Archive for December, 2009
For the next week or so, you’ll notice a little less activity on the ONE Blog as we depart to spend the holidays with our friends and family. We’ll resume our regular schedule in the new year.
Thanks as always for reading and take care!
-Chris and Ginny
Generalized System of Preferences — the largest U.S. trade preference program for developing countries, which allows producers in countries including the world’s poorest countries as well as emerging countries like Brazil and India to export approximately 4,800 goods in the U.S. free of duties — was extended last night for one-year. The extension of the program, which otherwise would have expired at the end of the month, was approved by the House last week, but was held up in the Senate over some unrelated issues. The Senate approved the one-year extension on 22 December.
Lawmakers have said they want to undertake major reform of all U.S. preferences programs next year, which is why they opted for a single-year extension. ONE will continue to engage in the reform discussions next year, and explore how the current Generalized System of Preferences could be reformed so that the program can be strengthened to increase the opportunity for the poorest countries while ensuring the gains that African countries have made under African Growth Opportunity Act (AGOA) are not undermined.
ONE is turning to its community of artists, friends, members and staff for their top picks on creative works that have enhanced their knowledge and understanding of the richness of African culture and arts. Today we have a recommendation from Vusi Mahlasela:
I met and heard Lebo Mashile recite her poems at the launch of AIMS.
She had an amazing ability to captivate her audience with her true words and her impassioned delivery of her poems. She’s a gifted leader and a strong voice to help bring about change in our world by remaining grounded in the principals of compassion, forgiveness, heart, and wisdom.
I was inspired by her to keep writing my own poetry and songs. Check out her latest collection Flying Above The Sky.
Happy New Year to you all,
Vusi
Freelance photographer and journalist Misha Cohen has a great piece in the Huffington Post about the International Rescue Committee’s work in Bhutan.
You can read an excerpt below, and learn more about the International Rescue Committee here.
The International Rescue Committee (IRC), a humanitarian aid agency that assists refugees, is one of a handful of organizations that has partnered with the State Department to resettle the Bhutanese in the U.S. Uma and her family are among them.
On a snow filled day last February, Uma, now 32, with her husband Chet Nath Timsina, 39, and their 5-year-old son Kushal Timsina, reached refuge in New York City – seventeen years after Uma and Chet Nath were exiled from their homes in Bhutan.
The couple lived in a refugee camp with their family in an eight-by-fifteen foot double hut, shared by 13 people. Denied the right to work, they were unable to earn money to provide for their needs. “Education was the only wealth we could accumulate while in exile,” says Chet Nath. He and Uma received their bachelor’s degrees while there, traveling by bus to their classes in neighboring India.
After living in the camp for twelve years, limited to the sparse food rations (rice and potatoes) provided by non-profit agencies, and without the finances to support their siblings’ education, Chet Nath and Uma left the camp to find work. Although refugees are not permitted to work in Nepal, the couple found jobs as English-speaking teachers in private schools. Undetected by the authorities, they lived and worked in Nepal for five years.
You may not think that natural disasters are discriminatory. Tsunamis, floods, earthquakes and hurricanes hit young and old, rich and poor, east and west with equal force. But as the empirical evidence shows, when natural disasters increase in frequency, their impact on the poor is disproportionately debilitating. According to UN Habitat, when the fallout of natural disasters in developed and developing countries is compared head on, the injury and death rates can be up to 100 times higher in low-income countries.
The Happy Hearts Fund (HHF) was established in 2006 to work primarily with children in disadvantaged post-disaster areas. We have found over and over again that restoring access to education is one of the most surefire ways to revitalize a disaster-ravaged community. While children are at school, parents are able to focus on reconstructing their lives and families can work on returning to their jobs. HHF is present in eight countries, including Haiti, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Peru, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Hurricane Katrina-affected areas of the United States. Globally, HHF programs benefit more than 12,000 children and 230,000 community members annually.
