A liberal narrative

This chapter unpacks a liberal narrative of democracy. It grounds and locates the ways that many aid workers in Myanmar understood and communicated about democracy. The chapter outlines three elements of this narrative. First, most international aid workers involved in the research pointed toward the challenge of ethnic and religious divisions in the country. These aid workers described how divisions in Myanmar were perpetuated by a personalised political culture where formal institutions of democracy were insufficiently embedded. Second, aid agency representatives often expressed a vision of a formal procedure-based democracy supported by liberal values of human rights, pluralism and the protection of minorities. This vision also had a future orientation, where proponents of this narrative saw Myanmar’s democratisation as being set within the context of other transitional countries around the world – moving away from traditional systems toward a democratic future. Third, many aid workers emphasised a strategy of government and civil society capacity building led by international aid agencies.

Designed Intervention

Chapter Four further explores the limitations of “Peace, Inc.”: the traditional way to end wars. United Nations peacekeepers, foreign diplomats, and the staff of many non-governmental organizations involved in conflict resolution share a specific way of seeing the world. They often assume that the only path to peace is through working with governments and national elites and mediating formal agreements between world leaders. As a result, most international aid agencies use a top-down strategy of intervention, ignoring the crucial role of local tensions in fueling violence. Foreign peacebuilders also regularly rely on other widely held beliefs, such as the notion that education, elections, and statebuilding always promote peace. Anecdotes from places as varied as Afghanistan, Iraq, and Timor-Leste, along with a detailed story of the massive international efforts in Congo, highlight the possibility for devastating consequences while explaining why these detrimental assumptions and this flawed intervention strategy nevertheless persist.

A Strategy for Sustainable Development of Cooperatives in Developing Countries: The Success and Failure Case of Agricultural Cooperatives in Musambira Sector, Rwanda

Many international aid agencies have been trying to utilize cooperatives as a strategic means for poverty reduction and rural community development in developing countries due to their characteristics, operational efficiency, and effectiveness. However, it is difficult to find a successful case due to various factors. This study tries to propose strategies that the aid agencies and local residents should use for the success of cooperatives in developing countries through an analysis of the success and failure cases of the two cooperatives established under the Saemaul ODA Program in Rwanda. While the length of the ODA program and scale of support significantly affect the cooperatives’ self-reliance, what support they receive from the aid agencies and whether it is a long-term support plan considering exit strategies are also important factors of their success. In addition to the support of the aid agencies, efforts of the cooperative members are essential. Cooperatives should reinforce their sense of ownership to achieve the long-term goals of self-reliance and sustainability by setting clear and feasible short-term goals and achieving them one by one through cooperation among members, as in the case of Korea’s Saemaul Undong.

Divided Yemen faces diverse economic policy challenges

Significance This has contributed to rising food prices in the south. Yemen’s economy is suffering from years of conflict and deep political divisions as well as more recent problems, including the impact of COVID-19 precautions -- but also has more depth and resilience than is often recognised by international aid agencies. Impacts The north-south split in Yemeni rial exchange rates will persist. The current fuel crisis will likely subside, but import difficulties will recur as long as the conflict continues. In the absence of a political settlement, the economy will be stagnant at best. Minimal investment will be limited to local companies in sectors such as telecoms and services, where consumer demand is strong. Trade will continue, excluded from external and internal border restrictions because of COVID-19.

Globalized low-income countries may experience higher COVID-19 mortality rates

Understanding the factors underpinning COVID-19 infection and mortality rates is essential in order to implement actions that help mitigate the current pandemic. Here we evaluate how a suit of 15 climatic and socio-economic variables influence COVID-19 exponential growth-phase infection and mortality rates across 36 countries. We found that imports of goods and services, international tourism and the number of published scientific papers are good predictors of COVID-19 infection rates, indicating that more globalized countries may have experienced multiple and recurrent introductions of the virus. However, high-income countries showed lower mortality rates, suggesting that the consequences of the current pandemic will be worse for globalized low-income countries. International aid agencies could use this information to help mitigate the consequences of the current pandemic in the most vulnerable countries.

The Curse of the One-size-fits-all Fix

In the context of falls in extractive commodities prices since 2011, this chapter examines the history of thinking about the interplay between extractive industries and economic development. Just as ‘the resource curse’ fails as a generic explanation on account of the huge diversity in country contexts, so does the one-size-fits-all governance solution, which international aid agencies, industry, and banks have promoted in support of ‘extractives-led growth’ since the early 2000s. Asking why the sector has not in many cases yielded more durable economic gains reveals the need for greater attention to a country’s capacity to diversify, options for pacing development, and appropriate performance measures.

