Foreign Aid | Council on Foreign Relations

Economics

Innovative Financing Mechanisms: Strategic Philanthropy and Impact Bonds

The international development financing landscape is changing. Today, official development assistance now comprises only 2 percent of financing flows in the developing world. New approaches to financing are needed to address pressing development challenges, including persistent inequalities for women and girls. Drawing upon their respective experiences, Fairhurst, Roberts, and Messing discuss two promising financing mechanisms: strategic philanthropy and impact bonds.

Event with John Fairhurst, Debra Messing, Kate Roberts and Rachel B. Vogelstein December 6, 2016 Women and Foreign Policy Program
Nigeria

Improving U.S. Anticorruption Policy in Nigeria

Introduction Corruption is endemic in Nigeria. It drains billions of dollars a year from Africa’s largest economy and most populous country. Systemic corruption also undermines Nigeria’s ability to combat Boko Haram, the world’s deadliest terrorist movement, which has displaced two million people in the country’s war-ravaged northeast. Although the United States and Nigeria have been close partners since Nigeria’s democratic transition in 1999, elite corruption has undercut diplomatic relations and undermined U.S. investments in the nation’s development, security, and governance. Following Muhammadu Buhari’s 2015 presidential election victory, senior U.S. policymakers saw an opportunity to support his aggressive anticorruption efforts. However, U.S. efforts have thus far been nonconfrontational—limited to public speeches and high-level discussions—and have yet to translate into policy action. Corruption is still treated as a secondary, stand-alone issue rather than as a potent threat to U.S. interests. To move beyond past mistakes, U.S. policymakers should commit to deterring official corruption in the sectors and institutions in which the United States invests significant attention and resources. At a minimum, this plan should establish an interagency working group on Nigerian kleptocracy, station a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) investigator in Abuja, and promulgate an executive order (EO) restricting financial transactions by corrupt Nigerian officials. Background Nigerian official corruption is not new. It has thrived under both civilian and military-led governments, and has involved leaders of all ethnic and religious affiliations. However, under Buhari’s predecessor, President Goodluck Jonathan, official corruption rose in scope and scale, especially in the security, petroleum, and power sectors. Nigeria has one of the most corrupt defense and security sectors in the world, according to Transparency International. Decades of unchecked corruption have left the Nigerian military hollowed out and ill-equipped to handle Nigeria’s many internal challenges, including the long-running Boko Haram insurgency that has killed tens of thousands of people. Security sector corruption takes many forms, ranging from facilitating oil theft to procurement fraud to misuse of opaque slush funds called “security votes.” Nigeria’s previous national security advisor, for example, is on trial for his role in diverting over $2 billion in security funds. The scale of this theft has overshadowed and arguably negated U.S. military and police aid to Nigeria, which totaled just $45.4 million from 2010 to 2014. Corruption also pollutes two areas that will shape Nigeria’s economic future: the petroleum and power sectors. Nigeria’s state oil company, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, has long been corrupt and mismanaged, according to the Natural Resource Governance Institute. In 2012, Nigerians took to the streets after it was revealed that politicians connived with domestic oil companies to embezzle $6 billion in budgeted fuel subsidies. Endemic corruption has also meant that, even as the government has spent $14 billion since 1999 on developing a modern power sector for all of Nigeria (population 183 million), the national electricity supply steadily diminished to a level on par with the city of Edinburgh (population 500,000). Systemic corruption threatens democracy and good governance in Nigeria. The country’s senate president is currently standing trial for false asset declaration and other corruption-related charges. At least five former governors are facing trial for graft. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Nigeria’s main anticorruption body, is actively investigating dozens more sitting and former officials. Recent news that several senior election officials allegedly accepted millions of dollars in bribes demonstrates that corruption threatens the integrity and credibility of Nigeria’s elections. Since 1999, U.S. policy in Nigeria has largely focused on three areas: security cooperation, economic growth and development, and democracy and governance. By not directly confronting corruption, the United States has done little to prevent kleptocrats from weakening Nigeria’s political, security, and economic institutions, sabotaging larger U.S. policy goals. Challenges U.S. anticorruption policy continues to be ineffective in Nigeria for four reasons. First, the interests of senior U.S. policymakers and working-level officials diverge. President Barack Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew have defined anticorruption efforts as a U.S. policy priority in Nigeria; they see it as part of a global effort to combat illicit finance, poor governance, and violent extremism. Yet officials serving at the U.S. Embassy in Abuja—diplomats, military liaisons, and intelligence officers—are mainly concerned with cultivating strong relationships with a wide range of elites, including those complicit in corruption. As a result, U.S. anticorruption policy remains broad-based and untargeted, centered on modest assistance programs for police investigators and civil society watchdogs. One area where this tension occurs is visa sanctions under Presidential Proclamation (PP) 7750. Local U.S. diplomats insist visa revocations unnecessarily antagonize their Nigerian counterparts and should be used sparingly. In 2013, an attempt to revoke the visa of a corrupt former minister was derailed by a senior embassy official who claimed that doing so would put U.S. oil companies’ business dealings at risk. Little evidence supports this argument, however, given that when the United States revokes visas, the target is not made public. And at least one state governor still routinely meets with U.S. diplomats even though he allegedly had his visa revoked under PP 7750 nearly a decade ago. Second, U.S. officials are not using existing tools—such as consular databases, local law enforcement records, or online searches to conduct basic due diligence—to identify and avoid enabling corrupt officials. As one example, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) funds a rice cultivation project owned by a former attorney general whom the United States sanctioned for corruption in 2010. In April 2016, the U.S. ambassador and USAID officials visited and toured the farm with the owner. Third, the anticorruption work of U.S. law enforcement agencies is under-resourced given the size and scope of corruption in Nigeria, its destructive impact on U.S. policy interests, and its role in fueling illegal financial transactions in the United States and Europe. Although the FBI’s International Corruption Unit recently tripled in size, its worldwide focus, heavy caseloads, and long prosecution timelines mean that it can only investigate a handful of the many potential cases involving corrupt Nigerian elites. Fourth, as with other policy efforts, anticorruption action is hindered by interagency divides. The U.S. Department of State, Department of Justice, Department of the Treasury, and the U.S. intelligence community rarely collaborate to combat corruption in Nigeria. For example, the State Department and the intelligence community do not routinely provide tips, background information, or expert advice to Justice Department investigators working to locate and seize assets stolen by Nigerian kleptocrats. Further, frequent personnel turnover has hindered attempts by some working-level officials to improve communication and policy coordination. Recommendations Since becoming president in May 2015, Buhari has supported the EFCC in investigating the country’s most corrupt officials, leading to 140 successful prosecutions in six months. Buhari has also lobbied the United States, as well as the European Union and Gulf countries, to repatriate stolen Nigerian assets. In April 2016, EFCC Chairman Ibrahim Magu visited Washington to ask for greater U.S. technical assistance, training, and information sharing. To fully realize the opportunity the Buhari presidency presents, the United States should make its anticorruption policy more effective by taking the following steps: Formalize an interagency working group on Nigerian kleptocracy. This internal discussion forum would be useful for sharing information and improving coordination between Washington and the U.S. Embassy in Abuja, as well as among policymakers, law enforcement, and the U.S. intelligence community. Better communication at the working level could facilitate stronger vetting of potentially corrupt Nigerians and discourage insulated decision-making. Establish a permanent FBI special agent corruption investigator position at the U.S. Embassy in Abuja. In doing so, Washington would send a clear signal that it is upping its anticorruption commitments and moving away from its hitherto nonconfrontational approach. Though subordinate to the U.S. legal attaché in Abuja, this investigator would operate free from diplomatic interference in support of the International Corruption Unit at FBI headquarters. Collaborating closely with the EFCC, this investigator would be able to provide Washington with unbiased reporting on corrupt individuals. The United States should also encourage the EFCC to field a senior liaison at the Nigerian Embassy in Washington, DC, to enhance information sharing. Promulgate an executive order on Nigerian kleptocracy. The United States should craft an executive order on Nigerian kleptocracy similar to EO 13660 on Ukraine and EO 13692 on Venezuela. Although it would require a months-long interagency effort, an EO would facilitate and streamline efforts to restrict financial transactions by individuals and corporate entities involved in official Nigerian corruption. It would also have a deterrent effect on Nigerians accustomed to investing their illicitly gained wealth in U.S. real estate. Passage of the bipartisan Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, now under deliberation in the U.S. Congress, would likely obviate the need to develop a separate EO by imposing financial and travel sanctions on foreign government officials implicated in “acts of significant corruption.” If passed, Congress should require the State Department to use its authority under Global Magnitsky, ensuring it becomes a forceful anticorruption policy tool. By taking these steps, the United States can combine its anticorruption policy rhetoric with measurable actions and significantly reduce illicit financial outflows from Nigeria, which Global Financial Integrity estimates exceeded $178 billion from 2004 to 2013. Absent these steps, Nigerian kleptocrats will continue to see the United States as soft on corruption and a place to hide and spend their ill-gotten gains.

