Social Issues

Education

  • Security Alliances
    Reforming the U.S. International Military Education and Training Program
    The International Military Education and Training (IMET) program, which provides U.S. government funds to members of foreign militaries to take classes at U.S. military facilities, has the potential to be a powerful tool of U.S. influence. IMET is designed to help foreign militaries bolster their relationships with the United States, learn about U.S. military equipment, improve military professionalism, and instill democratic values in their members. For forty years, the program has played an important role in the United States’ relations with many strategic partners and in cultivating foreign officers who become influential policymakers. Although the program’s funding is relatively small, it could have an outsize impact on the United States’ military-to-military relations with many nations. Yet IMET today is in need of significant reform. The program contains no system for tracking which foreign military officers attended IMET. Additionally, the program is not effectively promoting democracy and respect for civilian command of armed forces. A 2011 Government Accountability Office (GAO) study found that most IMET programs did not include material on human rights and democracy. Although some U.S. policymakers now want to expand IMET to include officers from a broader range of developing nations, such as Myanmar, the program should be revamped before it is enlarged. The reforms should include more effectively screening IMET candidates, developing a system to follow the careers of IMET alumni, and institutionalizing coursework on professionalism, human rights, and democracy in IMET’s curriculum. The Situation Launched in 1976, IMET supports training for foreign military personnel from “allied and friendly nations.” It designates funding for members of foreign militaries to take courses at technical schools, colleges, universities, and professional schools affiliated with branches of the U.S. armed forces. Most of the courses are categorized as either professional military education, which focuses on broad leadership training, or technical classes, which teach students skills specific to military occupational specialties. When it was founded, IMET focused on boosting foreign militaries’ relations with the United States and educating armed forces about U.S. weapons. Reforms initiated in the 2000s were supposed to refocus IMET to include more coursework on military professionalism, human rights, and the role of a military in a democracy. Funding for IMET is delivered on a country-by-country basis. It is only a small portion of overall U.S. security assistance to most countries. About 120 countries, mostly lower- and middle-income developing nations, receive IMET funding each year. The Stakes IMET is only a small portion of U.S. security assistance, but many policymakers believe the program is more effective at boosting foreign militaries’ ties to the United States than other types of aid. IMET creates personal relationships in a way that other types of security aid cannot, and the program often includes men and women who later ascend to the ranks of colonel or general. For more than four decades, the program has played a role in bonding foreign and U.S. officers, and in cultivating U.S. influence in strategically vital nations. In a 2014 study, political scientists Jonathan Waverley and Jesse Savage found that U.S. military training “increases the [foreign] military’s power relative to the [civilian government] in ways that other forms of military assistance do not,” because of the prestige accrued and bonds formed among officers. Recognizing IMET’s promise, Congress has increased IMET funding 70 percent since 2000; in fiscal year 2016 IMET was allocated $108 million. However, IMET’s importance makes it even more critical that the program be reshaped to function in the best interests of the United States. A 2014 study by the National Defense University found that the majority of IMET graduates are never contacted by the U.S. military again. This lack of information makes it difficult for U.S. policymakers to identify foreign military leaders who could be liaisons for future military-to-military relations or to assess IMET’s utility at all. A lack of institutional memory also makes it hard for the Pentagon and U.S. arms manufacturers to find IMET graduates who were trained on U.S. weapons systems. In addition, IMET’s admissions processes and curriculum do not sufficiently emphasize military professionalism or the importance of democracy and human rights. According to interviews with officers from a range of countries, few IMET courses focus on the role of a military in a democracy. Moreover, several U.S. government audits have found that screening of candidates for past abuses is minimal. Yet history suggests that allowing foreign officers who have committed abuses into IMET, with the rationale that the training will influence them to act more humanely, has proven a false hope. During the Cold War, IMET welcomed Burmese, Indonesian, Pakistani, Thai, and Egyptian senior officers who had demonstrated histories of abusive behavior. There is no evidence that they returned home and behaved differently. Instead, the United States should choose the most professional and least abusive candidates to come to IMET, rather than hoping that IMET will radically reverse officers’ qualities. Failing to utilize IMET to promote respect for democratic rule and civilian command harms U.S. interests. In countries such as Thailand, Egypt, and Pakistan, continued military involvement in politics weakens civilian governments and stokes instability, making these states unreliable strategic partners over the long term. In addition, continued involvement in politics undermines these militaries’ professionalism and their ability to actually fight wars. For example, the Thai armed forces have more generals per capita than any other military in the world, largely so they can effectively stage regular coups. The Thai army has performed poorly in its most recent military encounters, including an ongoing counterinsurgency effort in southern Thailand dating to 2001. Although U.S. training programs cannot be expected to dramatically determine political dynamics in foreign countries, failing to use U.S. training to emphasize respect for democratic institutions sends a message that assistance does not distinguish between abusive and law-abiding militaries. In addition, if foreign military leaders attend IMET and then intervene in politics back home, their history of U.S. education undermines U.S. rhetorical support for democracy. Foreign officers’ U.S. training is impossible to hide. For example, the international media quickly discovered that leaders of coups in Mali in 2012 and Honduras in 2009 had attended IMET-funded programs. How to Proceed Given IMET’s importance, it is critical that the program better serve U.S. interests and foster U.S. values. The Department of Defense should revamp how participants are selected for IMET, how IMET attendees are tracked, and how U.S. leaders use IMET in bilateral relations. Follow and support IMET alumni. The Department of Defense should develop a comprehensive system for tracking IMET alumni. Such a system would allow the U.S. government to track which graduates have been promoted and could help defense attachés at U.S. embassies cultivate relationships with foreign militaries. The Department of Defense also should provide three to five million dollars in seed funding to create an IMET alumni association. The association would sponsor events where IMET alumni could interact with U.S. diplomats and military attachés. Make IMET more selective. Once a country is approved to receive IMET, defense attachés at U.S. embassies should play a more active role in prequalifying IMET enrollees. The Department of Defense should assign attachés overseas who have experience vetting IMET candidates. Better screening would actually defuse congressional and human rights criticisms of IMET for funding abusive officers, and make it less likely that Congress would suspend IMET funding for a particular country. This prequalification should include a thorough analysis of proposed participants’ records for apolitical professionalism. In nations where the military has a long record of rights abuses, it may be necessary to open IMET spaces only to those below a certain age. Employ instructors from other democracies. To emphasize respect for human rights and a civilian chain of command, at least 5 percent of IMET’s funding should be earmarked for foreign instructors from the militaries of countries, such as Brazil, that recently made a successful transition to democracy. Use IMET more as both a carrot and a stick. Although U.S. law already prohibits IMET funding for a country where a “duly elected head of government is deposed by military coup,” the legislation has many loopholes. Most obviously, a U.S. president can choose not to call a military takeover a coup, and maintain IMET funding. Congress should rewrite legislation to make it impossible to provide IMET funds to a military that deposes an elected government. To be sure, cutting off IMET could be counterproductive for short-term strategic relations with that nation. However, taking this risk is necessary. Suspending IMET allows the United States to send an important signal to citizens of that country that Washington does not tolerate coups. In these young democracies, cultivating public support for U.S. policy is critical to sustaining bilateral relations in the long-term. Moreover, in the post–Cold War era, military regimes from Egypt to Thailand have proven themselves highly incapable of handling modern, globalized economies and security challenges, from violence in Sinai to Thailand’s macroeconomic policy. A potential short-term chill in a bilateral relationship is worth the prospect of helping end regimes that undermine regional security and prosperity. In addition, when elected governments are quickly restored, as happened after the 2006 Thai coup, the United States resumes IMET funding; evidence suggests that military relations are then revived at the same level as before the coup. Building Support Reforming IMET so that U.S. leaders can track graduates will improve the program’s effectiveness and might also make it easier for U.S. defense companies to find foreign customers. Anecdotal studies of foreign officers who have attended IMET suggest that they have positive views of bilateral relations with the United States. Comprehensively tracking these graduates would give the Pentagon an important database of potentially pro-U.S. officers. Changing some of IMET’s focus to better promote rights and professionalism will be harder than implementing the reforms designed to monitor alumni. Some U.S. policymakers may resist the idea of barring soldiers with records of abuses from getting IMET funds, arguing that the United States should not turn down opportunities to influence foreign military leaders. Yet vetting IMET participants would actually make it less likely that Congress would totally cut off IMET funds for any nations. The United States also has many other tools that it could use to influence authoritarian regimes—even military leaders who have committed abuses—without providing them the prestige afforded by IMET. Many of those tools can be maintained even if a foreign military has staged a coup, allowing the United States to preserve influence with a coup government even while cutting off IMET. 
