Development

How Bad Is It? The UN Development System Needs an Overhaul

• July 17, 2012

The clamor for United Nations reform has not stopped since its first days in 1945. Although ideas for changing the UN rise and fall each year, the newest calls for an overhaul involve development, one of the largest sectors of the world body’s system. With a Kafkaesque bureaucracy consisting of at least 30 agencies …

Development, Special Report

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New World Bank Leader Backs Anticorruption Campaign

Barbara Crossette

• July 4, 2012

On his first day in office on July 2, the new World Bank president, Jim Yong Kim, placed himself firmly in the footsteps of his predecessor. He announced that he was backing two recent decisions in the bank to halt the organization’s involvement in projects in Bangladesh and East Africa because of documented corruption. …

Development

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A Top Economist Faults UNDP for Outmoded Policies

Barbara Crossette

• May 22, 2012

In a broadside against the United Nations Development Program, Jagdish Bhagwati, professor of economics at Columbia University and an adviser to the government of India and numerous international bodies, argues that the UN’s premier agency has declined in staff quality as it clings to outdated policies that actually harm poor countries. At the heart …

Development

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In Washington, a Seasoned Hand at the UN’s Development Office

Dulcie Leimbach

• May 4, 2012

After six years as director of the United Nations Information Center in Washington, D.C., Will Davis is now leading the UN Development Program’s office in the capital, promoting the agency’s interests among constituents at Congress, the White House, nonprofit groups and the media. He joined the agency in January. Rodney Bent, a former senior …

Development, GOINGS-ON

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Nagging Hunger Undermines Millennium Poverty Goal

Barbara Crossette

• May 2, 2012

The first of the eight Millennium Development Goals makes an ambitious demand: eradicate extreme poverty and hunger worldwide. It is now widely accepted that progress has been made in many countries on cutting the percentage of people living with less than the rock-bottom $1.25 a day. But decreasing hunger by half is another sadder …

Development, Human Rights

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Scrutinizing Millennium Goal Claims as 2015 Looms

Barbara Crossette

• April 16, 2012

In early March, a report from Unicef and the World Health Organization proclaimed proudly that the world had not only met but also surpassed the Millennium Development Goals target of reducing by half the number of people without access to safe drinking water. The agencies said that 89 percent of the global population — …

Development, Health and Population

8 Comments

UN WOMEN'S CONFERENCE 2012

Land Rights for Women Transform an Indian Village

Dulcie Leimbach

• March 4, 2012

In India, a title to land can literally be a passport to security. Everything from bank credit to legal proof of caste, income, residence, eligibility for government housing, admission to schools and colleges – and even bail for a jailed relative or friend – depends on holding land titles. In this report from the …

Asia, Development, Women

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UN WOMEN'S CONFERENCE 2012

Assessing the Power of Farm Women: A New Approach

Barbara Crossette

• February 28, 2012

As the world pins hopes on more effective farming to end cycles of hunger in many developing countries, an important factor holding back food production is a persistent cultural opposition to giving women more power over the land. Nearly half the farm labor in the developing countries is done by women, who are hardworking …

Development, Women

4 Comments

At the UN Nuclear Watchdog, It’s Not Just About Iran

Dulcie Leimbach

• February 25, 2012

United Nations international atomic inspectors confirmed that Iran is moving apace on producing nuclear fuel at an underground site, but that is not what Kwaku Aning, an official from the International Atomic Energy Agency, wanted to talk about on a visit to New York. Nor did his colleague, Geoffrey Shaw, an Australian who represents …

Climate Change, Development

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GOINGS-ON

Graziano da Silva, New in Post, to Focus on Hunger and Rural Poor

Dulcie Leimbach

• February 20, 2012

José Graziano da Silva took up his three-year post as the new director-general of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, based in Rome, in January. The agency, which was founded in 1945, is tasked with eradicating hunger worldwide, particularly in rural areas. Graziano da Silva was the agency’s assistant director-general and regional representative …

Development, GOINGS-ON

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Africa Upgrades Its Business Climate

Barbara Crossette

• October 31, 2011

This year’s edition of an annual report from the World Bank measuring how easy or hard it is to start and run a business around the world has good news for sub-Saharan Africa. In its 2012 Doing Business survey, the bank found that in 36 of 46 countries – 78 percent of the economies …