HHF works to rebuild schools, which brings stability to children and helps them with the healing process. Within the schools, HHF establishes computer labs, which enhances the quality of education and teaches children new skills. HHF also incubates and fosters a community-oriented business as a programmatic companion to the new schools, thereby ensuring a long-term funding stream for the maintenance and development of the school—and by extension, the community. These community-based small enterprises are particularly critical for the project’s enduring sustainability and the community’s immediate economic reconstruction.
This week, HHF launched the “Bring Happiness Back!” campaign, which focuses on helping children, many of whom are being forgotten after natural disasters. The campaign includes a short PSA video, which we hope will urge people to join us in our efforts to advocate on behalf of children. We have seen the incredible impact that returning to school has on children after natural disasters. It results in not just healing and recovery, but also in the creation of a better future for children and the whole community.
Let’s come together and create an enormous difference to the lives of children!
-Petra Nemcova, Founder and Chair, and Phil Caputo, Executive Director, Happy Hearts Fund
Our friends at the African Development Bank have launched a new blog called Building Africa Today. Right now the blog is focused on private sector activity, a priority area for the AfDB, and is providing great data that examines economic trends on the continent.
For those of you that are unfamiliar with the African Development Bank (AfDB), it is one of several multi-lateral development banks serving developing regions—in this case, of course, Africa. The AfDB provides development financing and technical assistance to African member countries and the private sector within Africa for projects in a variety of sectors. In addition to funding country-specific projects designed to eradicate poverty and promote sustainable development on the continent, the AfDB houses several initiatives and mechanisms that aim to leverage additional resources for Africa.
The AfDB is known for investing in several specific development arenas including infrastructure and agriculture. The AfDB is often equipped to invest in these sectors when other donors are not. The Bank has played a particularly important role during this past year: as the financial crisis has unfolded, the AfDB has disbursed the money they have in the bank much more rapidly—called frontloading in bank speak. This funding has helped to buttress against the impacts of the crisis on African countries. Because of this frontloading, the AfDB will soon be out of money and will need to fundraise to replenish its covers. This will be a big priority for ONE this year—stay tuned for information there.
The folks at AfDB are also launching several new videos about their work, including this one which we showcased on the ONE Blog yesterday.
Earlier this month, during the German government’s 2010 budget negotiations, ONE ran a campaign asking the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, to keep her promise towards people living in extreme poverty. Germany has committed itself to invest 0.51% of its gross national income to development by 2010 and to increase this share to 0.7% by 2015. So the question was whether these commitments would be reflected in the new budget.
Angela Merkel has repeated this promise several times, and we expected her words to be matched by action even in difficult budgetary times and with a new German government in office. Thousands of German ONE supporters joined us to voice this expectation by signing our petition to the Chancellor. And many even phoned the government‘s hotline to personally stress the importance of living up to our commitments.
Unfortunately, it looks like this time our voices have not been heard. Last week, the government presented the draft budget and there is only one way to describe it: the budget proposal equals a breach of promise, as the following figures illustrate.
- 300 million Euros – the increase the new Development Minister, Dirk Niebel, had asked for before the start of the budget negotiations.
- 67 million Euros – the increase he was able to get. This equals an increase of the development budget of no more than 1.2%
- 13% – the growth of last year’s development budget when the ministry was still lead by Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul.
- 3 billion Euros – what would have been necessary in addition to last year’s budget for Germany to reach its target for 2010. The fact that Germany is now missing this target means that from 2010 on, Germany will have to increase its development budget by 1.5 billion Euros every year to reach the target for 2015.
So as 2009 ends the news isn’t as great as we hoped here in Berlin. But we have to look forward. 2010 is going to be a very important year for Africa. It’s the year our promises are due, and it’s also the year of the football World Cup in South Africa. The whole world will be looking at the continent – at the challenges it is facing, but also at the amazing African success stories. We have to take advantage of the public attention and get the German government back on track towards the 0.7% goal.
