteed — and nor […]
looking beyond borders 