Word: usaid
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...getting the money is only half the battle; how well it works - and whether it helps to change strong anti-American sentiment - depends on getting it to the right people and projects on the ground. That job principally falls to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and many critics say its performance isn't very encouraging. "When you are spending large amounts of money at arm's length, operating in hostile environments, it is very easy for money to get spent corruptly and/or badly, and that is what I have seen in our health programs," says Roger Bates...
...country has been a key focus of U.S. development efforts, both to undermine the need for and appeal of religious schools (or madrasahs) and to advance literacy, which is 43% among adults; two-thirds of Pakistani women cannot read or write. In long, jargon-filled reports, the principal USAID contractor on an $83 million, five-year education-sector reform project, North Carolina-headquartered RTI (also known as Research Triangle Institute), claims to have "positively impacted" more than 400,000 students (out of 70 million school-age kids) through strengthening policy and planning, teacher and school-administrator training, and youth...
Eighteen months since the IG report, USAID has also not adequately accounted for $16 million in project spending and has hired an outside auditor to track the money, according to Dona Dinkler, the USAID IG's chief of staff. USAID declined to comment, but it has blamed high staff turnover - four different USAID employees oversaw the project successively - and security concerns, which severely limited the number of hands-on visits to the remote Sindh and Baluchistan provinces, where the project was meant to have its greatest impact. "In that case, you have to find other ways to provide oversight...
...Part of USAID's problem is a "bunker mentality" that exaggerates genuine security concerns, he says, noting that agency regulations prevented key personnel from accompanying even members of Congress who traveled there to examine aid projects. But other observers say the problems go far beyond security issues. For Shuja Nawaz, a Pakistan security expert and director of the South Asia Center at the Atlantic Council in Washington, the core of USAID's shortcomings is that it has outsourced "its thinking, planning and local interactions with the recipients" to Beltway contractors who are more incentivized to keep money flowing than getting...
...rise. "There are growing concerns about the impact of relief food shortfalls on already vulnerable children," UNICEF said on Aug. 6. "As therapeutic feeding programs reach more hot-spot districts, the number of severely malnourished children receiving treatment will increase." The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) says the problem in the ethnic Somali region, Ogaden, is complicated even further due to "insurgent activity and security operations" that are disrupting trade networks and the movement of people and livestock. (See pictures of Ethiopia's harvest of hunger...