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Advocating For a Better Economic Environment for Refugees
Refugee youth in Kakuma Refugee camp embody the endurance of the human spirit. A study carried out by the International Financial Corporation (IFC) in 2018 took a unique look at Kakuma Refugee Camp a...
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Supporting “Cyber-Dissidents”

To continue on the topic of the previous post, Reporters Without Borders published a handbook for bloggers and cyber-dissidents.  The handbook, for example, has a story from Nepal to illustrate the challenges and the success story of getting Radio Free Nepal off the ground.  I have to admit, I li...

Blogging for Democracy in Nepal

In recent weeks, the Nepalese government has stepped up attacks on free media, targeting those who have openly criticized the actions of the King and the security forces.  Usually, shutting down media offices and taking copies of newspapers and magazines out of circulation while controlling TV and ...

New President for Haiti

After much fanfare that a clean election had taken place in Haiti last weekend, social turmoil ensued as presidential aspirant, Rene Preval, appeared unable to win the election in the first round. Yesterday, the Haitian electoral council voted 7 to 2 to disqualify more than 80,000 blank ballots that...

Russian Parliament Ratifies the U.N. Convention Against Corruption

Today, the Russian parliament – the State Duma – ratified the U.N. Convention Against Corruption.  It took just over 2 years for Russia to ratify the Convention, which the country signed in December of 2003, and the ratification did not go easy: The voting was preceded by emotional s...

On Corruption in Africa

The Institute of Public Policy Analysis in Nigeria is soon to release a report on corruption (in its February Newsletter), which suggests that foreign aid contributes to the problem as elites skim off their portion at every level. Dr. Kasper, the author of the report, argues that 'corruption is a bl...

Overcoming obstacles to information

Language is the most fundamental unit in information gathering. Without it, human beings would have a limited capacity to communicate. Language has often been the cause of miscommunication and misunderstanding, a problem that is exacerbated by the lack of precision in translation. Sometimes, ther...

Update on the Russian NGO Law

The passing of the Russian law on NGOs [see my earlier post on this] has stirred up a lot of controversy over the past several months.  But, did the international development community and Russian NGOs worry too much too soon?  Or not?  Here is what the Moscow Times has to say: Despite sizzlin...

Revising the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention

When the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention was drafted in 1997 and entered into force in 1999, it was a significant step forward, to say the least, for efforts to combat bribery in international business transactions.  Yet, more needs to be done, says a new report released by the Center for Global Devel...

Help Africa Help Itself

Is "doubling aid and forgiving debt" a good strategy for eliminating poverty in Africa?  Bill Easterly certainly doesn't think so.  He argues that such a strategy is not enough for getting the continent on the path of economic growth and prosperity in his op-ed in the Washington Post.  The title ...

Development Banks and Anti-Corruption

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is taking the necessary steps to hold companies accountable for corrupt behavior. [ADB] last year banned 40 firms and 22 individuals from working for the multilateral agency due to corruption, the Manila-based bank said today. Since the bank began investigating corr...

Hope Grows in the Killing Fields

Jan Mohammad, Governor of Uruzgan Province, has known little but war throughout his life.  A man with one eye, uneducated, yet wise from years of conflict against the Russians and the Taliban.  His militia is everywhere, and when we arrive in a military convoy from the U.S. military base in Tarin ...

The Baker’s Son

Nineteen year old Sadaar's father started a bakery several years ago, shortly after his family returned to Kabul. They lived in Peshawar, Pakistan for years as refugees, waiting for a time when they could return to their native Kabul, surrounded by the towering Parwan mountains. As we walked up to t...

Starting a Business in Africa

African entrepreneurs share their stories on starting a business on the BBC website.   There are some very interesting on-the-ground experiences, from good I think Ethiopia must be the best and the easiest place to start a business today. Yes it used to be very hard to start a business in Ethiopia...

Brazil and Argentina Regulate Trade

Last week, two members of Mercosur, Brazil and Argentina, reached a landmark trade agreement, hailed by the governments of both countries.  But if you think the agreement is supporting free trade between the two countries - afterall, free trade is what Mercosur is all about - think again.  How ab...

Demographic Crisis in Russia

Someone, hit the panic button!  Russian population shrunk by nearly 700,000 people in 2005, according to official Russian government statistics, and the life expectancy of a Russian male is now a meager 58 years.  In all, since the early 1990s, the Russian population has been declining at a r...

The role of the media in MENA reform

An independent and pluralistic media is a central pillar of democracy. The role of the media in a democratic society is one that informs the public, enhances political participation, and acts as a government watchdog. The media in the Middle East North Africa region is not able to fully perform th...

Palestinian Elections: Revisiting the “Chicken vs. Egg” Conundrum

Recently, National Public Radio conducted an interview with Robert Kagan of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.  The interview was ostensibly about possible outcomes from the recent elections in the Palestinian territories, and thus it adds some additional perspectives to a previous thr...

Googling Change

The big news in the technology pages these days is, surprisingly, not about Steve Jobs' newest toy.  Instead, folks are getting steamed up about Google's recent decision to acquiesce to local regulations concerning censorship when starting up its new search engine in China.  Google will also refra...

Who Makes People Poor?

Making people poor is not an easy task, and governments have to work hard to do it.  Ronald Bailey explores this issue in more detail in his piece on "Economics of Ruin 101" that appears in The African Executive, a weekly magazine published by CIPE's partner the Inter-Region Economic Network (I...

What is there to argue about?

Last Friday (January 27), NPR broadcast a piece about a new study, Electing to Fight: Why Emerging Democracies Go to War, which purports to show that emerging democracies are more likely than other countries to become involved in wars.  The study, authored by Professors Edward Mansfield of the Un...
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