Report by Matthew T. Page July 11, 2016 Civil Society, Markets, and Democracy Program
United States Agency for International Development (USAID)

Reconfiguring USAID for State-Building

Nation-building abroad has become a neuralgic term in American politics. Opposition to nation-building abroad is one of the few things that President Barack Obama and Donald Trump can agree on. And yet, at the same time that U.S. leaders proclaim their opposition to nation-building, they acknowledge that failing states pose a serious threat to American interests. As Obama said in his 2016 State of the Union address, "Even without ISIL … instability will continue for decades in many parts of the world—in the Middle East, in Afghanistan, parts of Pakistan, in parts of Central America, in Africa, and Asia. Some of these places may become safe havens for new terrorist networks. Others will just fall victim to ethnic conflict, or famine, feeding the next wave of refugees. The world will look to us to help solve these problems." But the United States cannot adequately respond to global instability with military force alone. The U.S. public will not support more large-scale interventions like the ones in Iraq and Afghanistan, while lesser military measures—such as drone strikes and Special Operations raids—are unlikely to prove adequate. Although "kinetic" strikes can kill terrorist leaders, they cannot eliminate terrorist organizations, and they definitely cannot create indigenous institutions capable of maintaining law and order on their own. The United States needs a civilian capacity to foster better-functioning institutions in chaotic countries: what should be called state-building but is more popularly known as nation-building. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) should lead that effort. To embrace a state-building mission, however, USAID will have to be transformed. The agency will need to do less but do it better, to limit its efforts to strategically important states while enhancing its focus on building core state functions. Drop Inessential Objectives The proposed 2016 budget for USAID is $22.3 billion, of which $10.7 billion is in core accounts directly managed by USAID. Of this, only $2.4 billion is to be spent on what might be considered state-building. The rest is dedicated to poverty alleviation, global health, biodiversity, women's empowerment, education, sanitation, and economic and agriculture development. These are admirable goals, but USAID has demonstrated no particular advantage in any of these fields compared to international organizations, such as the World Bank, and numerous nongovernmental organizations, such as Oxfam and Africare. Accordingly, USAID should leave these areas either to multinational or private-sector organizations. USAID and its defenders will argue that everything it does contributes to state-building because the public goods it supports—such as health care, electricity, and environmental protections—are commonly found in successful states. That is true, but successful states are not successful because they provide public goods; they provide public goods because they are successful. Even "democracy" can be a luxury good in the developing world. Yet the USAID program for state-building is billed as Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance. The most important issue—governance—is put in last place. Yet the United States can live with undemocratic states as long as they behave responsibly; indeed, some autocratic states such as Jordan are close American allies. Many become democracies in time, as did South Korea, Chile, and Indonesia. The United States cannot live with ungoverned space, which inevitably becomes a breeding ground for, and exporter of, terrorism, criminal networks, disease, refugees, and other problems. This is not a call for USAID to create or strengthen dictatorships or for the United States to abandon democracy promotion. Nurturing representative institutions is a legitimate job for the National Endowment for Democracy. But USAID should prioritize effective governance over democratic governance. Instead of trying to promote welcome but inessential services—from electricity to free elections—USAID should focus on the bare necessities of stable states. These include security forces that can exercise a monopoly on the legitimate use of force, courts that can dispense a semblance of justice, a professional civil service that is not compromised by rampant corruption, and a financial mechanism that can allow the state to raise and spend revenue with a degree of honesty and efficiency. USAID does not, at the moment, have the necessary competency in any of these fields; it needs to buttress its capabilities accordingly while shedding less important functions. USAID should tailor programs to fit individual countries; there is no "one size fits all" solution, but effective governance is always essential. Focus on Strategically Important Countries USAID currently operates in more than one hundred countries. USAID cannot be effective in more than thirty or forty countries with its current staffing and funding levels, and it should not be necessary to increase USAID's budget; it can do more in a smaller number of countries with the money already appropriated. The Millennium Challenge Corporation, USAID's stepchild, works only in forty-five countries "that show they are committed to good governance, economic freedom, and investing in their citizens." Although USAID should not replicate what the Millennium Challenge Corporation does, it should be similarly focused in its approach. USAID should limit its efforts to countries of strategic importance to the United States where it can make a difference. Given the threat of Islamist terrorism to the United States, one priority should be countries with significant Muslim populations (over 40 percent) that are located in the arc of instability stretching from West Africa to Southeast Asia. USAID should work closely with the U.S. military's Central, Africa, and Pacific Commands; they have and will maintain the lead role for military advising, while USAID should take the lead role for police assistance and other governance. USAID should target, first of all, countries with no effective governance, a list that currently includes, at a minimum, Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen. (Some of these states might be too unsafe to allow USAID to work; in other cases, USAID should augment its security and accept higher risk.) A second tier of urgency should be assigned to countries with a significant U.S. military presence, namely Iraq and Afghanistan. A third tier should include countries with functioning but weak governments, a category that can include most of the states in the greater Middle East. Relatively wealthy nations such as Turkey and the Gulf monarchies can be excluded, along with states such as Sudan or Iran that are hostile to the United States. Some hard judgment calls will have to be made as to whether services can be effectively delivered in nominally allied states such as Pakistan and the Palestinian Authority, where the governments have been implicated in supporting terrorism. If USAID cannot be effective, it should not commit. Beyond the focus on stopping the spread of Islamist extremism, USAID should focus its state-building initiative on supporting a few other strategically important countries at risk of subversion, whether from internal or external threats. USAID should help nations such as Ukraine and Georgia, which are vulnerable to Russian encroachment; nations such as Mongolia and Myanmar, which are vulnerable to Chinese encroachment; and nations in Latin America—particularly Columbia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico—that are vulnerable to a significant narco-trafficking threat. This is still a substantial undertaking, but it would exclude more than half of the countries where USAID currently operates. USAID should not be committing scarce resources in strategically irrelevant countries such as Lesotho and Madagascar, in unfriendly countries such as China, or in rapidly developing countries such as India. Money and personnel can better be focused elsewhere for maximum geopolitical return. Revamp the Bureaucracy In order to be more effective at state-building, USAID needs to change the way it does business. It should emulate the armed forces by assessing "lessons learned" from recent state-building experiences and inviting outside experts to assess its performance. It should be more willing to brand some projects as failures instead of claiming they were successful simply because the budgets were spent. It should streamline its bureaucracy: there is no need for fourteen separate bureaus and ten independent offices. It should give managers greater responsibility to shift resources, human and otherwise, between offices as events warrant. And it should decrease its reliance on contractors whose employees are tasked with promoting corporate self-interest rather than the strategic interests of the United States. This would save a good deal of overhead, because a significant part of USAID grants currently covers the process of awarding those contracts in the first place. Most importantly, USAID needs to transform its workforce. USAID's staff, while talented, are often not the specialists needed for state-building. USAID employs few if any experienced civil engineers, urban managers, civil service development specialists, security and policing experts, or development economists. Many permanent staff are recent graduates of master's degree programs in international relations with little direct experience managing government agencies or businesses. USAID needs to hire more mid-career professionals with substantial experience in managing large organizations and working in foreign cultures. One fertile source of recruits should be the U.S. Army, which is in the process of laying off thousands of officers and noncommissioned officers with extensive state-building experience. Conclusion Any of these changes suggested above, indeed any change at all, will be fiercely resisted by vested interests. Countries that face losing their USAID programs will complain. So will USAID employees and contractors who will lose their jobs and grants. Such a transformation can only be accomplished if the next administration makes it a priority. Of course there is no guarantee that even a restructured USAID will succeed at state-building in every instance or even in most instances. This is a notoriously difficult undertaking. The United States, however, has had success in contributing to state-building in such disparate countries as Colombia, East Timor, El Salvador, Germany, Italy, Japan, Kosovo, the Philippines, and South Korea. Although there is no way to predict how often USAID will succeed, even a few successes are worth the relatively modest (by government standards) investment. There is simply no good alternative to state-building if the United States wants to address the problem of failed states while avoiding endless military interventions.

