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

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 $5 million for Pakistan flood relief, compared to $560 million raised by 39 US groups in the two and a half weeks after the Haiti earthquake.

The difference in initial death toll reports may be one obvious explanation. The early figures for Haiti were 200,000 lives taken, compared to the 1,600 people reported to have died so far in Pakistan. But less than ten percent of the variation in amount of TV news coverage given to foreign natural disasters can be explained by severity, according to one academic study.

The same study found that one third of the variation in how much TV attention a disaster gets is explained by how popular the affected country is with US tourists. Sadly for the flood survivors, Pakistan is nowhere on the list of top destinations for US travelers in Asia and the outlook’s not great: the World Economic Forum ranked Pakistan 113 out of 133 countries in its latest Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report.

If you think that popularity with holiday-makers is a fair way to allocate disaster relief, no problem. For the rest of you, accepting the status quo may not be so attractive. In Pakistan, estimates of people affected by the floods—who may have already lost their homes, their belongings or their livelihoods, and who now lack basic services—are at 20 million. UN officials have recently been predicting a “second wave of deaths” from water-borne diseases as the flooding continues and people remain without clean water, food and medicine. Children and the very poor are among the most vulnerable.

For individual donors wanting to help, some advice:

1. Give to an established organization already on the ground and with experience working locally.
2. Give cash, not goods. Pakistan is far away and shipping items there is expensive. With cash, organizations can buy what they need closer to the disaster site.
3. Don’t earmark your donation, but give to an organization that you trust to allocate your money wisely.

Also check out this more comprehensive set of guidelines from Good Intentions Are Not Enough.

Ideas on where and how to give:

• One reader wrote in about perceptions that there are no Pakistani NGOs participating in the relief efforts, or that all of them are inherently corrupt. She countered that organizations such as the Edhi Foundation and Islamic Relief (which is an international NGO but has worked in Pakistan for many years) have solid reputations in Pakistan and abroad and have been effective in the past in getting aid to where it is most needed.
• Hillary Clinton announced last week that Americans can text the word "SWAT" to the number 50555 to donate $10 to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to provide tents, clothing, food, clean water and medicine to Pakistan.
• The Global Giving website has a list and description of their partner organizations working on flood relief.
• BRAC is the largest non-profit based in the developing world (it was launched in Bangladesh in 1972) and it is accepting donations through its US-based branch.
• Tonic and Interaction both have lists of organizations accepting donations for flood relief.

Feel free to add others in the comments.

Chinatown

Many do not realize that New York's thriving Chinatown is a suprisingly recent phenomenon.  Even during America's open immigration years in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Chinese were not welcome.  The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 formalized ugly prejudice.

New York's Chinatown stayed very small, surrounded in the early 20th century by Italian and Jewish immigrants.

Even as late as 1950, Chinatown was small.

Chinese Exclusion stayed in effect de facto until 1965, when the racist provisions of US immigration law were removed, liberalizing immigration by all non-European groups.

Only 5 years later in 1970, Chinatown had already expanded greatly. Italians and Jews had already left for middle-class and upper-class neighborhoods elsewhere

Today Chinatown is one of Manhattan's most thriving neighborhoods. Other East Asian immigrants also congregate there.

The ladder out of poverty continues for today's immigrants, following the Italians and Eastern Europeans, who in turn had followed the Germans and Irish.

The next time I have dim sum at Jing Fong on Elizabeth Street, I'll raise a glass of green tea to immigration freedom.

Credits: The Lower East Side in 1920 map is from Eric Homberger, The Historical Atlas of New York City, Henry Holt and Company, 2005, p. 136. The other maps are from the great software program and database, Social Explorer.

Chinatown in 2007

The accidental NGO and USAID transparency test

The following post was written by Till Bruckner, PhD candidate at the University of Bristol and former Transparency International Georgia aid monitoring coordinator.  An op-ed from Bill in Monday's Wall Street Journal mentioned Till's struggles with USAID; here Till provides the details. The aid industry routinely pushes institutions in developing countries to become more transparent and accountable. But a slow and almost comically incomplete donor response to a request to see some specific project budgets sheds light on exactly how willing donors are to apply such “best practices” to themselves.