    Policy Innovation Memorandum by Joshua Kurlantzick June 8, 2016
  • Human Rights
    A Story of Migration and Child Marriage
    The first time Senait went to school was when she was fifteen years old and it was entirely by accident. Last year, she left her small town in southern Ethiopia when her parents announced one day that a well-off man had asked to marry her, and they had agreed. Rather than attend school, Senait, the eldest of ten children, had to earn money for her family, so she sold food on the side of the road. Faced with the choice of marrying a man her father’s age, who already had twelve children, or paying a broker to illegally transport her to the Middle East for work, she chose work. So she left her town in the back of a truck, hopeful for the promise of greater opportunity in Kuwait. Things went wrong from the start. The broker told her he would take her to Addis Ababa and then onward to Kuwait by plane. Instead they drove south, and, when they reached Kenya, the broker coached her to convince the border officials she was visiting her brother in Nairobi. Once they reached Nairobi, the broker put her in a room with eight other girls and told her to wait as he got her a visa. For a month, the girls were given food and water and did not leave the room. When a few days passed without provisions, Senait left the house in search of water. She did not get far before the police picked her up. Senait called the broker from the station to ask for her passport. He hung up on her. The police transferred her to Heshima Kenya’s Safe House, a transitional shelter for unaccompanied refugee girls in Nairobi. For the first time in her life, she went to school and studied math, practiced reading, and learned some basic English. After ten months, her paperwork was ready that would allow her to return to Ethiopia. She was relieved to go home, but would miss her classes. Unfortunately, for many girls in Ethiopia and around the world, experiences like Senait’s are not uncommon. According to the United Nations, 62 million girls around the world are not in school and 150 million girls have experienced sexual violence. In the developing world, one in three girls is married before the age of eighteen. Among adolescent girls, medical complications from pregnancy and childbirth are a leading cause of death. A quarter of a billion adolescent girls live in poverty. As a result of structural cycles of poverty and violence, adolescent girls around the world like Senait migrate within their countries or to other countries to improve their economic opportunities. Migrants from Ethiopia are most likely to come from poor rural areas, be young and single, and in search of work. Some, like Senait, are younger than eighteen. While some go through legal channels, others pay illegal brokers to smuggle them out of the country, putting themselves at risk of sexual violence on the journey. Once they reach their employer’s home, many experience long hours, partial or delayed payment, and sexual or physical abuse. A recent report argues that adolescent girls’ experiences of poverty, exploitation, and violence shape their decisions to migrate and the risks they face doing it. While the Ethiopian government has taken important steps, more is needed to make legal migration safer, combat trafficking and illegal migration, and support rehabilitation services. Perhaps most importantly, girls like Senait need access to education and employment opportunities, the two major reasons they migrate in the first place—at the Safe House where Senait stayed in Nairobi with other girls from Ethiopia and the surrounding region, 70 percent had little to no schooling. African and international leaders have picked up the call to invest in adolescent girls like Senait, making the case that these investments benefit girls, their families, and their societies. Research from the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund finds that adolescent girls’ access to education is correlated with delayed marriage and childbearing, decreased HIV/AIDS rates, and greater gender equality. It improves the health of their children, and contributes to national income growth. These findings have spurred new action. At a national level, for example, the Ethiopian government vowed to eliminate child marriage—along with female genital mutilation, another harmful traditional practice—by 2025. To reach this goal, they secured a 10 percent increase in the national budget and mobilized more champions to build public support. International actors are joining in to complement such efforts and drive more resources and attention to the issue. A few weeks ago, the World Bank Group announced $2.5 billion in education projects for adolescent girls around the world, recognizing that their empowerment is central to achieving international development objectives. The U.S. government recently launched the Let Girls Learn initiative, along with a broader strategy to empower adolescent girls around the world. Adolescent girls also have taken more prominent roles in their societies and on the global stage to help guide the new investments and hold leaders accountable. When I met Senait, she had just arrived in Ethiopia from Nairobi, and expected to stay for a week at a transit center in Addis Ababa while her government, with the support of the International Organization for Migration, finalized the logistics for the return trip to her hometown. She planned to live with her aunt and save money to open a shop. If others ask her about her experiences, she’ll tell them not to try to reach the Middle East for work. And she will try to convince her parents to let her siblings wait until they’re older to get married. Despite her strength and optimism, Senait was going back to the same situation where she had no access to school and limited options to earn a living, and where there was little respect for her rights. Until this changes, girls like Senait will continue to risk abuse and exploitation as they migrate in pursuit of opportunity.
    Blog Post by Jamille Bigio May 5, 2016 Women Around the World
  • Wars and Conflict
    Women Around the World: This Week
    Welcome to “Women Around the World: This Week,” a series that highlights noteworthy news related to women and U.S. foreign policy. This week’s post, covering April 16 to April 22, was compiled with support from Anne Connell, Becky Allen, and Alexandra Eterno. World Bank increases investment in girls’ education                   Last week, the World Bank Group announced plans to invest $2.5 billion in adolescent girls’ education over the next five years. The commitment represents a major step toward reaching the goals of the Group’s new global strategy for gender equality, and dovetails with U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama’s call to action on the first anniversary of her signature Let Girls Learn initiative, which aims to reduce barriers that prevent adolescent girls from completing their education. A staggering thirty-one million adolescent girls worldwide do not attend school. The World Bank Group’s investment will create new programs to train teachers, administer scholarships, offer conditional cash transfers to promote school retention, and equip schools with toilets and clean drinking water. The bulk of investment will be targeted at sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia—regions with the highest numbers of out-of-school girls. Jim Yong Kim, president of the World Bank, suggested that the investment would bear fruit for generations to come, stressing that “empowering and educating adolescent girls is one of the best ways to stop poverty from being passed from generation to generation.” Ample evidence links girls’ education with economic growth, delayed onset of marriage and pregnancy, and improved health outcomes for girls and their families. Maternal health at risk in refugee crisis                                                                        New reports find that, in a notable demographic shift since the refugee crisis began in 2014, women and children seeking asylum in the European Union (EU) outnumber men—and some reports suggest that up to one in ten women refugees are pregnant. Pregnant women and new mothers are among the most vulnerable refugees, as access to pre-natal care is limited along remote routes, miscarriages are frequent, births occur often in unsanitary conditions without  medical personnel, and physical exertion contributes to fatigue, heavy-bleeding, and other post-natal conditions. Doctors Without Borders (MSF) and other organizations providing health services also cite a scarcity of formula and other baby supplies along commonly traveled routes. The challenges of providing maternal health care services to refugees en route to Europe are markedly different than those in static refugee communities, which have seen some successes in maternal health care provision: the sprawling Za’atari camp in Jordan, for example, which is serviced by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and MSF, recently celebrated the safe delivery of its 5,000th baby. President Dilma Rousseff impeached                                                                             This week, Brazil’s lower house of Congress voted to pursue impeachment proceedings against President Dilma Rousseff on charges that she violated federal budget laws. Rousseff became the first woman to hold the Brazilian presidency when she assumed the office in January 2011. More than 500 lawmakers offered public testimony of the reasoning behind their votes, much of which detoured from the charges Rousseff faces. A significant number of the legislators leading the charge to impeach Rousseff face corruption allegations themselves. Her presidency has weathered a number of controversies—including strikes of public service employees, the banning of an HIV-prevention campaign, and involvement in the Petrobras scandal that involved kick-backs and corruption—that have contributed to her unpopularity among opposition parties and some civil society groups. The Brazilian Senate will vote by simple majority, likely next month, on whether to hear the trial against Rousseff.
