The urgency of reducing poverty in the developing world has been the subject of a public campaign by such unlikely policy experts as George Clooney, Alicia Keyes, Elton John, Angelina Jolie, and Bono. And yet accompanying the call for more foreign aid is an almost universal discontent with the effectiveness of the existing aid system. In Reinventing Foreign Aid, development expert William Easterly has gathered top scholars in the field to discuss how to improve foreign aid. These authors, Easterly points out, are not claiming that their ideas will (to invoke a current slogan) Make Poverty History. Rather, they take on specific problems and propose some hard-headed solutions. Easterly himself, in an expansive and impassioned introductory chapter, makes a case for the "searchers"--who explore solutions by trial and error and learn from feedback--over the "planners"--who throw an endless supply of resources at a big goal--as the most likely to reduce poverty. Other writers look at scientific evaluation of aid projects (including randomized trials) and describe projects found to be cost-effective, including vaccine delivery and HIV education; consider how to deal with the government of the recipient state (work through it or bypass a possibly dysfunctional government?); examine the roles of the International Monetary Fund (a de-facto aid provider) and the World Bank; and analyze some new and innovative proposals for distributing aid. William Easterly is the author of The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics (MIT Press, 2001) and The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good. He is Professor of Economics at New York University (Joint with Africa House), Codirector of NYU's Development Research Institute, visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Nonresident Fellow of the Center for Global Development in Washington, DC. Contributors Abhijit Banerjee, Nancy Birdsall, Craig Burnside, Esther Duflo, Domenico Fanizza, William Easterly, Ruimin He, Kurt Hoffman, Stephen Knack, Michael Kremer, Mari Kuraishi, Ruth Levine, Bertin Martens, John McMillan, Edward Miguel, Jonathan Morduch, Todd Moss, Gunilla Pettersson, Lant Pritchett, Steven Radelet, Aminur Rahman, Ritva Reinikka, Jakob Svensson, Nicolas van de Walle, James Vreeland, Dennis Whittle, Michael Woolcock

"[A] tightly crafted, very readable book . . . the best in-depth contemporary analysis we are going to get."--Stephen Flynn, The Washington Post When Hurricane Katrina roared ashore on August 29, 2005, federal and state officials were not prepared for the devastation it would bring. In this searing indictment of what went wrong, Christopher Cooper and Robert Block take readers inside FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security to reveal the inexcusable mismanagement during the crisis--the bad decisions that were made, the facts that were ignored, and the individuals who saw that the system was broken but did nothing to fix it.
In this award-winning and critically acclaimed book, Cooper and Block reconstruct the crucial days before and after the storm hit, laying bare the government's inability to respond to the most elemental needs. They also demonstrate how the Bush administration's obsessive focus on terrorist threats fatally undermined the government's ability to respond to natural disasters. The incompetent response to Hurricane Katrina is a wake-up call to all Americans, wherever they live, about how distressingly vulnerable we remain.

Chief Dewey Whetsell is a thirty-four year veteran with the forty-member Cordova (Alaska) Volunteer Fire Department providing structural, marine fire protection, underwater rescue/recovery, and Search and Rescue operations. He is a recipient of Alaska's highest fire service award. Chief Whetsell is past-president of the Alaska Fire Chiefs association and certified Level IV instructor. He authored the 160-hour Senior Fire Officer's Course covering NFPA-1021, among numerous other courses. At the invitation of the Alaska Departmetn of Emergency Services, Chief Whetsell represented the City of Cordova during the 1989 Exxon-Valdex oil spill and eventually was responsible for impementation of the Incident Command System in spill response plans by major oil companies shipping oil in Alaska waters.