As I described in a previous Aid Watch blog post, I filed a Freedom of Information request with USAID after ten international NGOs working in the Republic of Georgia refused to publish their project budgets. After a painful, 14-month struggle, including failing to respond at all to my first three communications, USAID finally released a set of documents covering project budgets of 19 UN bodies, NGOs and private contractors.

The documents are disappointingly full of blacked-out non-information. The level of disclosure varies drastically from one document to the next. Some budgets are provided in full, while others appear as blacked-out row upon row. In three cases, USAID even withheld the identity of the contractor itself. USAID explained this inconsistency saying that it was legally required to contact each grantee to give it “the opportunity to address how the disclosure of their information could reasonably be expected to cause substantial competitive harm.”

I wondered why USAID is legally bound to follow its grantees' wishes in deciding which information to withhold. Can the grantees of a US federal agency really compel that agency to keep the total amount disbursed, or even their very identities, secret? Why doesn’t USAID specify full disclosure as a grant condition? I have filed an appeal with USAID to address these questions, and will keep the readers of this blog updated.

Since according to USAID every piece of blacked-out information was withheld on request of the grantee, the budgets provide a fascinating glimpse into aid agencies' willingness to open their books. If USAID blackouts do NOT correspond to NGO requests, I would be happy to correct the record.

Perhaps surprisingly, the United Nations showed the highest consistent commitment to transparency. The budgets of the two UN agencies funded by USAID are both reproduced in full.

UMCOR, Mercy Corps, and AIHA emerge as the most transparent NGOs. These charities apparently felt that they had nothing to hide, and did not request USAID to black out any of the information contained in their budgets.

In contrast, Save the Children apparently asked USAID to withhold all information related to salaries. As even the aggregate subtotals for international and national staff have been blacked out, concerns about the privacy of individual staff members cannot have been the sole concern driving the organization's response. Still, the fact that all non-salary related budget lines remain visible put Save the Children in the middle ground in terms of NGO transparency.

CARE's response is harder to interpret as USAID inexplicably sent only an aggregated “summary budget” that leaves little to conceal. What information exists shows that CARE did not object to the release of unit prices for supplementary food items, or of aggregated staff and operational support costs. In contrast, CARE appears to regard its “indirect cost rate” and “cost share” as confidential. To hide this information, USAID also had to black out the budget's bottom line, thus leaving unclear how many taxpayer dollars were handed over in total.

The least transparent NGOs in this test are CNFA, World Vision, and Counterpart International. They apparently requested that USAID black out all information in their budgets except for the grand total. Apparently, these NGOs consider budget items such as “office furniture” (CNFA), “visibility items (t-shirts, caps, publications)” (World Vision) and “forklift expenses” (Counterpart) as confidential information whose release could cause them substantial competitive harm.

What does this transparency test tell us? First, USAID's mechanism for responding to Freedom of Information requests desperately needs an overhaul. It took USAID 14 months to respond to a simple information request. Ironically, in terms of FOIA responsiveness, USAID is less transparent than public institutions in the Republic of Georgia, as recently assessed by a local watchdog organization. And we are still waiting to hear why USAID allows its own contractors to operate in secrecy whenever they wish. All of this places USAID in an awkward position as it recommends greater transparency and accountability to Georgia.

Second, NGOs have publicly committed themselves to transparency and accountability, but their actions show that their interpretations of what this entails in practice differ widely. For example, World Vision is a full member of the Humanitarian Accountability Partnership, but still asked USAID to hide all of its budget information apart from the bottom line. The Georgian country office of Mercy Corps had earlier refused to release its project budgets, but its headquarters apparently has no such reservations. Save the Children is willing to release indirect cost rates but refuses to divulge even aggregate salary information, while CARE appears more relaxed regarding human resource expenses even as it fiercely guards information on its indirect costs rates. Both USAID and the NGOs have too often violated the elementary principles of transparency.

Why can't leading conservative magazine understand freedom?