    Blog Post by Rachel B. Vogelstein April 22, 2016 Women Around the World
  • Wars and Conflict
    Action on Ending Child Marriage
    Voices from the Field features contributions from scholars and practitioners highlighting new research, thinking, and approaches to development challenges. This article is authored by Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin, under-secretary-general of the United Nations and executive director of UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund. In late 2013, a young girl named Haneen fled Syria with her parents and ten siblings to escape escalating violence and instability. Her father sustained serious injuries that left him paralyzed along their journey to the Turkish border. Fearing he could no longer provide for and protect his children, he decided to marry off Haneen to a middle-aged Turkish man whose name he didn’t even know. The family received a small sum of money in exchange for Haneen’s marriage, and decided they might fare better in Lebanon. They soon departed Turkey, leaving Haneen behind with her new husband. Three months later, Haneen reported that she had tried to commit suicide twice and that her husband regularly beat and mistreated her. Barely fourteen, she learned she was pregnant. Haneen and her family would eventually reunite, but her story has become a far too common reality for girls worldwide. Socioeconomic factors and desperation sometimes compel families to marry their daughters off too young, often under the false pretense that their child’s new spouse will provide them a secure and autonomous life. As a father, I understand any parent’s desire to see their children safe and secure. But choosing when and whom to marry is one of life’s most important decisions, and child marriage denies millions of girls this choice each year—with devastating impacts on the girl, her family, and her community. More than 700 million girls and women alive today were married as children. This is a massive human rights violation and a major obstacle to sustainable development. Girls forced into early marriage are more likely to become pregnant prematurely, increasing the risks of maternal and newborn death. They are much more likely to drop out of school, and their own children tend to be less healthy and less educated. This takes a cumulative toll on communities, workforces, and economies, and the loss is carried over from generation to generation. This issue affects us all and must no longer be ignored. Last month, UNFPA and UNICEF launched the Global Programme to Accelerate Action to End Child Marriage, which, through collaboration between a wide variety of governmental, non-governmental, and UN partners—as well as girls themselves—will bring us closer to ending this practice. The UNFPA-UNICEF Global Programme offers a framework for promoting the right of girls to delay marriage, addressing the conditions that keep the practice in place, and caring for girls already in such marriages. It is the flagship program for achieving target 5.3 of the newly adopted Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which aims to end child marriage around the world by 2030. The Global Programme will focus on enabling girls at risk of child marriage to choose and shape their own futures. It will support households in developing and demonstrating positive attitudes towards adolescent girls, and strengthen the systems that deliver services to adolescent girls. It will also seek to ensure that laws and policies protect and promote adolescent girls’ rights, and highlight the importance of using robust data to inform policies relating to adolescent girls. The Programme will begin in twelve countries: Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Mozambique, Nepal, Niger, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Yemen, and Zambia. These countries were selected for additional United Nations investment and accelerated efforts due to their high prevalence rates and large projected burden of child marriage, levels of government engagement, and regional distribution. The global momentum and opportunities to make significant progress on ending child marriage have never been greater. I look forward to working with my colleagues across the UN, governments, and other key partners—including entrepreneurs, the private sector, civil society, and, most importantly, young people. Together, we can end child marriage once and for all. It’s long past time to do so.
    Blog Post by Guest Blogger for Women Around the World April 14, 2016 Women Around the World
  • Energy and Environment
    Family Planning and the SDGs
    Voices from the Field features contributions from scholars and practitioners highlighting new research, thinking, and approaches to development challenges. This article is authored by Ellen Starbird, director of the Office of Population and Reproductive Health at the U.S. Agency for International Development. The sustainable development goals (SDGs) articulate seventeen goals for the world to collectively meet by 2030. The SDG document organizes the goals into five themes—people, planet, prosperity, peace, and partnership—but it’s still a lot to grasp, so finding lynchpins that connect the themes and goals will be important to their success. Voluntary family planning is one of those lynchpins, with clear connections across all five themes. First, family planning affects people in myriad ways. It advances human rights, and saves lives. The 1968 International Conference on Human Rights proclaimed that “parents have a basic human right to decide freely and responsibly the number and spacing of their children.” However, in 2014, estimates indicated that 225 million women in low- and middle-income countries had unmet needs for modern contraceptive methods, meaning they want to stop or delay childbearing but are not using modern contraceptive methods. The ability to access and use family planning can influence outcomes ranging from health and education to women’s empowerment. Family planning helps women time and space their pregnancies, so they can bear children at the healthiest times of their lives. This lowers the number of unintended and high-risk pregnancies, and reduces women’s exposure to pregnancy-related health risks. Helping women time and space their pregnancies also contributes to reduced child malnutrition, healthy birth weight for newborns, and increased breastfeeding. Analyses indicate that by 2020, family planning could help prevent approximately seven million under-five deaths and 450,000 maternal deaths in USAID’s priority countries. Correct use of male or female condoms has dual benefits—preventing both transmission of the HIV virus and unintended pregnancy in HIV-positive women, thus preventing HIV transmission to the newborn. Family planning also advances gender equality and strongly supports the empowerment of women and girls by helping them stay in school, become literate, learn a trade, or start a business. Women cannot take advantage of opportunities and resources equally with men if they cannot plan their families. A wealth of country-level studies document the impact of family planning programs, and provide guidance on how to reach all women, as well as marginalized and underserved populations. Second, family planning use affects the planet. Population dynamics, including human population size, growth, density, and migration, are important drivers of environmental and natural resource degradation, including land, forests, biodiversity, water, and climate change. Population growth affects water scarcity, erodes renewable energy gains, and influences the development of sustainable urban infrastructure. In many countries, populations are growing so quickly that they are overwhelming governments’ abilities to provide education, health services, housing, drinking water, electricity, and waste disposal, contributing to the spread of urban slums. Slower population growth enables building a resilient infrastructure for health and economic development, where fewer government health and education services, including water, are required, and more land, electricity, and energy are available per person. A 2015 report concluded that improving access to family planning can “slow global climate change by providing 16 to 29 percent of the needed emissions reductions.” And a 2015 review of integrated population, health, and environment (PHE) projects concluded “it is clear that PHE projects are having an impact…improving the health, well-being and environment of households and communities across diverse settings and landscapes.” Third, family planning can facilitate economic prosperity. Rapid fertility decline, a result of increased family planning use, lowers the ratio of young people (dependents) to wage earners. With supportive socio-economic policies and attention to equity, countries can experience a “demographic dividend” of rapid economic growth. Family planning also contributes to economic growth by increasing the economic participation of women, and research has shown that having fewer children per family leads to increased household savings and increased investments in each child. Korea and Thailand, both demographic dividend success stories, represent strong examples of countries aligning population policy and family planning services with human capital development policies to accelerate economic growth. Fourth, family planning can contribute to peace—to the development of stable, democratic societies. Studies have shown that a large “youth bulge” (defined as a high proportion of 15 to 29 year-olds relative to the older adult population) is associated with a high risk of civil conflict. The political impact of fertility decline can be significant: studies show that, as a country and its population age, the probability of attaining and maintaining a liberal democracy is increased. Fifth, family planning progress requires new and continued partnerships. Despite recent increased donor and country-level attention to family planning and the potential contribution of family planning to the SDGs, family planning services continue to fall short of need in all developing regions. As we map out the global plan for tackling the SDGs, family planning partnerships at the global level, such as Family Planning 2020, the UN Commission on Life Saving Commodities, the Ouagadougou Partnership, and at the country level, with the public and private commercial sectors, foundations, civil society organizations, and non-health sector groups, will continue to be critical. Empowering women to choose the number, timing, and spacing of their pregnancies is not only a matter of health and human rights, but can hasten progress across the five themes of the new sustainable development goals. Quite simply, family planning is a best buy, and can help make the world a better place for all of us.