Policy Innovation Memorandum by Max Boot and Michael Miklaucic June 22, 2016 National Security and Defense Program

Tunisia

Tunisia: Saving Democracy in the Middle East? Really?

U.S. assistance to Tunisia might help advance the democratic promise of Tunisia's uprising only. It would not stimulate the democratization of the rest of the Middle East.

Blog Post by Steven A. Cook April 18, 2016 From the Potomac to the Euphrates
Development

Five Questions on Sustainable Investing With Audrey Choi

This post features a conversation with Audrey Choi, chief executive officer of Morgan Stanley’s Institute for Sustainable Investing and managing director of its Global Sustainable Finance Group. Choi talks about the evolving $20 trillion sector, including important U.S. policy changes and her thoughts on where sustainable investing is headed. 1) What does sustainable investing mean, and how has it evolved in recent years? There has been an evolution in sustainable investing over the past five to ten years in both definition and practice. Investors have moved away from predominately avoiding—or divesting from—industries and companies considered harmful toward taking a more proactive approach as well. They are pursuing positive social and environmental impact while also expecting competitive financial returns. Traditionally, there was a tendency to divide investing and philanthropy, using the first to build wealth and the other to make a positive social difference. Sustainable investing, which includes values-based, environmental, social, and governance (ESG) integration, thematic investing, and impact investing approaches, allows investors to align their values or mission with their investment portfolio. Another shift has been the increase in research addressing the misconception that doing good requires a financial trade-off. Harvard University and Brookings compared a portfolio of companies that performed poorly on sustainability with a portfolio of companies that performed very well on the same issues. One dollar in the low performance portfolio grew to $14.46 between 1993 and 2014. The same dollar in the high performance portfolio rose to $28.36 over the same period. And at Morgan Stanley’s Institute for Sustainable Investing, we examined ten thousand mutual funds across seven years of performance, comparing sustainable to traditional investing strategies. We found that 64 percent of the time, sustainable strategies performed either the same, or slightly better, than traditional ones. Meanwhile, volatility for those strategies was the same, or slightly less, 64 percent of the time. Finally, the University of Oxford conducted a meta-analysis of over two hundred studies and found that incorporating ESG business practices resulted in better operational performance, lower cost of capital, and better stock price performance. We’re also seeing a shift in how sustainability factors into stock and company valuations. More and more investors and analysts are asking how to incorporate ESG into existing models of valuation. Whether a multinational company disposes of waste responsibly, monitors its water usage, and recycles increasingly matters. Sustainability efforts are more than corporate reports—they are considerations that can be materially relevant to core business practices and results. 2) How is “sustainability” measured, and what counts as sustainable investing? We take the broad view that sustainable investing encompasses both financial sustainability and environmental and social sustainability. As part of the sustainable investing evolution, there has been a great deal of work in the field to better understand the type of sustainability considerations that can have both real business and investment impact. The United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment (UNPRI) and the Sustainable Accounting Standards Board (SASB) are two important examples of increasingly-recognized bodies developing standards and frameworks for measuring and reporting on sustainability. UNPRI has not only established what responsible investment should entail, but as a membership organization, it is a platform for signatories (asset managers, owners, and service providers) to express their commitment to a more sustainable global financial system. And SASB has created standards for ESG considerations across eighty industries, helping public corporations disclose material issues to investors. As part of its standard-setting work, SASB found that climate change alone affects seventy-two of seventy-nine industries—each in specific and different ways. That’s 93 percent of the capital markets, or $33.8 trillion dollars. 3) How does sustainable investing compare to philanthropy or development aid, through NGOs and others? Are there some areas that should be left to private donors rather than investors? Ultimately, driving large-scale positive social and environmental change requires government, philanthropy, and investment dollars to work in common cause. Tax dollars and philanthropy alone are not sufficient to fix the world’s problems. Private investment can play a crucial role in filling that gap. Still, sustainable investing should not be seen as a replacement to philanthropy. Indeed, there are critical situations when philanthropy and government aid should be the first resort, such as when an immediate response is required, as in humanitarian efforts and disaster relief. Aid is critical in these instances where financial returns, cannot, or should not, be expected. But governments and philanthropies also play critical roles as catalytic investors. They provide the visionary risk capital to enable discovery and innovation, setting the stage for future markets. For example, microfinance began as a donor-led space, eventually growing to a robust field where private sector investment has enabled scale and reach. 4) What are the U.S. rules and regulations that have helped, or hindered, sustainable investing? In the U.S. context, one of the most important recent changes was the revision to U.S. Department of Labor guidance around ESG investing for Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) plans, announced late last year by Secretary Thomas Perez. Employee retirement plans, such as pension funds or 401(k)s, are bound by the ERISA, which sets a fiduciary duty, or legal obligation, for managers to act in the interest of plan participants. In October 2015, Secretary Perez and the Department of Labor issued a clarification that “environmental, social, and governance factors may have a direct relationship to the economic and financial value of an investment.” Rather than an external and separate consideration, ESG factors could now be considered relevant in evaluating an investment’s economic qualities. This clarification went a long way in addressing the perception that ESG consideration might be at odds with fulfilling fiduciary duty. Globally, another important development was the Paris Climate Conference (COP21) agreement that set binding targets to limit global emissions. It sent a clear signal of change that may open new conversations on ESG and sustainable investing, as well as the inclusion of climate change-related risk as a material financial consideration. 