Found this  mysterious transmission on a robot named R2D2 Twitter from  joshuafoust: "National Review Online endorses authoritarian capitalism. Help us, Obi Wan @bill_easterly, you're our only hope!" I won't let you down, Leia&Luke AKA @joshuafoust...  The bizarre article in question is titled China Teaches the U.S. Lessons about Economic Freedom. The argument seems roughly to be that China's rapid growth is explained by its positive change in economic freedom after 1978. Throw in a few qualifiers, and I would agree. Then things get bizarre: the article notes that after 2003, there was negative change in Chinese economic freedom, but says it had no effect on China's growth. Next it argues there was a negative change in freedom under Obama, which WILL have a devastating effect on the US growth rate, which for unexplained reasons responds differently than China's. The punchline:

Where economic freedom expands, growth follows. Where economic freedom is stifled, economies stagnate. Sadly, China’s former leaders understood this better than do its current leaders, or America’s.

--or better than the author, one might add. And should we maybe give 1 or 2 Brownie points to America's leaders for not shooting and imprisoning peaceful dissidents? And maybe America's leaders understand better than the leading conservative magazine the indispensable link between political and economic freedom understood by Milton Friedman and F.A. Hayek (perhaps this is why the latter wrote an essay "why I am not a conservative?").

Sorry, leading conservative magazine, as long as you are dishonest or incoherent about the f-word, you're not making any converts in these parts.

Wishful thinking on Pakistan

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 in responding to an earthquake in Kashmir in 2005 that killed 75,000 people.

…But American officials warn that the glow from the earthquake assistance faded quickly without more enduring development programs.

“LeFever [the senior US officer in Pakistan] clearly understands the P.R. value of flood assistance, but he also knows that absent other high-profile public diplomacy efforts, the half-life of any improvement to Pakistani impressions of the U.S. will be short,” said John K. Wood, a retired Army colonel….

This article raises several questions related to recent Aid Watch blog posts. First, has anyone quoted in the article examined the evidence for or against the hypothesis that giving disaster relief will improve the US’s image in Pakistan? As we blogged recently, there is startlingly little evidence at all on whether aid can “win hearts and minds,” but one of the few studies that exists looked specifically at the 2005 Kashmir earthquake. It found that even though US relief efforts were effective from a humanitarian perspective, they had no lasting impact on Pakistani perceptions.

Second, the Army official quoted above warns that flood assistance from the US may not be enough to create lasting change. Maybe he read the studies (or our blog)? But from which studies did he get his evidence that  “high-profile public diplomacy efforts” have a huge payoff for making Pakistanis love us?

Third, could the love affair between US aid and Pakistan be suffering because Pakistan remembers that US aid jilted them several previous times? (See great graph from CGD.) And because the aid to Pakistan was driven by our own strategic interests?

Now this may sound hopelessly naïve, but here are some reasons the American government should be providing humanitarian assistance to Pakistan: This is an unprecedented disaster causing tremendous suffering and disruption for millions of Pakistani people. The ongoing floods that have submerged one-fifth of Pakistan under water have killed 1,500 people, destroyed crops and livestock, and have put as many as 6 million people at risk of dying from water-borne diseases in “a second wave of deaths” now predicted by UN officials.

If ever there was a time for US aid to demonstrate that it is NOT always and everywhere ONLY about US strategic interests, this would be a good time. And because it’s the right thing to do.

Rodrik on The Myth of Authoritarian Growth

I really agree with Dani's great article on this (HT Chris Blattman).

When we look at systematic historical evidence... we find that authoritarianism buys little in terms of economic growth. For every authoritarian country that has managed to grow rapidly, there are several that have floundered. For every Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore, there are many like Mobutu Sese Seko of the Congo.

Democracies ... provide much greater economic stability, measured by the ups and downs of the business cycle. They are better at adjusting to external economic shocks (such as terms-of-trade declines or sudden stops in capital inflows). They generate more investment in human capital – health and education. And they produce more equitable societies.

Authoritarian regimes, by contrast, ultimately produce economies that are as fragile as their political systems....

At first sight, China seems to be an exception. ... Even though it has democratized some of its local decision-making, the Chinese Communist Party maintains a tight grip on national politics and the human-rights picture is marred by frequent abuses.

But China also remains a comparatively poor country. Its future economic progress depends in no small part on whether it manages to open its political system to competition, in much the same way that it has opened up its economy. Without this transformation, the lack of institutionalized mechanisms for voicing and organizing dissent will eventually produce conflicts that will overwhelm the capacity of the regime to suppress. Political stability and economic growth will both suffer.