    Blog Post by Guest Blogger for Women Around the World April 8, 2016 Women Around the World
  • Education
    What the Trade and Minimum Wage Debates Have in Common
    The election-year debates over trade and the minimum wage would appear to have little to do with each other. The growing concern over trade, on the one hand, has focused mostly on the impact of global competition on U.S. manufacturing, sectors in which most employees make far more than the minimum wage. The historic move by California and New York this week to raise their minimum wages to $15, on the other hand, will mostly boost pay for restaurant and retail workers – sectors that do not face international competition. But the two issues are actually the mirror image of the same problem – weak wage growth that has left far too many Americans struggling, especially those with low levels of education, even as strong job growth has cut unemployment in half since the depth of the Great Recession. Historically, manufacturing jobs provided lower-skilled Americans with a path to a middle-class paycheck. It also seems likely (though I have not found a good study on the subject) that higher manufacturing wages historically helped to pull up other wages as well. If an auto worker with a high school education could earn $25 or $30 an hour, local restaurants and retail shops would have to offer something more than rock bottom wages to attract and retain workers. But the number of manufacturing jobs has fallen from a peak of nearly 20 million at the end of the 1970s to fewer than 12 million today. Instead of acting as an engine to pull up other wages, former manufacturing workers have been dumped into the pool to compete for lower-wage jobs in retail or healthcare. There are at least two alternative ways for the United States to tackle this problem. One – call it the German model – would focus on expanding manufacturing sector employment through increased exports. As Obama administration officials never tire of reminding Congress and the public, jobs in export-oriented manufacturing companies pay more than most other jobs – on average about 20 percent more. In Germany, some 22 percent of the workforce is in manufacturing, and wage growth in Germany has been strong – strong enough indeed that German officials are worried that it will hinder the country’s ability to maintain its strong export performance. There are several problems with this strategy for the United States. First, the number of jobs is simply too small for manufacturing to resume its historic role as a wage growth leader. Even with the strong recovery from the recession, the number of U.S. manufacturing jobs has grown by just 5 percent since 2010, or about 800,000 jobs, and manufacturing today employs less than nine percent of Americans. Secondly, rising export growth depends on a weaker dollar and stronger growth in the major markets of Europe and Asia, neither of which appears likely in the near-term. U.S. exports last year fell slightly for the first time since the recession. And many of the new manufacturing jobs are not especially good ones by historic standards, in part because companies are holding wages down to compete with overseas rivals; the real median wage in the auto industry, for example, has fallen by more than 20 percent over the past decade. In the auto parts sector, median pay is now just over the $15 per hour that will become the new minimum in New York and California. A second approach – call it the Australian model – is to legislate a very high minimum wage, which mostly serves to raise wages in the non-competitive sectors of the economy like retail, but likely has some knock-on effects in pushing up wages in internationally competitive sectors like mining and agriculture, making them less competitive. Australia’s minimum wage – at more than A$16 per hour – is the highest among OECD countries in terms of purchasing power. That has probably hurt the country’s export competitiveness, but its overall economic performance has still been quite solid. Australia’s unemployment rate is less than six percent, its labor force participation rate is higher than the United States and its share of low-paid workers is much smaller. Whatever the other effects of a minimum wage rise, it has the virtue of increasing the pay packets of many workers, which increases internal demand for consumer goods, so the losses on the export side can be made up at home. The Australian model has some obvious merits for an economy like the United States. Compared to Europe or even Canada, Australia is a relatively self-sufficient economy. Its merchandise trade-to-GDP ratio is just over 30 percent, compared with 45 percent for France and more than 70 percent for Germany. In this respect, the United States is like Australia, though even more so. The U.S. trade-to-GDP ratio, while much higher than it was a generation ago, is still less than 25 percent. Higher minimum wages in the United States will likely hurt some internationally competitive manufacturing companies, though probably only at the margins since most of their employees earn above the minimum wage already. And the boost for lower wage workers should help increase consumer demand, which would be a good thing for many U.S businesses. The California and New York experiments will be radical ones, to be sure. The United States has in recent decades had one of the lowest minimum wages in the advanced world, but by the time the new laws are fully implemented over the next seven years, its two largest states will have minimum wages that are some of the highest. There are certain to be significant unforeseen consequences. But given the absence of other alternatives for boosting wages, especially for the poorest U.S. workers, it is a gamble worth taking.
    Blog Post by Edward Alden April 5, 2016 Renewing America
  • Human Rights
    Five Questions With Tina Brown
    The Five Questions Series is a forum for scholars, government officials, civil society leaders, and foreign policy practitioners to provide timely analysis of new developments related to the advancement of women and girls worldwide. This interview is with Tina Brown, journalist, editor, author, and founder and CEO of Tina Brown Live Media. This year, the Women in the World Summit has a significant focus on the issue of women, peace, and security. The summit will feature a panel on women waging peace in Africa; a conversation with Afghan first lady Rula Ghani; and a session on escalating violence against women in Turkey. What connection do you see between women’s participation in peace and security processes and the resolution of the pressing global security threats we face today? I see every connection—in the sense that a country that treats its women badly is bound to also be a national security risk. That is what has been proven again and again. And we keep seeing parts of the world explode in violence—and these are parts of the world where women are kept down, kept out of the economy, kept from political participation, kept uneducated, unable to play their part. So I see every connection between women’s status and peace and security. I also see a connection between instability and the fact that women are constantly being left out of peace processes all over the world. When they are at the table, they can make a real difference. You can see that in Rwanda, for instance: last year, Women in the World hosted a panel made up of women who were in the Rwandan government, and they are really making Rwanda a very different place. When women are brought in to peace processes, they have different kinds of solutions. They tend not to escalate conflict in the way that a room full of men do. Last year we also had two amazing women speak, one Palestinian and one Israeli, both of whom had lost kids to snipers from the other side, and yet they joined forces to talk about peace. So we thought how interesting to have this focus on peace and security on this year’s African panel, because, of course, violence in Africa gets buried in the noise about the Middle East, but Boko Haram and al Shabaab have killed many more people than ISIS have. The notion of bringing women into the process, cross-faith dialogue, reaching out in unofficial ways, and in outside channels is something that Women in the World is extremely focused on, and every year we bring these kinds of women together to offer their solutions. We call it women waging peace. I want to ask about another issue you will highlight at this year’s summit that affects billions but garners little media attention: the fact that 2.5 billion people live without a legal form of identification. Tell us why this issue matters and how it affects the status of women. I think it is incredibly important. I will be interviewing Ajaypal Banga, the CEO of MasterCard, because he is very, very strong on this issue. And, as you said, there are 2.5 billion people who live without a form of legal identification. Without identification, you are essentially living in a data dark world. The government can’t find you, healthcare can’t find you, aid organizations can’t find you. Without legal identity, how can people bridge those divides? The second part is that a cashless society can be much less corrupt. For a woman to have an identity card, she can also have a way to have payments made, which is an extraordinarily powerful tool because she doesn’t then have to walk miles to a money exchange location, or have the money stolen, or perhaps taken by her husband at home. All of these issues make having an identity card a critical gamechanger for women, in particular. I think it is a very important thing to discuss—it may not be a sexy topic, but it’s an incredibly important topic, and one that can actually change lives. This year marks the beginning of the implementation of the new 2030 framework, which elevates global ambition to achieve gender equality. For the first time, this agenda establishes time-bound targets related to a range of issues—from property rights, to political participation, to child marriage, to violence against women—that were overlooked in the prior development framework. What unique contributions can the private sector and the media offer to advance this agenda?   New partnerships are absolutely critical. Take the independent midwives initiatives supported by Merck to train women as skilled midwives and increase women’s access to maternal health, for example. It is one of these gamechangers that is kind of a granular idea, but that is very effective. MasterCard I’ve talked about, and Toyota and Flex, who also support the summit, are focusing on small businesses and innovation fueled by women, as well. We are finding that there is real interest among large corporate entities now to reach out across the aisle to the public sector and empower women because they realize that they make up an enormous market segment that has been left on the table, quite frankly. But this is also critical because, as we see again and again, when you educate a girl and you raise a woman up, you change the dynamics of a whole family, and therefore of a whole village, and therefore of a whole town. So it seems like a huge light bulb has gone off in the corporate sphere over the course of the last ten years and it’s making an enormous difference. There has been a lot of discussion this year about women’s leadership, particularly with the potential for the first female Secretary-General of the United Nations. What difference does it make to have women in leadership roles? It isn’t always as good as you hope it will be, to be honest. I was surprised, for example, after the hideous high-profile rape of a young woman in India in 2012, very few of the women leaders in Delhi actually spoke out. So, sometimes, you wonder why women don’t do more. On the other hand, there is no doubt that women bring different kinds of issues to the table. In political leadership, especially, the more women you have participating, the more you will see those issues come to realization. In Pakistan, for example, it is the women in the government who are moving forward new bills on honor killings and domestic violence, because these are issues that they feel keenly about and might not be brought to the surface by male colleagues. So women do care about some different issues. I also think that women are used to working somewhat outside the system, because they have to frequently, so they come up with more interesting, collaborative models of management that simply are created by the more ad hoc nature of the way women do things. If you have children and have periods where you aren’t working, or you drop out of the workforce and then come back, you learn to figure out ways to do things with resourcefulness. This makes people able to see new routes that are different from conventional routes. This is why I am a big champion of women managers, who show pretty creative thinking about new solutions to problems. What comes after the Women in the World summit?  How can we ensure that the issues you highlight are considered not only “women’s” issues, but also economic issues, security issues, and political and social issues that affect prosperity and stability for all? At Women in the World we now have a large global community, because our work is not just in New York, but now in India, in London, and elsewhere. But what is also interesting about what we do is the reverberation that the stories at the summit create. We often don’t even learn until quite long afterwards what happened due to our summit. For instance, in India, we featured a domestic worker who told a story of the horrors that many Indian domestic workers face when they work in the Middle East, where they often have their passports taken and suffer abuse. In this particular case, a mother had gone to the Middle East to work and was seriously abused by her employer. And Nita Ambani, a very wealthy businesswoman in India, was there and then funded the education of this woman’s six grandchildren. So, we feel extremely gratified by cases like this. We have also launched a partnership with Toyota called the Mothers of Invention program and are now into our fifth year of it. This program allows us to find an unknown young social entrepreneur who is trying to elevate a social issue, to whom Toyota awards a $50,000 grant. We’ve had about fifteen of these young women and each has done incredibly well since appearing on our stage. So we feel that we are a fantastic amplifier of women who have good entrepreneurial ideas but who are unknown—and, on the other hand, also of women who are doing some very dangerous work, and who may need the spotlight and connections that we provide them in order to be safe in their countries and keep doing their work.
