A sparkling satire on international aid and celebrity, Looking for Bono charts one man's accidental quest to bring water to his community. Baba is a semi-literate man living a simple life centred on the local auto repair shop in Palemo, how he will find his next meal and an obsession with his disinterested, Nollywood star-wannabe wife Munira and her voluptuous body. Baba is acutely aware of the water corruption that has left him, on occasion, without so much as a drop to even brush his teeth. One day on the news, a story about international humanitarian Bono flashes onscreen. Bono is in Africa to do good and like a thunderbolt, Baba decides that Bono is the answer to all of his problems. Once Bono hears about the local water issues he will want to step in and convince the president of Nigeria to end the corruption. Once the water is flowing, Baba can clean up and Munira will set her sights a little closer to home. Before he knows it, Baba is a celebrity being feted by the Lagos media and Munira has turned into his virtuous wife. Will the ensuing media storm engulf Baba as he is launched into a world of high stakes foreign aid dealings and competing interests? Or will he return to his simple life with water for his community and the renewed affections of his Munira?

The Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is one of the world's oldest, most prominent, and revered aid organizations. But at the end of World War II things could not have looked more different. Under fire for its failure to speak out against the Holocaust or to extend substantial assistance to Jews trapped in Nazi camps across Europe, the ICRC desperately needed to salvage its reputation in order to remain relevant in the post-war world. Indeed, the whole future of Switzerland's humanitarian flagship looked to hang in the balance at this time. Torn between defending Swiss neutrality and battling Communist critics in the early Cold War, the Red Cross leadership in Geneva emerged from the world war with a new commitment to protecting civilians caught in the crossfire of conflict. Yet they did so while interfering with Allied de-nazification efforts in Germany and elsewhere, and coming to the defence of former Nazis at the Nuremberg Trials. Not least, they provided the tools for many of Hitler's former henchmen, notorious figures such as Joseph Mengele and Adolf Eichmann, to slip out of Europe and escape prosecution - behaviour which did little to silence those critics in the Allied powers who unfavourably compared the 'shabby' neutrality of the Swiss with the 'good neutrality' of the Swedes, their eager rivals for leadership in international humanitarian initiatives. However, in spite of all this, by the end of the decade, the ICRC had emerged triumphant from its moment of existential crisis, navigating the new global order to reaffirm its leadership in world humanitarian affairs against the challenge of the Swedes, and playing a formative role in rewriting the rules of war in the Geneva Conventions of 1949. This uncompromising new history tells the remarkable and intriguing story of how the ICRC achieved this - successfully escaping the shadow of its ambiguous wartime record to forge a new role and a new identity in the post-1945 world.

A global health crisis creates great uncertainty, high stress, and anxiety within society. During such a crisis, when information is unavailable or inconsistent, and when people feel unsure of what they know or what anyone knows, behavioral science indicates an increased human desire for transparency, direction, and meaning of what has happened. At such a time, the roles of stakeholders that emerge with their words and actions can help keep people safe, help them cope with emotions, and ultimately bring their experience into context leading to meaningful results. But as this crisis shifts beyond public health and workplace safety, there are implications for business continuity, job loss, and radically different ways of working. While some may already seek meaning from the crisis and move towards the ""next normal,"" others feel a growing uncertainty and are worried about the future. Therefore, it is important to analyze the role of stakeholders during these uncertain times. Stakeholder Strategies for Reducing the Impact of Global Health Crises provides a comprehensive resource on stakeholder action and strategies to deal with crises by analyzing the needs of society during global health crises, how stakeholders should communicate, and how resilience and peace can be promoted in times of chaos. The chapters cover the roles of stakeholders during a pandemic spanning from the government and international development agencies to industry and non-government organizations, community-based organizations, and more. This book not only highlights the responsibilities of each of the stakeholders but also showcases the best practices seen during the COVID-19 pandemic through existing theories and case studies. This book is intended for researchers in the fields of sociology, political science, public administration, mass media and communication, crisis and disaster management, and more, along with government officials, policymakers, medical agencies, executives, managers, medical professionals, practitioners, stakeholders, academicians, and students interested in the role of stakeholders during global health crises.

Foreign aid is now a $100bn business and is expanding more rapidly today than it has for a generation. But does it work? Indeed, is it needed at all?
Other attempts to answer these important questions have been dominated by a focus on the impact of official aid provided by governments. But today possibly as much as 30 percent of aid is provided by Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), and over 10 percent is provided as emergency assistance.
In this first-ever attempt to provide an overall assessment of aid, Roger Riddell presents a rigorous but highly readable account of aid, warts and all. oes Foreign Aid Really Work? sets out the evidence and exposes the instances where aid has failed and explains why. The book also examines the way that politics distorts aid, and disentangles the moral and ethical assumptions that lie behind the belief that aid does good. The book concludes by detailing the practical ways that aid needs to change if it is to be the effective force for good that its providers claim it is.