Research in recent years on aid effectiveness shows that significant obstacles in fragile states--insecurity, poor governance and weak implementation capacity--usually prevent aid from achieving the desired results in these environments. This study investigates the attributes and effectiveness of donor-supported programmes and projects that worked well under difficult conditions in fragile states. Presented in this study are nine development initiatives in six less developed countries Afghanistan, Cambodia, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Timor Leste and Uganda. The cases show that development initiatives, which engage local communities and local level governments, are often able to have significant impact. However, for more substantial improvements to take places, localized gains need to be scaled up either horizontally (other localities) or vertically (to higher levels). Given the advantages of working at the local level and the difficulty of working through mainstream bureaucratic agencies at higher levels in these countries, donors often prefer to create 'parallel-agencies' to reach out to larger numbers of beneficiaries. However, this may in the long run weaken the legitimacy of mainstream government institutions, and donor agencies may therefore choose to work as closely as possible with government officials from the beginning to build trust and demonstrating that new initiatives are non-threatening and help prepare the eventual mainstreaming of 'parallel agencies'."

Despite its good intentions, mismanagement and corruption plagued the UN's Oil-for-Food Program:
-More than 2,200 companies paid $1.8 billion in illegal surcharges and kickbacks to the Iraqi regime
-The UN Security Council stood by as the Iraqi regime outright smuggled about $8.4 billion of oil during the Program years in violation of UN sanctions
-The Iraqi regime steered oil contracts for political advantage by giving rights to buy oil to dozens of global political figures sympathetic to Iraq's goal to loosen or overturn the UN sanctions
-The Iraqi regime provided Benon Sevan, the UN's chief administrator of the Program, with rights to buy more than 7 million barrels of oil
-UN-related humanitarian agencies collected tens of millions of dollars for costs they never incurred, and some built factories in Iraq that weren't needed or that never worked at all
-Even UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan was tainted by it
But the whole story has never been told in one place.

A twentieth-century innovation, foreign aid has become a familiar and even expected element in international relations. But scholars and government officials continue to debate why countries provide it: some claim that it is primarily a tool of diplomacy, some argue that it is largely intended to support development in poor countries, and still others point out its myriad newer uses. Carol Lancaster effectively puts this dispute to rest here by providing the most comprehensive answer yet to the question of why governments give foreign aid. She argues that because of domestic politics in aid-giving countries, it has always been--and will continue to be--used to achieve a mixture of different goals.
Drawing on her expertise in both comparative politics and international relations and on her experience as a former public official, Lancaster provides five in-depth case studies--the United States, Japan, France, Germany, and Denmark--that demonstrate how domestic politics and international pressures combine to shape how and why donor governments give aid. In doing so, she explores the impact on foreign aid of political institutions, interest groups, and the ways governments organize their giving. Her findings provide essential insight for scholars of international relations and comparative politics, as well as anyone involved with foreign aid or foreign policy.

Eroding Local Capacity is a critical examination of the interplay between international and local actors operating in the humanitarian arena in Africa. All sides emphasise the need to build local capacity for humanitarian action, yet the results have not been substantial. Even long-term, semi-permanent emergencies have generated little local capacity to assist and protect the victims of violence, displacement and related deprivations. In some cases, whatever local capacity did exist has been overwhelmed by the international aid presence. Why is this so? What is the case for a more even division of labour between North and South in this area, and why is it so difficult to bring about?The book focuses on cases from East Africa and the Horn. It considers institutional capacity in the public and private sector, as well as legal and social norms of humanitarian action. The authors are African and Nordic scholars who worked together on the NORAD-supported project over a 3-year period. Preliminary conclusions were discussed at seminars organized by the Centre for Foreign Relations (Dar es Salaam), the School of Government at the University of the Western Cape (Cape Town), and the Chr. Michelsen Institute (Bergen).

Understanding of Operational Counter Terrorism is one serious effort to lay out a comprehensive strategy of how to deal with a whole gamut of possible terrorist incidents by using a language that any person or first responders like policemen, security personnel, firemen, paramedics, etc. can understand. This guide covers everything from bombings and hostage- taking, to NBC (Nuclear, Biological and Chemical) Terrorism, what needs to be done before, during, and after an event. This manual combines what minimally needs to be understood about Operational Counter- Terrorism by the government- level policy maker, while at the same time helping the personnel on the first responder level who are planning to cope with what must at least initially seem like an overwhelming attack. Terrorism is global and any part of this guide can easily be adapted and translated to any region, law and government in the world. This manual should make clear that the only way, to effectively deal with terrorism is to have a thorough understanding of its present-day characteristics such as who is involved and what weapons and tactics are the terrorists likely to be using. their tool boxes; what works and what is required; what new capabilities need to be developed in order to face not only today's terrorist, but also tomorrow's as well.