    Blog Post by Rachel B. Vogelstein April 5, 2016 Women Around the World
  • Human Rights
    Women Around the World: This Week
    Welcome to “Women Around the World: This Week,” a series that highlights noteworthy news related to women and U.S. foreign policy. This week’s post, covering March 25 to April 1, was compiled with support from Anne Connell and Alexandra Eterno. New U.S. government efforts to empower women and girls           This month, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry announced the historic launch of the first-ever U.S. Global Strategy to Empower Adolescent Girls. The new strategy is the product of an interagency effort led by the Department of State in collaboration with USAID, PEPFAR, the Peace Corps, and the Millennium Challenge Corporation. The innovative strategy highlights the importance of investing in efforts to empower adolescent girls worldwide, focusing on critical issues like improving access to secondary school, collecting gender-disaggregated data, reducing HIV infection rates among young women, and bringing an end to harmful traditional practices such as child marriage and female genital mutilation (FGM).  The State Department also took steps this month to honor exceptional leaders in the cause to advance gender equality and social progress, recognizing fourteen women at its 10th Annual International Women of Courage Awards. Recipients include Debra Baptist-Estrada, an official in Belize’s Department of Immigration fighting human smuggling; Latifa Ibn Ziaten, a Moroccan-born Frenchwoman combatting radicalization in Muslim French communities; Dr. Nagham Nawzat Hasan, a Yezidi gynecologist providing psychological support to survivors of sexual violence; and Russian journalist Zhanna Nemtsova, who champions freedom of information. Women in Colombia’s peace process                                                                   Colombia’s government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a radical left-wing group violently opposing the government since the 1960s, missed the March 23rd deadline for a peace agreement that was set at a celebrated joint meeting last September. Throughout the conflict and tenuous peace process, women have played a prominent role: in bilateral talks last year in Havana, Cuba, for example, sixteen women participated as gender experts. And with women comprising an estimated forty percent of the rebel fighters, women’s inclusion at the negotiating table is critical to the creation of a durable peace that reflects the unique post-conflict needs of women, including female fighters and those affected by violence across the country. As peace talks continue in 2016, their incorporation of the complexity and diversity of women’s experiences during the conflict—both as perpetrators and victims of violence—will be critical. Reducing child marriage in Bangladesh                                                                  Promising new research from the Population Council demonstrates that targeted programs in Bangladesh that educate girls, provide information about legal rights, and offer livelihood skills training hold the potential to reduce the practice of child marriage by up to one third. Bangladesh has one of the highest rates of child marriage in the world, with sixty-five percent of girls married before their eighteenth birthdays and twenty-nine percent of girls married before the age of fifteen. With widely-publicized inaction from the government and poor implementation of current legislation that bans the practice, families in Bangladesh continue to perpetuate the practice of child marriage, which is fueled in part by extreme poverty. This new research should inform the design of programs aimed at reducing child marriage in Bangladesh—and could provide a model to be scaled in other countries throughout South East Asia.  
    Blog Post by Rachel B. Vogelstein April 1, 2016 Women Around the World
  • Education
    A Strategic Approach to the New Global Goals
    This week, at the sixtieth meeting of the UN Commission on the Status of Women, delegates from around the world will consider the link between women’s empowerment and sustainable development. The discussion comes at a timely moment—on the heels of the adoption of an ambitious new sustainable development framework, and as nations turn to the hard work of implementing its seventeen goals. The sustainable development agenda, which was forged with an unprecedented level of collaboration by the international community, has been heralded as a promising leap forward from its predecessor framework, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). This is especially true with respect to Sustainable Development Goal Five, focused on gender equality, which for the first time creates time-bound targets related to a range of issues—from property rights and financial inclusion, to political participation, to ending violence against women, to child marriage and FGM—that previously were overlooked. Gender issues also have been woven into the entirety of the 2030 agenda, with targets related to women and poverty, hunger, health, education, water and sanitation, employment, safe cities, and peace and security. And yet, while the scale of our ambition to achieve gender equality has grown, so too have questions about whether the world can realize this agenda in just fifteen years. Under a framework with seventeen goals and 169 targets, how will countries prioritize efforts? And how can we ensure that nations are focused on Goal Five as implementation gets underway? Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, under-secretary-general of the United Nations and executive director of UN Women, recently addressed these challenges in a UN Foundation roundtable meeting at the Council on Foreign Relations. Mlambo-Ngcuka noted that UN Women has identified women’s economic empowerment as a priority area of focus under the 2030 Agenda, together with ending violence against women and increasing women’s decision-making power. And she made the case that a concerted focus on women’s participation in the economy, in particular, stands to have a multiplier effect across all of the sustainable development goals. Data support the proposition that women’s full economic participation around the world holds the potential to jump-start the rest of the 2030 agenda. A growing body of research from the World Bank and other organizations provides ample evidence that women’s economic empowerment and access to assets corresponds with macro-level poverty reduction and economic growth. Studies also confirm that women are more likely to invest income back into their families and communities in ways that improve livelihoods, health, and educational outcomes for others. Women often form the backbone of resilience to natural disasters and conflict, and can protect local economies against shocks when they have rights to assets like land, water, forests, and housing. In light of this evidence, some contend that a woman’s ability to provide for herself and her family will promote progress towards every one of the seventeen goals. As UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon recently put it, “[i]f the world is to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), we need a quantum leap in women’s economic empowerment.” Given the criticality of women’s economic participation to the SDG agenda, the United Nations has taken steps to bring this issue to the fore. The newly-formed UN High-Level Panel on Women’s Economic Empowerment, which held its inaugural meeting last week, signals a commitment to women’s economic participation as a strategic imperative. The High-Level Panel brings together a diverse group of gender experts, economists, academics, trade union leaders, and business and government representatives from all regions of the world to spearhead efforts to eliminate structural barriers to women’s economic empowerment, promote their full inclusion in economic activities, and galvanize political will to improve economic outcomes for women and their families. The panel has committed to a yearlong review of the barriers to women’s economic participation worldwide and will emerge with a report in 2017 recommending steps for national and international reform. Achieving the expansive sustainable development agenda by 2030 will require focus. Strategic implementation will be the litmus test of the new goals’ success. Given this, amplifying efforts to accelerate women’s full economic participation will be essential—not only to fulfill the targets under Goal Five, but also to advance progress against the entire sustainable development framework.