5) Looking ahead, what is the outlook for sustainable investing, in the short and long term? Within ten to fifteen years, we believe sustainable investing should be perceived as a redundant term. Sustainability considerations will be a part of a best-in-class investing thesis, rather than being a separate analysis. Just as political and cyber risk has become a core part of the risk and return analysis, so too do we believe that sustainability factors will become a core part of risk and return analysis. There has already been impressive growth in the field. In 2012, the U.S. Sustainable Investing Forum reported one out of every nine dollars invested in the United States had some type of sustainable mandate to it. From 2012 to 2014, that figure grew by 76 percent to one out of every six dollars. Though the starting point was small, we are seeing rapid growth, with more than $20 trillion dollars now invested in the sector globally. Another driver of change in sustainable investing is the influence of millennials. Compared to other generations, millennials are three times as likely to pick an employer based on their ESG performance. They are also twice as likely to check product packaging for sustainable sourcing information before they choose a product. And this philosophy carries over to their investing decisions. Millennials are twice as likely to check a mutual fund or equity investment and choose it because of sustainability, and twice as likely to divest—or walk away—because of objectionable corporate activity. As this generation is set to inherit more than $30 trillion in the United States over the next thirty to forty years, it will be significant how they integrate their sustainability priorities into their investment decisions going forward.

Blog Post by Guest Blogger for Shannon K. O'Neil April 12, 2016 Development Channel
Development

Will Setting Goals End Hunger? What’s Next for the SDGs...

Emerging Voices highlights new research, thinking, and approaches to development challenges from contributing scholars and practitioners. This post is from Dean Karlan, professor of economics at Yale University, president and founder of Innovations for Poverty Action, and founder of ImpactMatters, a newly-launched organization that helps nonprofits use and create evidence to assess their impact. Earlier this fall the United Nations (UN) ratified the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a new agenda for helping the poor around the world by 2030. Their ratification comes fifteen years after the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), more than doubling the number of global commitments from eight to seventeen and breaking them down further into 169 targets. The goals include ambitious and noble aspirations, from ending global poverty “in all its forms everywhere” (SDG 1) to ending hunger (SDG 2). But, do the goals matter? Since last summer when the UN released a report on how the MDGs fared, debate has ensued about whether setting defined goals made countries more likely to achieve them. More precisely, did aiming at the MDGs lead politicians and donors to allocate more resources to poverty-fighting, thus leading to improved outcomes? As we turn to the SDGs, here is what we know about how goals may help or hurt, and a modest proposal for applying it. Behavioral economists and psychologists have shown that goal setting can help individuals lose weight, finish annoying work tasks, exercise regularly, save more, and so on. Politicians, being people too, may need a set of goals to help them focus on and invest scarce resources in social problems. Research also shows that while goals help, setting too many of them can deter progress and limit motivation. If one pledges to lose weight, stop drinking coffee, read more books for pleasure, and ignore work e-mails on the weekend—all at the same time—something is going to give. The 169 SDG targets (most likely added to placate various UN constituencies) mean a lot more goal setting than the MDGs. Can politicians and development experts keep track of all these commitments? Unrealistic goals can also be a problem—not only do they not get met, but they may fail to motivate. We know that signing up for a marathon is not the best way to make good on a New Year’s resolution to get into shape. The same goes for pledging to end all global poverty instead of merely reducing it. So when it comes to whether the SDGs matter, I have a proposal to find out: randomize the way the 169 targets are assigned. Many development economists (myself included) have done rigorous studies on goal setting at the household and individual level. In the Philippines, we set up randomized control trials (RCTs) to test whether offering people a commitment “goal savings” account helped them to save more money, and encourage them to spend more of it on large, durable goods. It did. In Uganda, a study we did found that offering children a commitment “goal savings” account led to higher expenditures on school supplies and improved test scores. Why not apply the same rigor to test what motivates the world’s politicians to reduce poverty and inequality? We can allocate each UN member country a number of targets on which to focus, and then track progress over time to learn whether those with particular targets did better on a specific goal than countries without them. Of course, this would be logistically impossible, and would make for a badly-designed randomized trial (with the “control” goals already known). Though my proposal is tongue-in-cheek, it highlights the challenge of measuring the new SDGs. Some ask: how are we going to know if any improvement was made because of the goals? That may be the wrong question. Instead, we should ask whether a particular policy is a good or bad idea. Because while the SDGs motivate us towards aspirational outcomes, they do not tell us what to do. Learning what policies actually work is a much more useful basis for a study, and where we should focus our attention.