The case of USAID and the flying suitcases

My Wall Street Journal column today (here is link to ungated version).

18th century wetbacks

Update: see end of post

Why should the Palatine Boors be suffered to swarm into our Settlements, and by herding together establish their Language and Manners to the Exclusion of ours? Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion. (Benjamin Franklin (1751)).

In the first half of the 18th century, there was a lot of immigration from the Palatinate region of German (southwestern region around Mannheim and Heidelberg) to the US, mainly through Philadelphia. The Palatinate had been devastated by repeated wars since the Thirty Years War a century earlier, so migrants sought better economic opportunities across the water. They shipped up the Rhine to Rotterdam, then sailed for Philadelphia, often paying for their passage with indentured servitude. Ben Franklin was apparently not a big fan of these immigrants, whom he also labeled "stupid" and "swarthy" (as compared to the genuine "whites," the English, hence the reference above to "our Complexion").

And now for yet another one of those embarrassingly self-indulgent personal connections. One swarthy stupid German migrant who arrived in Philly in 1742 was named Conrad Oesterlen; his last name was later Anglicized to Easterly.

UPDATE : Arizona announces ban on all immigrants who arrived after 1840.

(API) Arizona governor Bobby Lee Jones-Scott announced today that the Arizona law had been fixed to eliminate all inconsistencies by banning any immigrants who arrived after 1840. Jones-Scott explained that after 1840, immigrants started deviating from America's Protestant heritage: "in the 1840s, we started getting them people who was Papists, Jews, Syrian Orthodox, Shinto, Muslim, and all those other religions that I can hardly keep head or tail of, and they had all these weird rules about shellfish, pork, and eating only fish on Fridays." Unconfirmed and frankly fictional sources confirmed that all candidates for public office in Arizona had endorsed the new fully consistent legal framework for Arizona, although a few candidates were rumored to have had to make last-minute conversions to Anglicanism.

Manhattan's Non-Market Economy

Tyler Cowen has a great NYT column today about the harmful distortions caused by "free" parking. Manhattan offers plenty more ammunition to his case. Both sides of most crosstown numbered streets (17th, 18th, etc.) are devoted to "free" parking, which adds to traffic gridlock by creating one-lane streets, frequently blocked by delivery vans or by stopped taxis. Those using those "free" slots have to expend a lot of effort to keep moving their cars to comply with various random restrictions, like opposite side restrictions for street cleaning on different weekdays, or weekend vs. weekday, or work hours vs. night.

In short, just about everybody loses except for the readers of Calvin Trillin.

It also adds to my puzzlement about New York -- how can it be the premier world city it is with so many market distortions and/or breakdowns on providing public goods?

The Fall of The Southern Elite

The Greenbrier Hotel in White Sulphur Springs, W. Va. was the playground of the old Planter Class in the Old South, going all the way back to Robert E. Lee. The NYT travel section describes how it has fallen on hard times, just as the Old White Elite in the South is not quite what it once was. The Greenbrier's aristocratic visitors, waited upon hand and foot by liveried Negro waiters, were never that popular with the poor boys who actually lived in White Sulphur Springs, W. Va. One of them was my father.

Wonderful graph on global population by latitude and longitude

HT (i.e. stolen from) Chris Blattman

Wow did somebody actually read one of my obscure academic articles?

I was surprised to get the illustrated award in the mail some time ago. I didn't know anybody actually ever read this article. Of course, I don't know exactly what it means to be "most cited" -- you mean relative to the usual average of your adviser, your mother, and your spouse reading your articles? (My co-blogger Laura Freschi reassured me that she had never heard that I had written such an article.) Anyway, the answer to the title question of the article What did structural adjustment adjust? was -- contrary to conventional wisdom -- not much, as far as policy changes in the 80s and 90s. Macroeconomic policies did get better in many countries (according to the mainstream academic consensus of what's "better"), but these improvements were unrelated to the intensity of World Bank/IMF "Structural Adjustment Loans."

The World Bank and IMF seem to have achieved the worst of both worlds -- they were blamed for forcing policy conditions on unwilling governments, without actually succeeding at enforcing those conditions. It even led to a xenophobic populist backlash in some Latin American countries. The Fund and the Bank tried to reverse this public relations disaster in the new millennium by retitling the loans Cute Puppies and Adorable Children Poverty Reduction Growth Facilities, but I think they were lastingly tarnished.