    Blog Post by Rachel B. Vogelstein March 25, 2016 Women Around the World
  • Human Rights
    Advancing Legal Gender Equality Under the SDGs
    Voices from the Field features contributions from scholars and practitioners highlighting new research, thinking, and approaches to development challenges. This article is authored by Natasha Stott Despoja, Australia’s Ambassador for Women and Girls. As a former senator in the Australian Federal Parliament, I understand the power of law-making. I know that legislation can change lives for the better or for worse. In more than 90 percent of countries worldwide, women’s opportunities are limited explicitly by the unequal treatment of women that is enshrined in legislation. This ranges from laws that govern personal and marital status (including early, forced, and child marriage, the inability to travel freely outside the home, and the absence of protections from rape and domestic violence), to laws relating to economic recognition (those that bar women from owning or inheriting property, opening a bank account, or managing their own assets). These structural barriers both reinforce, and are underpinned by, attitudinal and cultural barriers. The effects of legislative discrimination are significant and far-reaching. Lower levels of gender equality in national laws are associated with fewer girls enrolled in primary and secondary education; fewer women in skilled work; fewer women owning land; fewer women accessing financial and health services; and higher rates of domestic, family, and sexual violence. The case for legislative reform is compelling. I have joined advocates for gender equality—including organizations such as Global Citizen—in their work to make ending gender discrimination in legislation a major campaign for the coming fifteen years, over the lifetime of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Since my appointment in 2013 as Australia’s global Ambassador for Women and Girls, I have traveled to twenty-four countries to advocate for gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls. My focus is the Indo-Pacific region: a part of the world where there are enormous challenges to women’s participation in leadership, decision-making, and economic life, and where violence against women is pervasive. I am one of a handful of gender equality ambassadors globally and, in addition to my advocacy for the empowerment of the world’s women and girls, I call on other governments to create positions comparable to mine. An expansion in the ranks of high-level advocates for gender equality will undoubtedly give women a stronger voice in the 2030 Agenda. This is necessary and important. In recent decades, we have seen significant progress for women and girls around the world, but in no country has gender equality been achieved and this comes at a cost to all of us. As we were reminded during the negotiation and adoption of the global Sustainable Development Goals in 2015, much remains to be done to ensure women’s full and equal participation in the political, economic, and social affairs of their countries. This is not just a question of what is right and fair, it also makes good economic sense. Women are now regarded as the most powerful engine of economic growth and drivers of national and global prosperity. A recent report by the McKinsey Global Institute found that advancing women’s equality would add between $12 and 28 trillion dollars to annual global growth by the year 2025. I was in New York attending the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit last September and witnessed the celebrations when the 2030 Agenda was adopted. The mood was euphoric, both in the halls of the United Nations and on the streets, or, more specifically, in Central Park, where the Global Citizen Festival welcomed in the global goals. Looking out across the tens of thousands of people who gathered at the festival to celebrate, I was reminded of the power of activism, and the collective voice of global citizens, because undoubtedly the 2030 Agenda echoes the voice of civil society activists who were an essential presence in the negotiations that led to its adoption. Now the hard work of implementation of the Global Goals begins, and once again we turn to global citizens to carry this work forward. We need them to be advocates, to be ambassadors, to work individually and collectively to call for change, for reform. We need them to leverage media and international fora—such as the United Nations, the Group of Twenty (G20), and the Commonwealth of Nations—to highlight injustice and discrimination. We need them to say to leaders and legislators: “This isn’t right, this isn’t the present we want or the future we believe in; it’s time for change.” There already exist many brave activists on the ground fighting for gender equality and organizations such as Global Citizen and CHIME FOR CHANGE, which have launched #LevelTheLaw to support existing campaigns to end gender discrimination in legislation. Campaigns such as the one led by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, who is calling on the Pakistani government to outlaw honor killings. Or Nadia, a Yazidi activist campaigning to have the genocide and rape of her community referred to the International Criminal Court. And young men like Aristarick who are willing to speak out on behalf of their mothers, sisters, and friends to end child marriage in Tanzania. We can help these advocates access the tools, publicity, and leaders who have the power to level the playing field for good. While these are issues that require solutions at a local level, they reflect a broader global challenge to secure gender equality. Last week, I attended the United Nation’s sixtieth session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) in New York for this very purpose: to lend my voice to international efforts to identify solutions to global gender equity problems. While attending CSW, I proudly endorsed #LevelTheLaw as a campaign of practical and tangible responses to longstanding discrimination. I hope others will join me.
    Blog Post by Guest Blogger for Women Around the World March 23, 2016 Women Around the World
  • China
    To Understand China’s Economic Signals, Start With the Four Comprehensives
    John Fei is a program officer for the Asia Security Initiative at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The views expressed here represent those of the author, and not those of the MacArthur Foundation or any other organization. The recent drama surrounding China’s economy reveals contradictions in the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) monetary and fiscal management policies. Witness the rare, and highly scripted, appearances of the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) governor Zhou Xiaochuan or the China Securities Regulatory Commission’s (CSRC) regulatory flip-flop on circuit-breaker mechanisms imposed on trading. While there has been a plethora of analyses regarding the need for improved communication and greater independence of organizations such as the PBOC, less has been said about how the recent spate of economic events relates to the CCP’s leadership doctrine. China’s schizophrenic economic signaling is not simply a reflection of poor communications or outmoded regulatory structures, but symptomatic of deeper contradictions within CCP doctrine. In a nation where doctrine serves as the ideological foundation for actionable policy, one can trace the current policy confusion in Beijing to Xi Jinping’s “Four Comprehensives” and other slogans. So just what are the Four Comprehensives? To casual Western observers, Xi Jinping’s Four Comprehensives may seem akin to what the late Justice Antonin Scalia would call the “mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie.” In a series of workshops conducted in Chinese at the China Executive Leadership Academy in Pudong, a CCP Party school in Shanghai, I and other participants in the American Mandarin Society’s Fellows Program had the opportunity to delve into the meaning and policy implications of slogans such as the Four Comprehensives. The Four Comprehensives are part and parcel of Xi Jinping’s “Chinese Dream”—realizing the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation—and capture China’s paramount objectives in four points: 1) comprehensively build a moderately prosperous society, 2) comprehensively deepen reform, 3) comprehensively implement the rule of law, and 4) comprehensively strengthen Party discipline. How does the Chinese leadership intend to implement each of the Four Comprehensives? What can our engagements with CCP officials tell us about China’s recent attempts to inject confidence and stability into its exchange rate and other economic practices? The first and second comprehensives embed doctrinal ammunition to liberalize China’s economy. To achieve a “moderately prosperous society,” the Chinese leadership announced during the Third Plenum of the 18th Party Congress that the market is to play a decisive role in the allocation of resources in an effort to comprehensively deepen reform. Taking this logic to include liberalization of capital markets, loosening controls over the renminbi’s exchange rate thus appears to be a step towards unleashing market forces. Given the central bank’s devaluation of the renminbi last August and the fact that China has yet to enact strict capital controls, the goal to comprehensively deepen reform seems to have won the day. In regards to the third comprehensive, CCP officials we encountered are also keenly aware that China’s legal system needs reforming so that the current, unsustainable model of economic development—one based on manufacturing and capital investment—can shift towards an “innovation economy.” Some of our interlocutors were even quite direct, noting that the Party should reduce its role in society so that non-profit and non-governmental organizations could play a valuable role by coming up with innovative ways to address China’s various societal and environmental challenges. Yet, the spirit of allowing market forces to play a decisive role in China’s economy and of comprehensively implementing the rule of law appears to be simultaneously countered by logic implied by the fourth comprehensive—that of strengthening Party discipline—and other canonical slogans. Invoked to address the very real problem of corruption within the CCP, implementation of the fourth comprehensive has had the effect of instilling restraint in the words and actions of many. Combined with the CCP’s goal of building a “harmonious society”—one that stresses social stability—the fourth comprehensive could be fueling voices that aim to control China’s economic narrative. For example, while one would easily assume that building the rule of law comes hand-in-hand with press freedoms, recent proclamations have required that media must be “socially responsible.” Spreading rumors would be considered verboten under these guidelines. Alarmingly, this raises the danger that certain reporting on China’s stock market gyrations or on the depletion of foreign currency reserves could be considered “socially irresponsible.” This might explain the fact that Zhou Xiaochuan has made few public appearances and that CCP leadership continues to censor economic information. The debate over the renminbi’s depreciation and China’s economic policies is likely to continue. Examining the doctrinal foundations of Beijing’s recent economic policies through engagements with Party officials reveals just how China’s leadership will have to struggle to navigate the contradictions embedded in slogans such as the Four Comprehensives or “harmonious society” in the months to come. If the Party is truly serious about improving the credibility of its signaling on international economic matters, it might want to begin by revisiting the Four Comprehensives and other slogans to ensure greater consistency.
