Archives: Morning Breakouts

The House Foreign Affairs Committee on Thursday approved legislation (HR 2829) that would withhold up to half of non-voluntary U.S. contributions to the United Nations "if, in two years, the United Nations is not collecting 80 percent of its regular budget in voluntary contributions," Agence France-Presse reports. The panel "approved Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen's (R-Fla.) bill by a party-line 23-15 vote after an angry debate over whether such a move would enhance or diminish U.S. global influence," the news service writes. "The proposal could pass the Republican-led House of Representatives but faces stiff opposition in the Democratic-held Senate and from President Barack Obama, all but certainly dooming the measure," AFP notes (10/14).

In this post in the Guardian's "Poverty Matters Blog," Lawrence Haddad, director of the Institute of Development Studies, writes, "We must politicize undernutrition, which is still a major global problem, so that it gets the attention it deserves." He adds, "Three key elements of governance are critical to tackling undernutrition: capacity, accountability and responsiveness."

In this Washington Post opinion piece, Raj Kumar, president of Devex and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and John Hewko, the general secretary and chief executive of Rotary International, report on the Millennium Challenge Corp. (MCC), a government "corporation" established in 2004 under the George W. Bush administration "on the premise that U.S. foreign assistance would have the greatest impact if offered on a non-political basis to developing countries that adopt sound economic and social policies." They write, "Congress has appropriated about $10 billion to the MCC over the past seven years, but the prudent agency has disbursed just a few billion," and "the agency is now a takeover target."

"As South Korean President Lee Myung-bak continued his state visit to the United States on Friday, a group of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) wants the Obama administration to explain what they call unconscionable delays in deciding whether to resume U.S. food assistance to North Korea," Reuters reports. "Rising global commodities prices coupled with summer floods and typhoons have compounded the emergency this year, and the United Nations estimated in March that more than six million North Koreans urgently need food help," the news agency writes.

The New York Times reports on a growing movement in Senegal to end female genital cutting, which was officially banned in the nation more than a decade ago. "The change is happening without the billions of dollars that have poured into other global health priorities throughout the developing world in recent years," the newspaper writes, adding, "Over the past 15 years, the drive to end the practice has gained such momentum that a majority of Senegalese villages where genital cutting was commonplace have committed to stop it."

Toronto's Globe and Mail reports on the death on Thursday of Winstone Zulu, an HIV/AIDS advocate from Zambia who lived with the virus for two decades. "His death has devastated the international community of AIDS activists," the newspaper writes, adding, "Winstone was a one-man force who played a key role in reshaping the global response to HIV/AIDS and (tuberculosis) TB. He personally lobbied every G8 leader; he spoke to mass rallies on five continents; he inspired audiences at schools and in churches and in parliaments in dozens of countries."

"Work on malaria suggests that focusing on the science and technology required to eliminate a disease, rather than just control it, can pay off -- and that such approaches could be applied to other diseases," SciDev.Net Editor David Dickson writes in a SciDev.Net editorial, adding that "programs can place greater emphasis on research into transmission pathways, not just the treatment of patients," and "can also increase pressure to generate epidemiological data to demonstrate the effectiveness of elimination campaigns and compare control strategies."

At a ceremony marking World Food Day on Monday, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) "called for more transparency on commodity markets to prevent sharp spikes in global food prices and deplored the scale of world hunger," Agence France-Presse reports (Le Roux, 10/16). "FAO chose the theme of 'Food Prices -- From Crisis to Stability' for this year's day to shed light on the trend and what can be done to mitigate its impact on the most vulnerable," the U.N. News Centre writes.

Noting some of the successes of U.S. foreign assistance in the area of global health, Christopher Elias, president and CEO of PATH, and Richard Stearns, president of World Vision U.S., write in The Hill's "Congress Blog," "Unfortunately, ... American aid is being threatened with severe cuts, though it makes up less than one percent of the federal budget." They continue, "When we also consider food aid, disaster assistance, and economic development, it is clear that millions upon millions of people are able to live healthy, productive lives today because of the goodwill of everyday Americans."

As the world's population approaches seven billion, "experts say most of Africa -- and other high-growth developing nations such as Afghanistan and Pakistan -- will be hard-pressed to furnish enough food, water and jobs for their people, especially without major new family-planning initiatives," the Associated Press/San Jose Mercury News reports. In the article, "Associated Press reporters on four continents examin[e] some of most distinctive examples" of how "population challenges vary dramatically around the world" (Crary et al., 10/15).

The Los Angeles Times examines polio eradication campaigns in Pakistan, which is one of just four countries where the disease remains endemic. "Several factors have stood in the way of eradication," including tribal violence, migration within the country and "an intense mistrust among some Pakistanis for the vaccines and the people who supply and administer them," according to the newspaper (Rodriguez, 10/16).

"Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is calling on the international community to give rural women the same access to productive resources as men, noting the huge benefits that would ensue, from increased food production to a drop of 150 million in the number of the world's hungry people," the U.N. News Centre reports (10/14).