Blog Post by Guest Blogger for Shannon K. O'Neil December 15, 2015 Development Channel

Pakistan

Critiquing U.S. Aid in Pakistan: A Second Take

Emerging Voices features contributions from scholars and practitioners highlighting new research, thinking, and approaches to development challenges. This post is from Nadia Naviwala (@NadiaNavi), an Islamabad-based researcher and writer. Here she details a recent New York Times story on U.S. development assistance in Pakistan, and explains why investigating aid efforts there requires a different approach. The New York Times published a story last month about the second largest United States Agency for International Development (USAID) mission in the world: Pakistan. The Times argued that despite over a decade of work and billions of dollars, “aid has had minimal impact on the ground,” thanks to overreliance on “American contractors with little development experience,” and corrupt Pakistani subcontractors that don’t do the work or return equipment. As a former country representative for the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), a USAID desk officer, and a Congressional staff member who helped to lead the creation of the Commission on Wartime Contracting, I have been involved in U.S. assistance efforts in Pakistan since 2009. My research and experience with Pakistani civil society made me an early and vocal critic of foreign-led development efforts in Pakistan. Yet the Times story’s criticisms are not supported by the evidence. A Lawyer in Peshawar Sues USAID The Times story centered on a USAID contract in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) terminated in 2010 for waste, fraud, and abuse. As the Times told it, three lawyers in Peshawar accuse USAID of failing to recover U.S. taxpayer money from a court settlement that awarded the agency damages. It continues: “A recent lawsuit against the agency highlighted the challenges and image problem it faces in a country where American aid is often viewed with suspicion… “Documents and correspondence filed by the lawyers lay bare the money and equipment that went to waste in a project in Pakistan’s insurgency-hit tribal areas…. “U.S.A.I.D. suspended Academy for Educational Development from United States government contracts…Academy for Educational Development was also awarded at least $300,000 after a drawn-out arbitration process with its Pakistani subcontractors — money that should have been returned to U.S.A.I.D. The Pakistani lawyers who filed the suit said that the aid agency had made no attempt to recover the money. “For many Pakistanis, the case is another puzzling instance of wastefulness. ‘This is U.S. taxpayer money,’ Sanaullah Khan, one of the lawyers, said. ‘Why is U.S.A.I.D. walking away from an ongoing legal process?’” The unasked question is, why did a Pakistani lawyer in Peshawar dedicate his time (unpaid) to chase American taxpayer money? After contacting Sanaullah Khan, one of the lawyers involved in the suit, it became clear that the Times is conflating two sets of cases. The first relates to local court battles over contracting corruption, for work USAID supported in Pakistan before 2010. The more recent lawsuit is over unpaid legal fees that have nothing to do with the development agency’s impact there. In 2010, USAID discovered corruption tied to the Academy for Educational Development (AED), a U.S. contractor working in FATA, thanks to a whistleblower who wrote a letter to President Obama. Khan, AED’s Director of Legal Affairs at the time, says he was left behind to fight off subcontractors after USAID cut ties and AED dissolved. Engineering subcontractors then sued AED for around $9 million, though a Peshawar court in 2013 decided these claims were illegitimate. They awarded damages in the other direction—subcontractors were to pay AED a total of $300,000, while AED owed them only $60,000. As to why USAID is not getting involved in the legal process to claim this $300,000 (which is still tied up in appeals), the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad explains: “AED’s subcontractors are not and were never in a contractual relationship with USAID. Because USAID’s contract was with AED and not with AED’s subcontractors, there is and was no legal way for USAID to recover funds.” In addition, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) reached a settlement with AED in 2011. According to the terms, AED paid USAID $5.3 million dollars, plus another $350,000, plus the company’s remaining cash assets—possibly totaling over $15 million. It released both parties from future claims. Khan is now suing the dissolved AED in a Peshawar court for $750,000 in unpaid legal fees (the second case). Khan named USAID’s Pakistan mission director in the claim and asked the court to freeze USAID’s bank accounts in the country until he is repaid. His case faces a challenge by the 2011 DOJ settlement that specifically states the U.S. government is not liable for AED’s lawyers’ fees. In the Court of Public Opinion Khan likely hoped the Times publicity would help advance his cause. Less clear is why the Times extrapolates these cases to make their own about USAID’s minimal impact in Pakistan when the details undermine their argument. The fraud the Times describes happened over five years ago—before the implementation of the $7.5 billion, five-year aid program (known as the Kerry-Lugar-Berman Act) that the story calls into question. Further, the Obama administration acted swiftly and severely against AED’s corruption, effectively “killing” the company. They touted AED’s investigation and suspension as a success story in USAID accountability. The Times’ editors likely realized the overreach and within days of publication changed the title from, “In Pakistan, U.S. Aid Agency Produces Dubious Results,” to “In Pakistan, U.S. Aid Agency Faces Skepticism.” (They also added a lengthy editor’s note about their interactions with USAID in reporting the story.) Surprisingly Khan is not among the skeptics of U.S. development programs. He supports the work AED and USAID did in FATA. “Only the engineering team was involved in corruption. The rest of the program was good and useful. I’d say ninety percent of all other components—in agriculture, health, education, training, development, there are many—worked tremendously well.” Contracting with Governments The Times’ criticism—and its focus on U.S. contractor relationships as a source of the problem—detracts from more useful scrutiny of USAID’s work in Pakistan over the past five years. In 2009, around the time of the AED scandal and the new multi-billion dollar aid package, USAID reorganized the way it implements projects in Pakistan. The agency terminated contracts with U.S.-based companies (at the behest of the late Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, then U.S. envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan) and started shifting funding to local partners, primarily the Pakistani government. The Pakistan package has since been one of the largest experiments in contracting with a foreign government—referred to as government-to-government or “G2G” assistance—in the world. According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), between 2010 and 2014, the value of G2G contracts in Afghanistan and Pakistan exceeded the total value of contracts with all other foreign governments (see: Figure 1). U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), "USAID Has Taken Steps to Safeguard Government-to-Government Funding but Could Further Strengthen Accountability," 2015. The approach is not without flaws. G2G would be more aptly named B2B, or bureaucracy-to-bureaucracy. The slow pace has been a huge frustration to both Pakistani and U.S. officials and prompted the gradual reintroduction of U.S. contractors in complex arrangements with government institutions— a relationship worth investigating. The Times makes an important point that whether U.S. money is lost to graft and waste matters, but fails to substantiate it. A more valuable question is whether U.S.-funded projects in Pakistan, including schools, clinics, roads, and power and water infrastructure, are operating and can be sustained once handed over to local governments. And whether the hundreds of millions the U.S. invested in training, capacity-building, policy, and advocacy programs are helping to meet that goal.