    Blog Post by Guest Blogger for Asia Unbound March 11, 2016 Asia Unbound
  • Education
    Immigration and the 2016 Campaign: The Sad Legacy of Speaker John Boehner
    There has been a great deal of ink spilled on the question of who or what is to blame for the meteoric rise of Donald Trump in the Republican Party. The alleged culprits include everything from wage stagnation to cable news to talk radio to political correctness run amok. These may all be true in whole or in part, but I would be more precise. I blame John Boehner. As the Wall Street Journal reported this morning, the former Republican Speaker of the House has retired to a condo in Florida, leaving the House seat he held in Ohio for 24 years up for grabs among an assortment of 15 challengers in the Republican party. He thus has a foot in the two states that will decide on March 15 whether Mr. Trump waltzes to the GOP nomination or might still be derailed. If any one issue has driven Mr. Trump’s rise in the party, it is the positions he has taken on immigration – accusing Mexican immigrants of being drug dealers and rapists, promising to build a wall along the whole of the 2,000-mile border, and proposing a ban on immigration by Muslims. Such extreme positions were once unthinkable in American politics, but have now roused a solid plurality of GOP voters who appear to believe that dangerous and desperate times call for dangerous and desperate solutions. So why blame John Boehner for any of this? Boehner was, by all accounts, a fairly moderate, centrist politician for whom such positions would be deeply offensive. But it was his very failure to lead like a moderate, centrist politician and work across the aisle that opened the door to the sort of destructive responses that are now on the table. In 2013, the Senate passed on a bipartisan, 68-32 vote a comprehensive immigration reform bill that represented the most serious effort in decades to respond to the multiple challenges of immigration. While far from perfect, it was a carefully constructed compromise that would have greatly strengthened border security, barred most illegal migrants from finding legitimate employment, welcomed more highly-skilled immigrants to boost the U.S. economy, and offered a long and difficult path to legal status and citizenship for the nearly 11 million unauthorized migrants who have now lived in the country for years and in many cases decades. When the bill moved to the Republican House, Speaker Boehner had a chance to leave his mark on history. There were multiple paths open to him. He could have instructed the Republican-led committees to prepare an alternative bill to be written and passed and conferenced with the Senate. Or given his stated reluctance to pursue a “comprehensive” approach to immigration reform, he could have passed a series of bills and then entered into negotiations with Democrats on the sequence and timing for passage. Or he could have worked with a minority in his own party and with Democrats to simply pass the Senate bill. Any of these would have been politically difficult to be sure. But leadership is by definition politically difficult. He had willing partners on the Democratic side – including President Obama and Congressman Luis Gutierrez, the designated leader on the issue for House Democrats. And he had Republican allies in the Senate, the GOP establishment, and the business community who badly wanted to put the immigration issue behind them. Faced with these options, what did the Speaker do? He did nothing. He buckled to the vocal opposition within his own party, and simply let the Senate bill die without a vote or a serious effort at offering an alternative. It will go down as one of the great failings of political leadership in American history. And the consequences were predictable. Rather than strengthening party moderates like himself, Boehner’s inaction has galvanized the extremists on both sides. The Republican party is now led by Trump, and by Senator Ted Cruz who wants to see every single one of the 11 million unauthorized migrants removed. The one candidate standing who behaved like a statesman in trying to work with Democrats to pass immigration reform – Senator Marco Rubio – has been pilloried for it by his opponents and is likely to lose even in his home state. On the Democratic side, the presidential candidates have run to the other extreme. Hillary Clinton told the Spanish-language broadcaster Univision this week that, if elected, the only migrants who would face deportation would be “violent criminals” or “people planning terrorist attacks.” In other words, the United States will have immigration laws that in theory require the government’s permission to live and work in the United States, but the president will not enforce those laws. My former CFR colleague Michael Gerson, writing in the Washington Post this morning, reflected on the distrust that the framers of the Constitution had for the direct democracy that can lead to candidates embracing such positions. Instead, what they sought was representative government that would mediate the often extreme views of the public through “a chosen body of citizens whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country.” But what if the members of that chosen body refuse to lead? We are witnessing the consequences. Boehner, asked if he had any candidate he supported in the upcoming GOP primary for his Ohio seat, found one last chance not to lead. Instead, he said through a spokesman that he “feels strongly that the people of the eighth district should make the call about who will represent them in the House.” All of this reminds me, sadly, of the best line in the 1995 movie, The American President, in which the president’s chief of staff, played by Michael J. Fox, urges his boss to fight back against a demagogic opponent. “People want leadership, Mr. President, and in the absence of genuine leadership, they'll listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They want leadership. They're so thirsty for it they'll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there's no water, they'll drink the sand.” On immigration, in the absence of genuine leadership, Americans are now drinking the sand.
    Blog Post by Edward Alden March 11, 2016 Renewing America
  • China
    A Hard Landing for Chinese "Parachute Kids"?
    Pei-Yu Wei is an intern for Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. On February 17, 2016, three Chinese “parachute kids” were sentenced to prison after bullying their classmate last March in Rowland Heights, California. Yunyao “Helen” Zhai, Xinlei “John” Zhang, and Yuhan “Coco” Yang, were part of a group of twelve who kidnapped and assaulted a classmate over unsettled restaurant bills and arguments over a boy. After luring the victim to meet with them, the bullies took her to a park where they repeatedly beat her, kicked her with high-heels, and burned her with cigarette butts. Zhai, Zhang, and Yang were arrested, while the rest of the group fled, some reportedly back to China. Initially charged with torture, kidnapping, and assault, all three of the defendants plead no contest to the kidnapping and assault charges. In return, the torture charge was dropped. Zhai, Yang, and Zhang were sentenced to thirteen, ten, and six years, respectively, and will be immediately deported after completing their terms. The high schoolers’ actions sparked a wide debate in China, which has been dominated by the issue of the lack of parental supervision for “parachute kids,” young international students who come to the United States to study without their families. Online discussions have also identified deeper legal and cultural differences, which may have contributed to the impunity with which the students carried out the attack, and the ways that their parents later attempted to smooth over the incident. In fact, such gaps in understanding have become more apparent among Chinese students studying in the United States and their families. With its large population and growing middle class, China has sent an increasing number of “parachute kids” in recent years, especially in the fifteen-nineteen year age group. As of 2013, the number of Chinese students attending U.S. high schools exceeded 23,000. Many students seek to escape the ultra-competitive national collegiate examination in China, to receive a more well-rounded and flexible education, or to get a leg-up in applying to American colleges. While most “parachute kids” have gone on to succeed, many have encountered challenges. At a young age, the students face culture shocks, language barriers, and loneliness. Although many of the students live with host families, the hosts often only provide room and board, and students are left isolated. These factors, coupled with the daunting problem of handling one’s own free time and copious amounts of spending money sent by guilty parents, often cause children to withdraw from classmates and teachers, or to lash out. At the same time, bullying incidents similar to or more severe than that in Rowland Heights have become increasingly common in China itself. In 2014, forty-three extreme bullying cases were exposed by the Chinese media. The number of cases reached twenty-six in the first three months of 2015. In June 2015, Huang Tanghong, a senior in Fujian province, was beaten so badly that he was hospitalized for a ruptured spleen. While the case drew widespread attention in China and the authorities took the bullies into custody, the perpetrators were ultimately released when their parents paid Huang’s family approximately $33,000 in compensation. Huang’s plight was not an isolated case. In fact, incidents of extreme bullying are often settled out-of-court through monetary compensation and interventions from educational authorities. Expulsions are rare, let alone jail time. Under China’s current Child Protection Law, those between the ages of fourteen and sixteen can only be subject to criminal punishment for committing heinous crimes, namely rape and murder. All these factors can lead to significant cultural misunderstandings. The defendants in the Rowland Heights case asked the case’s detective, “What’s the big deal? It happens in China all the time.” The father of one of the defendants also attempted to bribe the victim to “settle” the matter. He was later arrested. Another defendant’s father told Xinhua that his knowledge of the United States was like a “blank sheet of paper” and that he didn’t understand legal and cultural differences between the two countries. Netizens in China followed the case avidly, commenting on the severity of the consequences the students face and reflecting on the lack of institutional and legal mechanisms to respond to and prevent bullying in China. Most are pleased with the outcome. One commentator noted, “This group ignores the laws, and when they are faced with dire consequences they play innocent and say they don’t understand U.S. laws. They deserve to be imprisoned. When I read the report I felt extremely happy and that justice has been served. Actually, this kind of thing happens in China too, but the ways that they are dealt with make people feel unsatisfied.” Another speculated that had the incident happened in China, the defenders might not have faced the consequences because of their family backgrounds, writing, “Apparently one of the assailants’ mother is the leader of a tobacco company, and his father heads up a Shanghai police department. Please imagine: if this torture case had happened in China, what would happen?” Some also highlighted the differences in norms between the two nations. One commented, “A parent [of the offenders] who’s as helpful as a god even attempted bribery and got arrested…. But when things happen and the parents’ first thought is to use money to ‘settle,’ then we can see how deeply rooted this kind of thought is in China.” While this extreme bullying case drew widespread attention, these students were not alone in their misperception of regulations and laws in the United States. University of Iowa student, Hanxiang Ni, was expelled in February 2016 and had his student visa revoked after posting online, “If I do not get good grades after studying so hard, I will make professors experience the fear of Gang Lu” just days after he received permits to obtain and carry a gun.  Lu was a Chinese doctoral student at the same university who fatally shot four people and himself in 1991. On Weibo, Ni claimed that his message was meant as a joke that “any normal person would understand as such,” and that he “wrote in Chinese deliberately” because he “didn’t want any misunderstandings to arise.” Both Ni and his father thought the school was overreacting, with the latter saying they are seeking legal options. Similarly, students who pay consultants to fill out their U.S. college applications, ghostwrite their essays, and compose teachers’ recommendation letters are sometimes unaware that this could be considered fraudulent or get them expelled. As an increasing number of young Chinese students arrive in the United States to study, the need for understanding cultural and legal differences between the two societies must be addressed. Providing students with a basic education on the laws of the United States, and helping them understand what kinds of behaviors are unacceptable is a good place to start. Currently, a number of colleges in the United States include talks from law enforcement officials in their orientation programs. Furthermore, resources detailing things such as when to call the police, regulations on alcohol and drugs, and driving policies can be found on school websites. These can be easily extended to cover topics that students may not have encountered before, such as firearms, and actions that may result in more severe consequences, such as bullying or posting threats as “jokes” on the internet. It is also crucial for Chinese parents and students to familiarize themselves with, if not at least have a cursory understanding of, the law. After all, the bulk of the responsibility to abide by the law rests with the students and their families. Parents must consider whether their kids will be able to responsibly use their sudden freedom. As all three of the defendants in this case noted, too much freedom and no parental supervision can be a “formula for disaster.”