Why is promising a right to food more politically appealing than delivering that food?

In India, the system that delivers subsidized food and fuel to the nation’s poor is badly broken. Many people who are supposed to receive the subsidized fuel and bags of grain do not, and “studies show that 70 percent of a roughly $12 billion budget is wasted, stolen, or absorbed by bureaucratic and transportation costs.” This is according to a recent NYT article by Jim Yardley, which frames the current debate about what should be done as a struggle within the ruling Indian National Congress Party between Sonia Gandhi and her “left-leaning social allies” on one side, and “many economists and market advocates” on the other.

Sonia Gandhi wants to include a “right to food” in the Indian constitution, while expanding the reach of the existing distribution system to cover everyone, and increasing the level of benefits it provides. (For the moment, the Indian constitution directs the State to consider “raising the level of nutrition and the standard of living of its people” as “among its primary duties” but does not spell out a specific “right to food.”)

The economists and market advocates, on the other hand, are fed up and want to experiment with vouchers, food stamps, or cash instead of the notoriously leaky bags of grain.

We’ve hosted many heated discussions on this blog about the “rights-based approach” to development (see the end of the post for a list). I wonder if we can avoid rehashing these same debates and instead ask WHY it appears to be so much more popular for politicians to promise a “right to food” than to devise a system that might actually deliver that food to the starving and the malnourished.

It’s true, we don’t know for sure that vouchers or food stamps would reduce the corruption in the system and make sure that the benefits get to more people who need them. So why not run some pilots and test several methods?

But it’s pretty certain what the people of India will get if their politicians vote to expand a broken system: More of a broken system, more injustice, and less food reaching the poor.

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Aid Watch posts on the rights-based approach to development: Poverty is not a human rights violation Amnesty International Responds to “Poverty is Not a Human Rights Violation” UN Human Rights and Wrongs Hillary illustrates perils of fuzzy human rights concepts Human rights are the wrong basis for healthcare Guest Post by April Harding on Health as a Human Right Seeing the Light on a Rights-Based Approach to Development Why are we not allowed to talk about individual rights in development?

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Photo credit: chmoss

Things that are now officially bad: Slum tourism; donors dissing democracy; bad workplaces

UPDATE Aug 11, 12:45pm : some comments defending slum tourism; I give a new perspective on one of the most heated debates that has kept recurring on Aid Watch (see below). The following bad things are now officially bad because:

(1) NYT oped page gives space to eloquent former slum resident to tell us that slum tourists are indeed really, really offensive (will they get it this time?)

(2) FT Africa editor realizes aid donors not as enthusiastic about democracy as they said they were, really.

(3) somebody finally showed what to do when your workplace is really, really bad: just grab 2 beers, curse at everyone in sight, and slide down the emergency chute. Aid workers: imitate?

UPDATE Aug 11, 12:45pm :

Some commentators defend slum tourism. This same debate keeps recurring on Aid Watch and has been one of our most heated issues ever. If you feel like it, check out the links below for previous rounds of debate. I am going to uncharacteristically step back and try to understand both sides.

Critics of poverty tourism are very sensitive to the dignity of the poor, feel that the rich would NOT be treated in the same way, and don't feel the modest material payoffs  justify a violation of dignity. Supporters stress the economic benefits and believe the poor should not or do not perceive a significant loss of dignity.

I think what the debate has advanced is an agreement that the dignity of the poor is a very important and legitimate consideration in aid.  After that, there is just an almost empirical disagreement about how, when, what or why this dignity is or is not compromised by any given tourism project.  But I'm glad that individual dignity has gotten a much higher profile as a major ideal, principle, and objective.

Should starving people be tourist attractions? Response from tourism operator to “Should starving people be tourist attractions” Response to MV tourism operator on “Should starving people be tourist attractions?”

And Now For Something Completely Different: Davos Features “Refugee Run”

The Sacrifices of the Slain Aid Workers (NYT, and Hilary Clinton video)

Their devotion was perhaps most evident in what they gave up to carry out their mission: Dr. Thomas L. Grams, 51, left a thriving dental practice; Dr. Karen Woo, 36, walked away from a surgeon’s salary; Cheryl Beckett, 32, had no time for courtship or marriage.