Blog Post by Guest Blogger for Shannon K. O'Neil October 15, 2015 Development Channel
Wars and Conflict

Countering Violent Extremism: Falling Between the Cracks of Development and Security

Emerging Voices features contributions from scholars and practitioners highlighting new research, thinking, and approaches to development challenges. This article is from Dr. Khalid Koser, executive director of the Global Community Engagement and Resilience Fund (GCERF) and Amy E. Cunningham, an advisor with GCERF. Here they discuss how a global policy shift to tackle violent extremism is exposing tensions between the development and security sectors. Led by the United States and partner governments, ‘countering violent extremism’ (CVE) is a new policy paradigm that aims to address structural and social conditions enabling recruitment and radicalization to violent extremism. Unlike counterterrorism approaches that rely on broad security legislation or heavily-militarized responses, CVE focuses on prevention by trying to alleviate underlying causes of injustice—endemic poverty, ethnic and religious tensions, and political marginalization—with the goal of building more conflict-resilient communities. CVE prioritizes a role for civil society, as these organizations are often viewed by communities as more credible than local governments or law enforcement. They are also better positioned to identify local-level drivers of violent extremism, and more suited to work with neglected groups through education, interfaith dialogues, and arts and sports activities. Ultimately, civil society empowers communities to better deflect extremist agendas. Yet because CVE combines development and security concerns, it exposes a wide gap between national and international agencies expected to implement the policy—development agencies and NGOs fall on one side, and military, police, and intelligence agencies on the other. In large part, this divide is an unintended consequence of the ‘Global War on Terror,’ which at times distorted development principles such as ‘Do No Harm’ (by diminishing credible CVE efforts through over-securitization); misappropriated development tools—including vaccination campaigns—for security ends; and blurred roles and responsibilities in delivering humanitarian aid. As the two sides now combine efforts to counter violent extremism, they struggle to overcome a legacy of mistrust. The divide also stems from cynicism from some in the security sector about CVE’s effectiveness, compounded by growing pressures on domestic security budgets. The result is an unwillingness to devote serious resources to CVE. Even where there is acceptance, there is impatience. Prevention-focused CVE efforts don’t deliver immediate results. Development agencies are equally hesitant about the strategy’s merits. Skeptics dismiss CVE over concern that it does not prioritize the most vulnerable populations, and many question the argument that poverty leads to violent extremism, citing a lack of substantive research. Others express concern that CVE does not address poverty enough, treating poverty alleviation as a welcome side effect instead of an end goal. Visiting Bangladesh, Mali, Nigeria, and other nations as executive director and advisor of the Global Community Engagement and Resilience Fund (GCERF), we have seen firsthand how the uneasy relationship between security and development can hinder CVE efforts’ effectiveness. First, communities most at risk of radicalization are often overlooked. Security interventions tend to focus on populations and regions where violence is already rife; development interventions target the poorest. But at-risk communities such as refugees, transit migrants, and internally displaced persons may not fall into either category. Second, a CVE policy agenda has not yet translated into integrated programming or better coordination on the ground, creating an opportunity for security and development disagreements. Among other priorities, CVE efforts that provide positive economic and social alternatives for at-risk youth—in the form of education, vocational training, or arts and culture programs—are still addressed through intermittent, ad hoc projects, or subsumed in ongoing international development efforts. Third, proving CVE works is challenging for both sides. Standard development monitoring and evaluation efforts are difficult in insecure environments. For security agencies, it is hard to demonstrate that more training or deeper community engagement measurably reduce violent extremist threats. Without a real effort to fill the existing data gap, the CVE approach will remain unproven, ensuring that development and security communities remain in silos. As a step toward solving the development-security rift, a dedicated organization to lead CVE efforts on the global stage is needed. An internationally-brokered institution or multilateral body dedicated to CVE research, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation would go a long way in improving information sharing and eliminating redundancies, and could help to overcome mistrust and skepticism towards the overall CVE approach. Global leaders should consider this recommendation when they convene for high-level CVE meetings at the United Nations General Assembly in September. While ongoing CVE summitry and dialogue are important, effective on-the-ground actions still lag. CVE’s framework will only succeed if a more creative and integrated alliance between security and development sectors is forged.

Blog Post by Guest Blogger for Shannon K. O'Neil August 26, 2015 Development Channel
Development

Innovation in Development

Amidst final negotiations over the Sustainable Development Goals, both private and public sector development funders are turning their attention to the gap between this ambitious agenda and available resources. Last week, government, business, and NGO representatives gathered in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia for the Third Financing for Development Conference to devise ways to support this new development agenda. One proposal is to support innovation to fuel cost-effective approaches to development. On the eve of the Addis conference, I hosted a roundtable at the Council on Foreign Relations with a pioneer of development innovation: Ann Mei Chang, executive director of the Global Development Lab at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Launched in April 2014, the Global Development Lab is USAID’s newest entity, designed to fund breakthrough innovations to “accelerate development impact faster, cheaper, and more sustainably.” Such a broad mandate requires both flexibility and a willingness to fail—two characteristics not traditionally associated with government agencies. The Global Development Lab takes a venture capital-style approach to funding development. It crowdsources solutions from around the globe, including from individuals and organizations that have never before worked with USAID. The Lab makes high-risk, low-cost investments in projects, with the potential to increase funding for those that show promise. By experimenting and “failing small,” the Lab can take on more risk than the average government aid funder. Some have expressed skepticism about the power of innovation to accelerate development gains. Bill Gates, for example, has criticized models that emphasize tech innovations too heavily as potentially distracting from perpetual development challenges, such as a lack of sanitation infrastructure or access to basic health services. In fact, while the Global Development Lab does support projects that are technically advanced, some of the most successful initiatives simply improve upon common solutions and existing knowledge by permitting the flexibility to innovate. For example, in one Lab-funded project, the NGO Evidence Action explored how to enhance the uptake of chlorine to disinfect drinking water and prevent diarrhea, which is the cause of death for an estimated 760,000 children under five each year. Despite widespread acknowledgment of chlorine’s efficacy, uptake stands at less than ten percent around the world. In an attempt to improve this number, innovators from Evidence Action came up with an idea called the chlorine dispenser, a low cost machine installed in areas with community water services. With the push of a button, the dispenser distributes an appropriate amount of chlorine into a bucket or jerrican. This simple innovation has already had an outsized impact: in areas where it is operational, including Kenya, Malawi, and Uganda, it has increased the use of chlorine to nearly 50 percent. Other projects funded by the Lab stem from unlikely sources and test unexpected methods. One intervention dreamed up by a car mechanic in Argentina—called the Odón Device—became a potentially life-saving tool to assist with obstructed labor. The device, which is now in development at Becton, Dickinson and Company, features a plastic bag which inflates around the baby’s head in the womb and is pulled until it emerges. The innovator, Jorge Odón, first thought of the idea after watching a YouTube video that showed how to extract a cork stuck inside an empty wine bottle. This device is considered safer than vacuum assist and forceps, which are even more dangerous when used by inexperienced practitioners in low-resource settings. While these out-of-the-box ideas have the potential to accelerate development gains, one of the Lab’s greatest challenges is how to measure impact—particularly in areas such as democracy, human rights, and governance. The Lab is piloting sensors and mobile surveys in an attempt to obtain timely and gender-disaggregated data, but more work is certainly needed. Though the Lab is still a work in progress, its approach to innovation in development is a model to consider incorporating into the next stage of development funding.