    Blog Post by Guest Blogger for Asia Unbound March 9, 2016 Asia Unbound
  • Development
    Women Around the World: This Week
    Welcome to “Women Around the World: This Week,” a series that highlights noteworthy news related to women and U.S. foreign policy. This week’s post, covering February 11 to February 18, was compiled by Anne Connell and Becky Allen. Women in the Syrian peace talks                                              Despite months of civil society activism, women have largely been excluded from participation in the formal Syrian peace process, and talks set to begin next week show no signs of breaking this pattern. The December convening of global leaders in Paris to create a roadmap for the peace talks involved no women in positions of influence. Since then, United Nations Syrian Envoy, Staffan de Mistura, invited Syrian women and civil society representatives to contribute to the talks through an independent Women’s Advisory Board—a promising move, though the board remains isolated from direct stakeholder negotiations. Advocates for more inclusive negotiations argue that women could play a pivotal role in conflict resolution and the creation of durable peace in Syria: a 2015 study of 182 peace agreements shows that accords reached with women involved in direct talks are 35 percent more likely to last at least fifteen years. Indian court elevates women’s equality                                                                                 The Indian Supreme Court acknowledged that, while there is “a long way to go” for women to attain in practice the equality with men granted to them by the Indian constitution, the issue is the “need of the hour.” In a thirty-eight-page written ruling on a case of gender-based discrimination brought by an Indian police sub-inspector denied a promotion, the court recognized the relationship between women’s empowerment and broader economic development in India. In its ruling, India’s top court cited a study by Nobel laureate Amartya Sen and wrote that “…empowerment can accelerate development. From whichever direction the issue is looked into, it provides justification for giving economic empowerment to women.” The ruling suggested that advancing the rights of women in India is not only a matter of fundamental human rights but also a strategic imperative to promote the country’s prosperity and stability. UN promotes role of women and girls in science                                                            The United Nations (UN) held the first International Day of Women and Girls in Science on February 11 in an effort to highlight the critical role of women and girls in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields. The aim of the new UN day, adopted last December, is to strengthen science education, encourage greater participation of women and girls in STEM careers, and promote the achievements of women in all scientific fields. Irina Bokova, director-general of UNESCO, marked the day with a call to close the substantial gender gap in science research: only 28 percent of scientific researchers worldwide are women. Bokova also emphasized that empowering women and girls in science is an essential step towards achieving the goals laid out by the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.    
    Blog Post by Guest Blogger for Women Around the World February 19, 2016 Women Around the World
  • Thailand
    Thailand’s Universal Eye Screening in Action
    Ariella Rotenberg is a research associate in U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. As of January 9, 2016, Thailand has implemented refractive error eye screening in first-grade classrooms nationwide. Additionally, any student that is identified with vision impairment through the refractive error screening, is guaranteed to be seen at the local hospital by an ophthalmologist and provided with glasses to correct for their impaired vision. Under this policy, it is estimated that 260,000 Thai children will be able to access spectacles that they need but may not have otherwise received. With the exceptions of South Korea and Iran, Thailand stands way ahead of the pack among Asian countries in having universal eye screening for children. Last September, the World Health Organization (WHO) hosted a meeting focused on promoting universal eye health across the Western Pacific region specifically because the region lags in providing universal vision care. Thailand’s new nationally-approved program for testing and treating children with vision impairment exemplifies the shift in the global health agenda from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). As Yanzhong Huang explained in his Expert Brief, the new agenda entails a widening of the scope of global health initiatives to include issues such as non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and social determinants of health. Vision impairment fits neither into the category of infectious disease nor in the category of non-communicable disease, at least not in the way is it typically defined. It is, however, encapsulated in the broad mandate of the third SDG, namely, “ensure health lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.”  It is the very fact that vision impairment fails to fit neatly into either category, perhaps, that it has remained so underfunded and under-addressed, despite the fact that one third of the blind children in Thailand between the ages of one and fourteen became blind from untreated refractive error—nearsightedness, farsightedness, and astigmatism. These conditions, if uncorrected, can cause learning disabilities, may result in behavioral problems from an inability to focus, and even cause blindness. Thailand’s government demonstrated the success of evidence-based health policy making with its eye screening intervention. The eye screening program was piloted by Thailand’s semi-autonomous Health Intervention and Technology Assessment Program (HITAP) in order to decide whether or not the government should include this health service in their universal health coverage (UHC) package. In order to decide about new health services, the Ministry of Public Health deploys HITAP to assess pilot interventions based on cost-effectiveness and impact. A cross-sectional study of the refractive eye screening was conducted in seventeen schools spread out over four provinces. The results of the study showed that the detection rate for primary school children of visual impairment was relatively high: 52 percent for mild visual impairment and 74 percent for moderate visual impairment. The study also revealed significant willingness on the part of teachers to perform the screening and that parents trusted teachers to conduct the screening given the limited number of health professionals available. Furthermore, the study found the cost of the screening conducted by teachers to be relatively low–low enough to be funded by current revenue raised for the UHC services. The universal treatment of refractive error in Thailand addresses not only a health risk, but also works to counteract detrimental social determinants of health. The third SDG has been interpreted to address not only medical conditions, but also the underlying social and economic factors that allow many easily-treated conditions to go untreated in underserved populations. Access to something as simple as an eye screening, ophthalmologists, or eye glasses is commonplace in developed countries where routine clinic visits are typical, but not in developing countries where a large majority of the population does not have access to reasonable quality eye care services. In Thailand specifically, awareness of refractive errors is associated with higher income and urban residence. Furthermore, according to a World Health Organization (WHO) report, uncorrected refractive error in a child who needs glasses and later becomes blind due to lack of treatment “can hinder education, personality development, and career opportunities, in addition to causing an economic burden on society.” Incorporating early detection and treatment of refractive error in Thailand not only addresses the immediate health concern of vision impairment and possibly vision loss, but it helps in that respect to equalize opportunities for successful education, development, and career opportunities. Two weeks ago, I had the chance to travel to the eastern Thailand province of Samutprakan—one of the pilot provinces for the eye screening intervention. The photo for this post features three young girls at Samutprakan elementary school, one of whom was fitted for glasses as part of the pilot program. The site visit reminded me that UHC and other health-related SDG targets are not just words on paper, but they drive forward actions across the world that have the potential to significantly improve access and health outcomes. The health problems the eye screening program seeks to address, the negative social determinants of health it intends to counteract, and the fact that it is cost-effective, impactful, and funded sustainably, offer clues on how health-related SDGs can be effectively pursued at the country level.  
    Blog Post by Guest Blogger for Asia Unbound February 17, 2016 Asia Unbound