For more than forty-five years, Kevin Cahill has been helping to heal the world: as a leading specialist in tropical medicine and as a driving force in humanitarian assistance and relief efforts across the globe.Physician, teacher, activist, diplomat, and advocate, Cahill has touched many lives and helped right many wrongs. In this book, he chronicles extraordinary achievements of compassion and commitment. Bringing together a rich selection of writingsaessays, op-ed pieces, speeches, and other works, many out of print or hard to findahe crafts a fascinating self-portrait of a life devoted to others.The writings reflect fully the range of Cahillas passions. Reporting from places under siegeaLebanon, Somalia, Nicaragua, Libya, and IrelandaCahill writes as a physician and activist working to restore lives wounded by land mines or threatened by violence and disease. Closer to home, there are his visionary statements from the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, powerful critiques of the politics of famine and public health, and programs for new forms of humanitarian assistance to transform health and human rights.Looking back as the Bronx-born son of an Irish physician, he also touches on more personalabut no less passionateaconcerns and on the impact on his life of the worlds of pain and suffering in which he has traveled. Kevin M. Cahill, M.D., is Director of the Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs at Fordham University and President of the Center for International Health and Cooperation in New York City. He is the author and editor of many books, including Human Security for All: A Tribute to Sergio Vieira de Mello and Technology for Humanitarian Action, both in the Fordhamseries International Humanitarian Affairs.

An autobiographical account of forty years in the life of a British doctor working with victims of war and exile in Israel, Lebanon and the Occupied Territories. Runa Mackay shares her thoughts and views of political situations such as the Six-Day War, the birth of the Intifada, Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and the Israeli deportation of Palestinians living in disputed territories. 'Dr Runa Mackay writes with authority and verve about her forty years' service in Israel and Lebanon. Her story is medically impressive, socially moving and politically trenchant. Her faith, courage and sustained commitment to the Palestinian cause over so many years is deeply challenging.' Revd Dr Gordon Strachan Director, Church of Scotland Centre, Tiberias 1987-1989 'Having lived in Galilee, in Lebanon and in the Occupied Territories, she bears witness for Palestinians living within that trinity - in Israel's 'Green Line', in the diaspora of exile and under occupation ... The resilience, courage, generosity and warmth of a nation living under extremes of wretchedness and confronting the greatest of odds comes through in page after page of this remarkable book.' Dr Swee Chai Ang, Author of From Beirut to Jerusalem

As interest in planning for emergencies and disasters burgeons, and educational and training programs proliferate, Principles of emergency planning and management is the first book to meet the need for a concise yet comprehensive and systematic primer on how to prepare for a disaster. Providing readers with a comprehensive, systematic, yet concise introduction to effective preparation for disasters, it provides a unified starting point encompassing the scattered and parochial literature in this nascent field of academic enquiry and practical endeavor.

The book provides a general introduction to the methods, procedures, protocols and strategies of emergency planning, with emphasis on situations in industrialized countries and the local level of organization (i.e. cities, municipalities, metropolitan areas and small regions), though with ample reference to national and international levels. Rather than concentrating on the practices of any one country or state, the author focuses on general principles. Principles of emergency planning and management is designed to be a reference source and manual from which emergency managers can extract ideas, suggestions and pro-forma methodologies to help them design and implement emergency plans. A comprehensive all-hazards approach is adopted, with frequent reference to the most important individual hazards and the planning and management needs that they create. Twelve examples of actual emergency planning and management problems are analyzed in detail.

Principles of emergency planning and management is written especially for the new generation of emergency planners and managers that is emerging as a result of intensified governmental interest in disaster preparedness. Many of them will occupy positions in government or other organizations that require emergency plans. The book will also be of value to students of disasters and hazards who have a practical interest in how disasters are planned for and managed, and to professional workers and trainees who will eventually have to participate in disaster plans. Principles of emergency planning and management is designed to be easily integrated with training courses in emergency preparedness.