Blog Post by Rachel B. Vogelstein July 21, 2015 Development Channel
Emerging Markets

Gender Equality and Smart U.S. Foreign Assistance

It has become axiomatic in international development that increasing economic opportunities for women contributes to economic growth. Organizations from the World Bank to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) have concluded that women’s participation in the economy is linked to poverty reduction and gross domestic product (GDP) growth. Today, the question is not whether women’s economic participation matters—rather, it is how to promote this goal most effectively. The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), a U.S. foreign aid organization, has been at the forefront of answering this question. Last week, Dana Hyde, the chief executive officer of MCC, spoke at the Council on Foreign Relations about MCC’s innovative approach to reducing poverty and promoting growth around the world—including through the advancement of gender equality. MCC is a young agency, celebrating its tenth anniversary just this year, and it governs a relatively small share of the U.S. government’s foreign assistance budget. Nevertheless, MCC has had an outsized impact, and has been heralded internationally for its commitment to results-based, data-driven foreign assistance. MCC employs a competitive selection process, partnering only with countries that meet a set of rigorous policy indicators conducive to promoting economic growth. Once countries are selected, the organization works with in-country actors to identify priorities and facilitate local management, thereby fostering both country ownership and sustainability. It also insists upon comprehensive and transparent monitoring and evaluation as programs are implemented. Critical to MCC’s economic growth strategy is its commitment to advancing gender equality. In 2006, MCC enacted a robust Gender Policy that requires consideration of gender inequalities in development, implementation, and evaluation of programs. Five years later, MCC expanded its guidance by introducing Gender Integration Guidelines, which provide specific operational instructions on how to integrate gender into development work, including through the recruitment of gender specialists in partner countries and the creation of country-specific gender integration plans. To build on this progress, in 2012, MCC revised its country selection criteria to assess the degree to which potential country partners provide women the same legal capacity to work as men. This indicator assesses whether married and unmarried women can engage in ten different economic activities, including holding a job, registering a business, signing a contract, opening a bank account, and serving as a head of household. By adopting this indictor, MCC has not only changed its own practice—it has also sent a powerful message that ensuring an equal playing field for women and men in the economy is both a precondition of economic growth and a factor in whether a country will be entitled to partner with the U.S. government. The addition of a gender equality indicator as a condition of MCC partnership is already paying dividends. The government of Cote d’Ivoire, for example, approached MCC to find a way to improve its laws on gender equality in order to bolster its competitiveness for U.S. assistance. Soon after, the country enacted a new law to give women the same rights as men to determine where they live, work, and travel. Such policy changes are sorely needed: according to the World Bank’s Women, Business and the Law report, 128 out of 143 countries today have at least one legal difference between men and women that restricts women’s economic opportunities. In 54 countries, women face five or more limitations. Though MCC’s focus on legal reform to promote women’s economic participation is promising, there are a range of other gender inequalities that undermine growth and could be considered as well. One example is gender-based violence, which inhibits women’s economic participation and exacts significant costs: a World Bank report estimated the cost of this violence to range between 1.2 to 3.7 percent of GDP, depending on the country. Or consider the issue of child marriage, which is negatively correlated with girls’ education and economic potential: surely this factor should be considered as MCC develops a compact with Niger, which has the highest overall child marriage prevalence rate in the world. MCC’s emphasis on fair and equal legal capacity as a condition of economic growth is significant both as a matter of policy and practice. To leverage funding even more effectively, MCC should consider incorporating other indicators of gender equality, in addition to legal equality in the economic sector, when evaluating whether potential partner countries have created environments conducive to poverty reduction and economic growth.

Blog Post by Rachel B. Vogelstein May 21, 2015 Development Channel
Emerging Markets

Expanding Private Sector Engagement in Developing Countries

Emerging Voices features contributions from scholars and practitioners, highlighting new research, thinking, and approaches to development challenges. This article is by Elizabeth Littlefield, president and chief executive officer of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, the U.S. government’s development finance institution. This month marks the 70th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day—when Nazi Germany surrendered to the allied powers and World War II ended in Europe. This occasion is an important opportunity to reflect on how the postwar reconstruction plan shapes our current model of economic engagement with the developing world and to consider expanding the role of the private sector in these efforts. The postwar consensus came together at Bretton Woods. To rehabilitate a ravaged Europe, representatives of the allied powers agreed on a few basic lessons from the war: (1) advanced nations, especially the United States, need to engage with the world; (2) economic instability breeds conflict; and (3) military and economic preparedness of individual nations alone can’t provide stability. These beliefs have informed U.S. post-war policies and led to the creation of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank. For decades after, multilateral institutions and national governments led the investment in the developing world. In the early 1970s, official development assistance dwarfed private capital flows into emerging nations. The Bretton Woods consensus continues to shape the approach to economic development. Today, developing countries receive IMF and Bank loans as well as aid from donor governments. But development assistance is no longer the primary source of international capital. For every $1 in official flows, $7 in private investments flow into the developing world. (Official flows are $134 billion, while private flows are $778 billion). Yet, the need remains, and the private sector is well positioned to deliver where aid efforts have fallen short—in meeting immediate demands, especially creating jobs, building infrastructure, and stimulating the economy. The Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) was established in 1971 as a mechanism to help companies enter emerging markets. The U.S. government spun this development finance institution (DFI) out of the U.S. Agency for International Development. OPIC provides financing and political risk insurance to private investors seeking to work in emerging markets. By leveraging U.S. private sector capital and capacity to address critical needs in development countries, OPIC advances U.S. foreign policy and national security objectives. Today, OPIC’s global portfolio totals $18 billion in financing and insurance, supporting development projects in over 100 countries. Yet, OPIC’s capacity to support these investments doesn’t meet the scale needed today. Nearly $800 billion in global foreign direct investment (FDI) goes to developing economies, but the world’s least-developed countries receive less than 4 percent of global FDI flows. Aid will not satisfy the unmet needs of the world’s least developed regions. Currently, less than 1 percent of the U.S. budget is allocated to foreign assistance, and it is difficult to imagine this figure will drastically increase. Rather, increased private sector investment is the answer. Numerous U.S. companies are ready to invest their capital in emerging markets, but they need support to meet the business challenges and risk common to such environments. OPIC has already played an important role, providing loans and guarantees to mobilize investments and insurance to protect against unforeseen events But, the United States lags behind in economic engagement in developing countries. To expand U.S. private sector engagement, it will be necessary to redouble OPIC’s efforts. It is time for the United States to lead once more in the effort to spread peace and prosperity to the developing world—as we did post-World War II.