Most of all, the 10 medical workers massacred in northern Afghanistan last week — six Americans, one German, one Briton and two Afghans — sacrificed their own safety, in a calculated gamble that weighed the risk against the distribution of eyeglasses and toothbrushes, pain relief and prenatal care to remote villages they reached on foot.

The group that was attacked was returning from a three-week mission in Nuristan that included two veteran aid workers, Mr. Little, 61, an optometrist and the group’s leader, and Dan Terry, 64, both of whom arrived in Afghanistan in the 1970s. Mr. Little and his wife, Libby, raised three daughters there.

Dr. Grams ...in Afghanistan had learned to negotiate the etiquette of the burka so he could work on the diseased teeth of women who may never have seen a dentist. In 2007 he gave up a thriving practice in Durango, Colo., to treat patients for whom an encounter with a dentist meant a life-changing release from pain.

Two years ago, after visiting a friend in Kabul, {Dr. Woo} quit her $150,000-a-year job to move there. ... She was just weeks from her wedding. But it was her medical work that anchored her life. Her fiancé’s mother told The Sunday Times of London that Dr. Woo resolved to do more to promote women’s rights in Afghanistan after she treated a 14-year-old girl who had been burned after refusing to marry an older man.

One of two Afghans killed, Ahmed Jawed, 24, a cook, had been excitedly considering what to do with the $20 a day in overtime he would earn on the trip. Mr. Jawed was the main breadwinner for his wife, three children and extended family, and was known in his neighborhood for the collection of 500 audiotapes he would break out for weddings or parties. The second Afghan victim, Mahram Ali, 51, supported two disabled sons on his salary of $150 a month.

Mr. Jawed’s brother Abdul Bagin said of the killers: “They were infidels; not human, not Muslims. They killed my brother without any judgment, without any trial, without talking to him.”

Find the  full New York Times article here.

Hilary Clinton condemns the murders:

A Lecturer answers The Big Question

Two of my favorites, Chris Blattman and Megan McArdle , recently had a great dialogue on "is aid depressing?" I don't have anything to add--read them! However,  their dialogue does remind me of  The Big Question that I and many others get whenever we give lectures on economic development. Inevitably, after every single lecture I have ever given, the first question is ... What Can I Do to End World Poverty?

How to respond? On one hand, I want to (and usually do) salute the questioner for their willingness to give of themselves for those less fortunate. I admire their idealism and commitment.

On the other hand, I find this question to be unproductive and frustrating. It sounds mean, but the honest response (which I have never given) is, "look, the biggest problem to solve in economic development today is NOT what you can personally do to end poverty."  Poor people do not perceive THEIR biggest problem to be that rich people are agonizing how to help them.

More constructively, I want to say: Don't be in such a hurry. Learn a little bit more about a specific country or culture, a specific sector, the complexities of global poverty and long run economic development. At the very least, make sure you are sound on just plain economics before deciding how you personally can contribute. Be willing to accept that your role will be specialized and small relative to the scope of the problem. Aside from all this, you probably already know better what you can do than I do.

But I do salute you again, and I do believe when there are enough people like you, you will cumulatively make a difference.

Aid workers murdered in Afghanistan

UPDATE: response to criticisms about mentioning humanitarian neutrality issue (see end of post)

The New York Times reports today

Returning home from a three-week trek on foot to deliver free medical care to the remotest regions of the country, the aid workers — six Americans, a Briton, a German and four Afghans — had just finished eating when they were accosted by gunmen with long dyed-red beards, the police said.

The gunmen marched them into the forest, stood them in a line and shot 10 of them one by one.

...The Taliban claimed responsibility for the killings, accusing the group of being spies and Christian missionaries.

This blog and others have expressed concern about the erosion of humanitarian neutrality in Afghanistan, with one possible contributor the attempt to coordinate aid and the military.

There is no evidence that these particular killings were due to such factors; obviously the immediate responsibility is with the evil and hate-filled men who were the murderers.  Our most sincere condolences to the families and friends of the victims.

