Aid and Development Archive

Editor’s note: Corridors of Power is written by World Politics Review Editor-at-Large Roland Flamini and appears every Monday. This week’s edition appears Tuesday due to Monday’s Memorial Day holiday in the United States. A GHOST AT THE COMMITTEE — Randall Tobias will not be present when the U.S. Congress takes up foreign aid appropriations after Memorial Day, but he will certainly be there in spirit. Tobias resigned as head of USAID, the U.S. Agency for International Development, following that rather bizarre Washington madam scandal, in which he was the only publicly identified alleged high-profile client. But it is largely the […]

VILLA CARDAL, Uruguay — The 1,200 inhabitants of this isolated rural town could not care less about a feud between U.S. tech companies Intel and AMD. But recently it began a social experiment that could impact not only its development but also the fortunes of several U.S. corporate giants. Eight-year-old Nahuel Lema and his 135 classmates at Number 24: Italia, the only primary school here, took home new laptops May 10 thanks to a partnership between the Uruguayan government and One Laptop per Child (OLPC), a United States’ non-profit born out of the MIT Media Lab. Nahuel’s mother, Grisela, sat […]

Editor’s Note: Rights & Wrongs is a new occasional feature covering the world’s major human rights-related happenings. It is written by regular WPR contributor Juliette Terzieff. FOMENTING FEAR — Amnesty International released its annual report Wednesday with cautions over the growing influence of the “politics of fear” and the increasing participation of established democracies in widespread human rights abuses, and called on countries to invest in human rights institutions. “In 2006, short-sighted, fear-mongering policies undermined the rule of law and human rights, fed racism and xenophobia, fueled discrimination, suppressed dissent, intensified conflict and sowed the seeds of more violence,” Amnesty’s […]

KATMANDU, Nepal — Tucked away in the forests of eastern Nepal, acres of neatly organized bamboo huts accommodate the victims of one of the world’s most intractable refugee situations. For 16 years, tens of thousands of Bhutanese refugees have languished in seven overcrowded camps, relying on international aid for food and shelter, and slowly losing hope. Today, many are pinning the last of those fading hopes on an offer from the United States to resettle 60,000 people. But the offer has also caused a schism amongst the refugees. While many see this as the only viable option to move on […]