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Category Archives: Disaster/ humanitarian aid

This just in: there was a flood in Pakistan

By William Easterly | Published August 27, 2010

We have chronicled here on Aid Watch how media coverage of disasters influences disasters, and how late the US media has been to the story of the disastrous flood in Pakistan, with apparently anemic donor response as a result.

Puzzlement deepened this morning at 7:30 am when I picked up my NYT off my doorstep and saw the four column front-page headline: Much of Pakistan’s Progress is Lost in Its Floodwaters.  The NYT devotes…

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Laura in NYT debate on Can Aid Buy Taliban’s Love?

By William Easterly | Published August 26, 2010

NYT DEBATE: Can Flood Aid Weaken the Taliban in Pakistan?

Or is it more likely that extremist groups will capitalize on the chaos created by the disaster?

Laura Freschi’s answer: aid doesn’t help with the Taliban, but give anyway.

The idea that flood aid will change Pakistani perceptions about the U.S. in a lasting and meaningful way is both unproven and based on simplistic, even condescending assumptions about the beneficiaries of

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Is it OK to neglect disaster in Pakistan because it’s not a tourist destination? If not, see below

By Laura Freschi | Published August 19, 2010

The latest story on the catastrophic flooding in Pakistan is about how it hasn’t been a story.

Compared to the response to the Haitian earthquake, media coverage of the Pakistan floods has been paltry. While news coverage isn’t correlated with need, it does have a major effect on the amount of disaster relief aid given. An article in the Chronicle of Philanthropy yesterday reported that eleven US charities had so far raised only…

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Wishful thinking on Pakistan

By Laura Freschi | Published August 17, 2010

From last weekend’s New York Times:

As the Obama administration continues to add to the aid package for flood-stricken Pakistan — already the largest humanitarian response from any single country — officials acknowledge that they are seeking to use the efforts to burnish the United States’ dismal image there.…

American officials say they are trying to rekindle the same good will generated five years ago when the United States military played a major role

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Also posted in Aid policies and approaches, Military aid | Tagged | 7 Comments

US food aid policies create 561 jobs in Kansas, risk millions of lives around the world

By Laura Freschi | Published June 24, 2010

I read recently the First Law of Policy Economics: Every inefficiency is someone’s income.

US food aid policy is definitely no exception, and it is riddled with inefficiencies.

Exhibit A: This invitation from a coalition of big US shipping interests to an event in Washington today. At this event, USA Maritime will have tried to convince lawmakers and their staff that ancient and outdated US food aid legislation, which requires virtually all US food aid…

Also posted in Aid policies and approaches, Political economy, Trade | Tagged , , , , | 18 Comments

Of mangos and plastic crates

By Laura Freschi | Published May 28, 2010

Sometimes the things that keep people in poverty seem so small and so insignificant, and the remedies seem so simple, that it’s hard for people from rich countries to understand why they remain impoverished.

Jelen, a Haitian farmer living on about $2 a day, can’t get enough water to her mango trees, even though there is a river just beside her property. She needs a simple canal dug from the river to irrigate her…

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Are aid donors now running Haiti?

By Guest Blogger | Published April 28, 2010

This post is written by Daniel Altman

Who will determine Haiti’s future?  Probably not the Haitians.  With aid groups enlarging their presence on the ground and foreign governments exercising control through their wallets, Haiti’s future may be out of the hands of the Haitians for years to come.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the recently convened Interim Committee for the Reconstruction of Haiti (CIRH), which will set the nation’s priorities during an 18-month state…

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Yes, Cash is Best. Now when will USAID follow its own advice?

By Laura Freschi | Published April 20, 2010

These two posters are finalists in a student contest to create public service announcements that tell Americans why giving cash in emergencies is better than giving goods like food, bottled water, or used clothes. (Hat tip to Saundra Schimmelpfennig).

The contest guidelines, provided by the Center for International Disaster Information (CIDI), are very clear on why they require entrants to focus on the simple message that giving money is the best way…

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Here’s the real story on Twitter for earthquake relief

By William Easterly | Published April 5, 2010

See this brilliant analysis.

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When Kenya saved Washington DC

By William Easterly | Published March 14, 2010

In today’s NYT :

… everyone-as-informant mapping is shaking up the world, bringing the Wikipedia revolution to the work of humanitarians and soldiers who parachute into places with little good information. And an important force behind this upheaval is a small Kenyan-born organization called Ushahidi, which has become a hero of the Haitian and Chilean earthquakes and which may have something larger to tell us about the future of humanitarianism, innovation…

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