"Tonight the Bhopalis are going through their Hiroshima."
-Professor Manish Mishra, a doctor on the scene from FIVE PAST MIDNIGHT IN BHOPAL

One of the premier historians of our time, Dominique Lapierre is the author of such stirring classics as Is Paris Burning? and The City of Joy. Famed for uncovering the humanity in historic events, he here joins forces with acclaimed writer Javier Moro. Together they investigate and chronicle each fateful moment counting down to what happened...

FIVE PAST MIDNIGHT IN BHOPAL

Union Carbide was a huge American corporation whose leaders had only the best intentions. In New York they invented a miracle insecticide. In ancient Bhopal, they formulated the lethal gas needed to produce it and built a giant plant to process it.

But at five past midnight on December 3, 1984, toxic gas leaked out of a pesticide tank. By one thirty geysers were spitting poison into the night wind. The apocalypse had begun. Banks of deadly fog filled nearby slums. Lungs burst. Corneas burned. Death would strike in seconds and no one was prepared: neither the bride at her wedding banquet nor the peasants who came to Bhopal for a better life, not the shoemaker rousing his neighbors to flee their huts or the Scottish nun risking all to rescue lost children. By night's end, over half a million Bhopalis were drowning in pain and chaos and between 16,000 and 30,000 would die in the worst industrial disaster in history.

In FIVE PAST MIDNIGHT IN BHOPAL, Lapierre and Moro weave hundreds of characters, eyewitness accounts, and adventures into one haunting human tapestry. An epic of ambition and valor, faith and hope, catastrophe and consequence, it is as spine-tingling as Titanic, as harrowing as The Perfect Storm, and as relevant as the latest headline.

Half of all royalties for this book go to the Dominique Lapierre City of Joy Indian Foundation to support humanitarian actions in Bhopal.

Michael Taylor spent 12 years of his life as director of Christian Aid, during which time he came face to face with world poverty. In this book he gives three examples of theological work which promotes historical change in favour of the poor.

Edited by the United Nations Development Programme, this collection of papers offers a new rationale and framework for international development cooperation. Its main argument is that in actual practice development cooperation has already moved beyond aid. In the name of aid (i.e. assistance to poor countries), we are today dealing with issues such as the ozone hole, global climate change, HIV, drug trafficking and financial volatility. All of these issues are not really poverty-related. Rather, they concern global housekeeping: ensuring an adequate provision of global public goods.

What impact do international economic inputs have on human rights in Third World nations? William Meyer explores the effects of direct investment by U.S. multinational corporations, economic and military aid, and MNC manufacturing plants. He examines the international political economy of human rights at both the national and the international levels. Case studies are combined with quantitative studies that use aggregate cross-national data, and theories that link MNCs to human rights are subjected to empirical testing.

As Meyer illustrates, at the national level, human rights violations are associated with U.S. MNCs in Chile, Honduras, India, Indonesia, and Mexico. MNCs have been especially guilty of violating labor rights, particularly through their reliance on sweatshops. MNCs have also been responsible for widespread pollution and environmental degradation. At a broader international level, increased investment by MNCs tends to go along with human rights improvements in the Third World as a whole. Meyer shows that there is a broad positive relationship between direct investment by MNCs and broader political rights and improved living standards. Aggregate data are also analyzed for human rights as compared to U.S. economic and military aid. Economic aid is found to be associated with improved civil-political rights and improved socioeconomic rights. Military aid, by contrast, is associated with declining levels of civil rights and with lower levels of social welfare. This book will serve as an important study for researchers, activists, and students of human rights.

