McLeod Group Blog, Feb. 16, 2015
‘It used to be that the best way to raise money for the developing world was to show the abject poverty that could be found there, but NGOs are finding that tactic no longer works.’ So says Nathaniel Whittemore in a thoughtful article—‘The Rise and Fall of Poverty Porn’—which talks about focusing on solutions rather than symptoms.
Is he right? Has the ‘pornography of poverty’ declined? Is it true that it doesn’t work? If you ...
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Response by Ron Schatz to a guest blog by Nipa Banerjee
February 2, 2015
On January 5, 2015, we posted a guest blog by Nipa Banerjee that was critical of Canada’s aid program in Afghanistan. Ron Schatz, who was CIDA’s Development Director at the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) in Kandahar city from September 2007 to August 2008, has a different point of view.
I met with the Independent Panel on Canada’s Future Role in Afghanistan when they came to the PRT in late ...
Continue Reading →McLeod Group Blog, January 19, 2015
January 12 marked five years since the earthquake that devastated Haiti, killed over 230,000 citizens and rendered over three million people homeless, almost 30% of the country’s population. Since 2010, Haiti has received a great deal of media attention, been the subject of many promises of help (some of which have been honoured). It also experienced two major hurricanes in 2012 as well as an outbreak of cholera, believed to have been introduced by a ...
Continue Reading →Guest blog by Nipa Banerjee
January 5, 2015
The NATO combat mission in Afghanistan ended in December, while Canadian participation concluded a few months earlier, in March. Seven years before, in 2007, the Harper government dispatched a five-person panel to review Canada’s participation in the war. Led by former Liberal finance minister John Manley, the panel noted that Canadian aid to Afghanistan was largely unknown to both Afghans and Canadians, and proposed that CIDA create ‘signature projects’ that could be used to showcase ...
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McLeod Group Blog, December 22, 2014
According to George Orwell’s Ministry of Truth, ‘War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.’ In the Harper government’s brave new world, bad financial budgeting is good financial management.
That’s the only conclusions you can draw from government departments that planned and over-budgeted so badly in 2013-14 that they were able to return $7.2 billion in lapsed funds to the treasury. Treasury Board President Tony Clement calls this incredible mess ‘a sign of good ...
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McLeod Group Blog, July 4, 2014
To the extent that any of them take Canada seriously as an aid donor, our ‘focus’ countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America must be tearing their metaphorical hair out. Long criticized by the OECD for spreading Canadian aid too thin and over too many countries, the Harper government cut the number in 2009 from 25 to 20. Out went eight very poor countries in Africa and two in Asia. Perhaps thinking nobody was watching, ...
Continue Reading →McLeod Group Blog, April 12, 2014
It may come as a surprise to many Canadians who follow global civil society issues to learn that Canada chairs the Community of Democracies’ Working Group on Enabling and Protecting Civil Society, a group that believes,
An active, pluralistic civil society is an essential ingredient of a vibrant democratic political system. Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) are the primary vehicles through which people organize themselves to promote shared objectives and values and to convey their interests. ...
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By Rieky Stuart and Stephen Brown
The Canadian government’s recent Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (MNCH) Summit in Toronto has not lacked for cheerleaders, especially NGOs receiving funding under the MNCH initiative. Prior to the summit, only a few critical voices were cited in the media (mainly from the McLeod Group) and most journalists, such as Paul Wells, initially set aside their cynicism and were won over by the cause. However, the government alienated many by excluding the ...
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By Diana Rivington and Elizabeth McAllister
More maternal and child health funding is welcome, but the lack of focus on the human rights of women and girls is not.
In taking stock of last week’s maternal, newborn and child health summit, Prime Minister Stephen Harper gets kudos for pledging more money to achieve UN Millennium Development Goal 4, to reduce child mortality, and Goal 5, to improve maternal health. But the second target of Goal 5, ‘achieve universal access to reproductive health,’ ...
Continue Reading →McLeod Group Blog, May 27, 2014
Once again Canada’s development cooperation policies are being driven by domestic interests, not the development outcomes and the results the government claims to be seeking. We are going it alone and indeed this time even pretending that everybody else is following our lead. In truth, maternal and child health has been both a global and Canadian priority for decades, with an accelerated focus on reproductive health and rights following the 1994 UN Population conference in ...
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