Blog Post by Guest Blogger for Shannon K. O'Neil May 18, 2015 Development Channel
Global Governance

Crisis in Global Governance

Experts discuss the mounting challenges to international cooperation today, and the launch of the Council of Councils (CoC) Report Card on International Cooperation.

Event with Richard Haass , Elizabeth Sidiropoulos, Memduh Karakullukçu, Sunjoy Joshi and Margaret G. Warner May 12, 2015
Wars and Conflict

India as Regional Power: Promoting Women’s Rights in Afghanistan

Last month’s decision by President Obama to extend the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan is an important step in securing the substantial American investment there. This extension—which is and should be temporary—is crucial to allow the Afghan government and security forces to build their capacity to maintain stability on the ground. As I have written before, security and stability in Afghanistan is critical for Afghan women and girls to expand upon the gains they have made since the fall of the Taliban. The United States should continue its support of Afghan women through agencies like the U.S. State Department and USAID, in addition to security assistance. However, other regional support for Afghanistan would also be beneficial in promoting Afghanistan’s security, development, and economic growth—therefore ensuring that Afghan women and girls can maintain and build upon the gains they’ve made In a recent CFR Policy Innovation Memorandum, Senior Fellow Alyssa Ayres argues that India could be a useful partner in promoting Afghan stability. Already, “India is the fifth-largest bilateral donor to Afghanistan with over $2 billion in pledged support,” she writes, “India constructed the Afghan parliament building, part of the interprovince Ring Road, electrical lines, and the Salma Dam, among others. India has also trained Afghan civil servants in Indian academies. The Confederation of Indian Industry has trained more than one thousand Afghans in carpentry, plumbing, and welding. The Self-Employed Women’s Association of India—a women’s trade union—has educated more than three thousand Afghan women in microenterprise.” For more on India’s capabilities to advance security, stability, and growth in Afghanistan, read “Why the United States Should Work With India to Stabilize Afghanistan.”

Blog Post by Catherine Powell April 20, 2015 Development Channel
Asia

Stand by Her: Afghan Men as Advocates for Women

Emerging Voices features contributions from scholars and practitioners highlighting new research, thinking, and approaches to development challenges. This article is by Kristen Cordell, gender advisor for the Office of Afghanistan and Pakistan Affairs at USAID. “When I was a young man, I held my own sister back from going to school. I didn’t even know why I should let her go,” my colleague Nadir* recalled at a recent meeting at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP). One might be surprised to hear that Nadir now serves as deputy director of the gender section at the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) office in Kabul. Growing up in Afghanistan, he witnessed the unique challenges women in his family faced: restricted access to education, limited career opportunities, and domestic violence. These injustices eventually drove him to law school—to become an advocate for those who could not advocate for themselves. He later represented his aunt in her legal battle to end an abusive, forced marriage and supported his mother’s return to school at the age of forty. At USAID, Nadir devotes his time to addressing the immense gender gaps in opportunities and understanding that linger in Afghanistan. He is a true advocate for women’s empowerment, often at great risk to himself and his loved ones. Nadir serves as an example of the tremendous impact men can have on the lives of women in their families. Efforts to empower women cannot succeed if they do not engage the other half of the population: men. Who allows a daughter to attend her first day of primary school? Who drives a sister to her classes at a nearby university? Who helps with the children while a wife works late at the office? From the poorest farmer to the wealthiest businessman, men can and should be champions of women’s empowerment. Yet Nadir’s story also underscores the fundamental struggle in the project to empower Afghan women: convincing men to become active supporters. Rather than viewing women’s empowerment as a zero-sum game where men ultimately lose, all Afghans should consider it as a vehicle for advancing their country’s prosperity; increasing the opportunities women have to contribute to society leads to greater transparency, rising GDP, and decreased corruption. The strictures surrounding gender can be lifted, and those societal gains made, only when the majority of a country—men and women—fight for that change. By introducing and convincing more individuals to join the cause, supporters of women’s empowerment can encourage a “norm cascade,” where a critical mass of the population is reached, and a new norm—in this case, women’s unhindered involvement in the Afghan public space—is embraced. A forthcoming USAID study shows that much of the challenge in convincing men to become advocates for women lies in exposure to new ideas, new culture, new types of interaction. USAID’s recently launched Promote project, the U.S. government’s flagship effort to enhance women’s empowerment in Afghanistan, supports women through community outreach, business empowerment, coalition building, and reforming workplace dynamics. Promote strives to create an environment where obstacles to women’s participation in their country do not exist. The project takes into account the role of fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons in supporting women’s aspirations and integrates these men into every aspect of the project’s operations. The goal is not simply to convince fathers that their daughters should participate in Promote; rather, it is to persuade fathers to participate themselves. By engaging Afghan men directly, Promote hopes to give them a stake in the project’s success. Furthermore, Promote was designed to be fluid and responsive to the beliefs, opinions, and suggestions of beneficiaries, male participants, rights groups, Afghan leaders, academia, and the private sector. As Assistant Administrator of the Office of Afghanistan and Pakistan Affairs Donald “Larry” Sampler said, it is a “platform, rather than a project.” Promote’s flexible, non-traditional mechanism allows not only for greater involvement—and thus buy-in—from Afghan participants, but also for buy-in from other international donors, ensuring the program will grow and prosper. Nadir recently became a father. When he talks about empowering Afghan women, he doesn’t think of norm cascades, flexible development platforms, or best practices for engaging men. Instead, he thinks about his daughter and his hopes for the country she will live in. *This name has been changed to protect the coauthor, who worked closely with Cordell on the preparation of this blog post. You can find out more about Promote (including how to get involved) at www.PromoteAfghanWomen.org.

Blog Post by Guest Blogger for Women Around the World January 14, 2015 Development Channel
Haiti

Haiti’s Reconstruction Struggles

Five years after a devastating earthquake, Haiti remains plagued by a weak political system and flawed reconstruction process, says former correspondent Jonathan M. Katz.

Interview with Jonathan M. Katz and Danielle Renwick January 12, 2015