* An accessible introduction for all social science students * A balanced, comprehensive and up-to-date treatment of the issues and trends * A guide to the past, present and future of foreign aid Foreign aid has undergone considerable changes over the past fifty years. Foreign Aid in a Changing World explores the changes and locates them in a context of wider economic and political developments. These are the developments affecting all countries, in North, South, East and West, and in particular, the changing relations among them. The book analyses the different reasons why some countries - both in the developing world and former communist states - seem to need assistance. It critically surveys the values-based and interests-based arguments in favour of aid and its many forms; encompasses the important non-governmental and multilateral dimensions, as well as the bilateral flows, at national and sub-national levels; and focuses particularly on the contemporary emphasis on making aid dependent on democratization and 'good government'. Peter Burnell examines the principal influences on foreign aid, what makes aid controversial, and whether it has a future. He provides an important text for all students of international relations and development studies across the social science disciplines.

This book explores the emerging phenomenon of complex humanitarian emergencies and the evolving policies of the United States in responding to these emergencies. In addition, Andrew Natsios examines the relationship of disaster response to U.S. foreign policy and national interest, and makes suggestions for improving both relief strategies and systems for designing those strategies.

To these issues Natsios brings his first-hand experience in numerous key positions. Mr. Natsios provides case study analysis from these experiences over the past five years to illustrate the arguments presented in the book, particularly regarding Somalia, Angola, Sudan, Panama, and Kuwait and Kurdistan following the Gulf War. As former president George Bush indicates in his foreword to the volume, this book will make a substantive contribution to continuing and enhancing vitally important work. Of great interest to scholars, researchers, and policy makers in the areas of contemporary American foreign policy and humanitarian activities abroad.

Unlike earthquakes and other natural catastrophes, this "new species of trouble" afflicts persons and groups in particularly disruptive ways. With clear-eyed compassion, in vivid narrative and in participants' own words, Kai Erikson describes how certain communities have faced such disasters. He shows conclusively that new attention must be paid to their experiences if people are to maintain elementary confidence not only in themselves but in society, government, and even life itself.

This handbook is the product of the experience of Oxfam UK and Ireland in its work in over 70 countries around the world. It offers an expression of Oxfam's fundamental principles: that all the people have the right to an equitable share in the world's resources, and the right to make decisions about their own development. The denial of such rights is at the heart of poverty and suffering. This reference work analyzes policy, procedure and practice in such fields as health, human rights, emergency relief, capacity-building and agricultural production.

For nearly a decade, international efforts to combat famine and food shortages around the globe have concentrated on the critical situations in sub-Saharan Africa. In the Sudan, the largest country in Africa, prolonged drought, complicated by civil strife and debilitating economic problems, has caused widespread human suffering. The Sudan illustrates the proverbial worst-case scenario in which urgent food needs have been denied, food has been used as a weapon, and outside assistance has been obstructed. The Challenges of Famine Relief focuses on the two famine emergencies in the Sudan in the 1980s the great African drought-related famine of 1984-86 and the conflict-related famine that afflicted the southern Sudan in 1988-91. Francis Deng and Larry Minear analyze the historical and political setting and the response by Sudan authorities and the international community. The book outlines four problem areas exemplified in the response to each crisis: the external nature of famine relief, the relationship between relief activities and endemic problems, the coordination of such activities, and the ambivalence of the results. The authors identify the many difficulties inherent in providing emergency relief to populations caught in circumstances of life-threatening famine. They show how such famine emergencies reflect the most extreme breakdown of social order and present the most compelling imperatives for international action. Deng and Minear also discuss how the international community, alerted by the media and mobilized by the Ethiopian famine, moved to fill the moral void left by the government and how outside organizations worked together to pressure Sudan's political authorities to be more responsive to these tragedies. Looking ahead, the authors highlight the implications for future involvement in humanitarian initiatives in a new world order. As recent developments in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union demonstrate, such humanitarian challenges of global dimensions are no longer confined to third world countries. As the international community apportions limited resources among a growing number of such challenges, more effective responses to crises such as those described in this book are imperative.

At the age of 48, Moritz Thomsen sold his pig farm and joined the Peace Corps. As he tells the story, his awareness of the comic elements in the human situation -- including his own -- and his ability to convey it in fast-moving, earthy prose have made Living Poor a classic.

"Hilariously funny at times, grimly sad at others and leavened with perceptive insights into the ways of the people and with breathtaking descriptions of the Ecuadorian landscape". -- St. Louis Post-Dispatch