UPDATE: Aug 9 4:15pm. On Twitter and on one comment on this blog, there has been criticism of my introducing the humanitarian neutrality issue in discussing this tragedy. If there was anyone personally offended by this, I apologize; I meant no disrespect to the victims of this horrible tragedy. Just as with other tragedies in aid, one wants both to offer condolences to the victims and to discuss ways to lessen the likelihood of future tragedies of the same kind. The second is obviously of no consolation to the victims.

I have many friends who are aid workers;  my family and I sometimes informally act as aid workers ourselves. Discussing prevention of such tragedies is not a partisan debating point, it is very close to home. I believe the erosion of humanitarian neutrality is to be regretted and reversed, both on the grounds of principle and for the sake of protecting aid workers (including those who never moved away from neutrality).

When I said there was no evidence linking these murders to the erosion of humanitarian neutrality, I was making a generic statement that always applies -- we can never tell exactly what caused one particular horrific outcome.

However, there are still plenty of grounds to worry about new risks to aid workers if they are perceived as not neutral -- common sense, case study judgments, and the general trend that attacks on aid workers have increased at the same time as the erosion of humanitarian neutrality.  I admit this is far from a rigorous demonstration, but on whom should be the burden of proof? On those who have moved away from the long-standing principle of humanitarian neutrality, or on those who want to preserve and defend it?

A more articulate economist formulates perfectly my most unpopular development argument

From the wonderful, recently updated book by Paul Seabright, via Greg Mankiw via Peter Gordon:

Politicians are in charge of the modern economy in much the same way as a sailor is in charge of a small boat in a storm. The consequences of their losing control completely may be catastrophic (as civil war and hyperinflation in parts of the former Soviet empire have recently reminded us), but even while they keep afloat, their influence over the course of events is tiny in comparison with that of the storm around them. We who are their passengers may focus our hopes and fears upon them, and express profound gratitude toward them if we reach harbor safely, but that is chiefly because it seems pointless to thank the storm. (p. 25)

I think Greg is thinking mainly of politicians' responsibility for recession or expansion, but Paul's point was more general -- nobody is really in charge but the economy (usually) works anyway.

In another classic passage from the first chapter titled “nobody’s in charge”, Paul describes buying a shirt and then wonders how it would happen if somebody had to be in charge of providing shirts:

The United Nations would hold conferences on ways to enhance international cooperation in shirt-making…committees of bishops and pop stars would periodically remind us that a shirt on one’s back is a human right. The humanitarian organizations Couturiers sans Frontieres would airlift supplies to sartorially challenged regions of the world…the columns of newspapers would resound with arguments over priorities and needs. In the cacophony I wonder whether I would still have been able to buy my shirt. (p. 18)

We have this terrible tradition in development of leader-worship, in which leaders get credit for any economic success that happens on their watch, and we think development can only happen through the intentional designs of the leaders (advised by us all-knowing development experts). This blog has vainly tried to protest this is all wrong-headed. I'm glad Paul is there to say it better than I can -- read his book!

Wyclef Jean for Prez?

In a world where being an actor, a rock star, or sex video vixen is sufficient qualification for people to sit up and pay attention to your ideas about how to solve world poverty, it comes as no great shock that Wyclef Jean has decided to run for President of Haiti. Herewith, we attempt two arguments in favor of the former Fugees frontman’s candidacy, and two against. In Favor:

1. Wyclef Jean demonstrated his impressive grasp of global political issues, including consequences of ethnic strife, with his song “A Million Voices.”
2. His single “If I was president” shows his understanding of social issues. Plus, the song reveals deeper roots of his interest in the Haitian presidency: it was released in 2008.

Against:

1. The scandal over Yéle Haiti, which forced Jean to defend himself tearfully on Oprah, hinted that (at worst) he is capable of misappropriating funds intended for charity, and (at best) he is an incompetent manager with a fuzzy concept of accountability. In either case, the Yéle affair may just hint that he lacks the expertise to run a small NGO, which is rather little compared to a country.
2. The "open letter" in the Huffington Post announcing his candidacy explains why he wants to be president, but does not provide much (or, actually, any)  info as to why he is qualified to be president. (Even most of us  in our high school days applying for jobs like window washers had to say something about our qualifications and previous experience.)

If we are being too tough on you, Mr. Jean, TIME magazine gives you rather more serious consideration here. Also check out their interview with an image consultant on Lindsay Lohan's impending jail release.