Active Women and Ideal Refugees: Dissecting Gender, Identity and Discourse in the Sahrawi Refugee Camps

Since the Moroccan invasion in 1975, official reports on visits to Sahrawi refugee camps by international aid agencies and faith-based groups consistently reflect an overwhelming impression of gender equality in Sahrawi society. As a result, the space of the Sahrawi refugee camps in Algeria and, by external association, Sahrawi society and Western Sahara as a nation-in-exile is constructed as ‘ideal’ (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, 2010, p. 67). I suggest that the ‘feminist nationalism’ of the Sahrawi nation-in-exile is one that is employed strategically by internal representatives of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguia el-Hamra and Río de Oro (POLISARIO), the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) and the National Union of Sahrawi Women (NUSW), and by external actors from international aid agencies and also the colonial Moroccan state. The international attention paid to the active role of certain women in Sahrawi refugee camps makes ‘Other’ Sahrawi invisible, such as children, young women, mothers, men, people of lower socio-economic statuses, (‘liberated’) slave classes and refugees who are not of Sahrawi background. According to Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh ( ibid.), it also creates a discourse of ‘good’, ‘ideal’ refugees who are reluctant to complain, in contrast to ‘Other refugees’. This feminisation allows the international community not to take the Sahrawi call for independence seriously and reproduces the myth of Sahrawi refugees as naturally non-violent (read feminine) and therefore ‘ideal’. The myth of non-violence accompanied by claims of Sahrawi secularity is also used to distance Western Sahara from ‘African’, ‘Arab’ and ‘Islamic’, to reaffirm racialised and gendered discourses that associate Islam with terrorism and situate both in the Arab/Muslim East. These binaries make invisible the violence that Sahrawis experience as a result of the gendered constructions of both internal and external actors, and silence voices of dissent and frustration with the more than forty years of waiting to return home.

‘Helping our beneficiaries tell their own stories?’ International aid agencies and the politics of voice within news production

International aid agencies often claim to give the poor and disenfranchised a voice by helping them tell their stories to others located far away. But how do aid workers conceptualize and operationalize a politics of voice within media production processes? How do ideas about giving voice to others shape aid agencies’ engagement with mainstream news organizations? This article explores two contrasting news production case studies which took place in South Sudan and Mali, involving Save the Children, Christian Aid and their local partners. It finds that different approaches to giving voice exist in aid work, creating tensions within and between agencies. In addition commercialized notions of value for money, the influence of mediated donor reporting, and aid workers’ weak understandings of linguistic and intercultural interpretation combined to make aid agencies’ values-in-action far less empowering than they assumed.

Outlook for a Rakhine solution in Myanmar is poor

Significance Another 20,000 were gathering near the Bangladesh-Myanmar border yesterday following Rohingya militia attacks on police and military installations. The situation in Rakhine State was already tense: the same group attacked nine police posts in October 2016, prompting a crackdown by Myanmar’s military. A further security operation is now under way, posing more social and political dangers. An estimated 400 have died so far in renewed fighting. Impacts International aid agencies in Rakhine may have to withdraw their personnel. Myanmar’s neighbours will experience further refugee inflows. Instability may threaten Myanmar’s place in China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Other Myanmar ethnic minorities will see even less reason to trust the military, further impeding the Panglong peace process. The Rakhine controversy will likely cause further rifts within ASEAN.

NATURAL DISASTERS: ALTRUISM, INTERESTS, AND OPPORTUNITIES

Adversities are mostly investigated and debated according to their negative impacts and to the emergency action they demand. This article presents the results of research on the paradoxical potentialities (positive externalities) that might emerge from them. Its main approach is provided by interviews with local agents responding to the 2011 Disaster in the State of Rio de Janeiro and by international aid agencies. The main topics discussed here are: solidarity as an asset that goes beyond altruism, the distinguished role of the media and the state as regulator agents of such solidarity, and the increasing importance of international aid agencies. This empirical study is based on a series of interviews with selected international aid agencies according to their global activity and volume of resources administered. The conclusions indicate that potentialities may be recognized as real assets in post-disaster action; however, they are not easily understood by policymakers.