Perhaps most worrying of all is the unwillingness of Obama and other Western leaders to say or do anything to support the hundreds of thousands of Muslim Ethiopians who have been demonstrating peacefully against government interference in their religious affairs for more than a year. (The Ethiopian government claims the country has a Christian majority, but Muslims may account for up to one half of the population.) You’d think a nonviolent Islamic movement would be just the kind of thing the Obama administration would want to showcase to the world. It has no hint of terrorist influence, and its leaders are calling for a secular government under the slogan “We have a cause worth dying for, but not worth killing for.” Indeed, the Ethiopian protesters may be leading Africa’s most promising and important nonviolent human rights campaign since the anti-apartheid struggle.

Source: New York Times Book Review Blog, “Obama: Failing the African Spring?”

Perhaps most worrying of all is the unwillingness of Obama and other Western leaders to say or do anything to support the hundreds of thousands of Muslim Ethiopians who have been demonstrating peacefully against government interference in their religious affairs for more than a year. (The Ethiopian government claims the country has a Christian majority, but Muslims may account for up to one half of the population.) You’d think a nonviolent Islamic movement would be just the kind of thing the Obama administration would want to showcase to the world. It has no hint of terrorist influence, and its leaders are calling for a secular government under the slogan “We have a cause worth dying for, but not worth killing for.” Indeed, the Ethiopian protesters may be leading Africa’s most promising and important nonviolent human rights campaign since the anti-apartheid struggle.

Source: New York Times Book Review Blog, “Obama: Failing the African Spring?”

The United Nations says access to contraception is a universal human right that could significantly improve the lives of women and children in poor countries. The United Nations Population Fund’s annual report effectively declares that legal, cultural and financial barriers to contraception and other family planning measures are an infringement of women’s rights. The United Nations does not count abortion among the measures.

It’s amazing that these things can seem so obvious yet strongly progressive at the same time.

Source: NY Times

"Mind the Gap" by Zadie Smith →

The other thing that seems, to me, useful about Writers Bloc, is its tone of subjectivity, of passion. It is natural that development organizations should attempt a “neutral” voice, express little outrage, and try not to offend the governments with whom they work. But it is also natural, upon entering the gap between first world and the third, to feel something, to be moved, and to have opinions, to express anger. The correspondents for Writers Bloc express their feelings not in the flat blandness of the TV camera nor the news-hungry enquiry of the press reporter but as human citizens rather than professional advocates in prose that hopes to cut through that most depressing first world malady: “Charity fatigue.”

Writing is often called “news from elsewhere,” and speaking about one world to another has always been one of the many aims of the writer. A writer hopes to make connections where the lazy eye sees only a chasm of difference. Judging from these pieces, some of the differences that in recent years, public policy makers have taken as “self-evident” are not so obvious. What is ethnic difference, really? Should borders really be drawn between ethnic groups? Is foreign investment always more important than government regulation? What is a nation anyway? Can people really be “separate but equal?” These questions may seem naive but if they don’t get asked, or even posed, government policy marches on without them relying on that dangerous quality “common sense.” All of us who write—whether our documents are full of statistics, analysis, number crunching, anecdotes, or plain old story-telling—know that writing is as indirect as it can be powerful. It takes millions of words written by thousands of people in hundreds of disciplines to affect the gaps in the world even a little. In its own small way Writers Bloc hopes to join its words to all those others.

“Bangladeshi Rickshaw Driver Builds Clinic”

At the age of 61, Joynal Abedin is still pedaling his rickshaw. It’s hard work—he carries people, heavy goods, even animals. On a good day he earns $6. Joynal has been at it for 30 years, saving literaly every penny he can. He may not know how to read or write, but he certainly knows the value of a dime. Over the years, he savedhalfof his income. By the time he was 60, he put aside $3000, just enough to open a small village hospital.

Joynal: “My dad died because we could not afford to get him to a doctor and the nearest hospital is a two day’s walk. I wassoangry.”

“People here think that because we are poor we are helpless. I wanted to prove them wrong.”

Hell, fucking,yes, Joynal. Thank you for your display of that proud, self-reliant attitude that is so often snuffed out by the current foreign aid system.

Rickshaw drivers are the poorest of the poor, often not even owning the rickshaws they pedal, but rent them daily, handing over most of their profits to the owner. Meaning the fact that Mr. Abedin was able to put asidehalfof his income is an incredible feat.

I’ve been in Bangladesh since June interviewing rural Bangladeshis about their savings activities and often, the sentiment I’ve been met with from respondents is that they don’t make enough income to save. I wish I had this video of Mr. Abedin’s achievement to show those who said it wasn’t possible just what really can be possible when one fully recognizes her/his own capacity to change one’s situation.

You betta PREACH, Joynal.

(Source: Al Jazeera English)

Source: Al Jazeera English - “World Bank Cancels Loan for Bangladesh Bridge” (Click photo to access article).

The World Bank has cancelled a $1.2bn loan for Bangladesh’s Padma bridge project, saying the government had not co-operated in investigating “high level” corruption in the project.

“The World Bank cannot, should not, and will not turn a blind eye to evidence of corruption,” it said on Friday about the loan being cancelled immediately.

“We only finance a project when we have adequate assurances that we can do so in a clean and transparent way,” the bank said.

Seems like a new policy for the World Bank, but one that should be heartily supported.

"The White Savior Industrial Complex" by Teju Cole →

Source: Matador Network (Click photo to access article) - “Seven Worst International Aid Ideas”

"Typically, in the societies of the bottom billion the civil service has lost whatever skills it once possessed. Once over dinner the former head of the civil service in one of the big bottom-billion societies described what had happened to the civil service that he had helped to build. He asked me to imagine being a schoolboy in his country on the eve of independence. The bight boys in the class aspired to join the civil service to help build the country. At the other end of the class, what were the aspirations for the dumb class bully? Forget the civil service with its tough exam. So the class bully set his sights on the army. Fast-forward two decades and a coup d’état. The army was now running the government. Between the class bullies, now the generals, and their objective of looting the public sector stood the class stars now running the civil service. The generals didn’t like it. Gradually they replaced the clever boys with people more like themselves. And as they promoted the dumb and corrupt over the bight and the honest, the good chose to leave. Economists have a term for it: “selection by intrinsic motivation.” So by the time the military ceded power back to civilian politicians, the civil service was broken: far from being the vehicle for developing the country, it was a vehicle for looting it."

Paul Collier - The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It

Today I make the move from Mbale, Uganda to Arusha, Tanzania. I have learned a lot during my 6 months stint with the NGO world—most importantly that I don’t want to have to work in English. Therefore, the next three months will find me in daily Swahili lessons and life in a homestay. Wish me luck! [Sema, “Bahati njema!”].

"To know what people really think, pay regard to what they do, rather than what they say."

~ Descartes (Via)