By Ryan Lasnick

Having completed the bulk of the accession formalities, Afghanistan is scheduled to become the thirty-fifth least developed country (LDC) member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and only the sixth LDC to join since the organization’s inception. The country received approval to join the WTO on December 17 and will have until June 30 to ratify the agreement. LDCs often lack the capacity, both economically and governmentally, to make the necessary changes that WTO accession requires, which is why only six have joined in the past 20 years. Beyond this initial difficulty, the economic disadvantages for an LDC joining the WTO have been shown to be significant; yet Afghanistan has decided to accede despite these hazards. This leads to the question: Why has Afghanistan seemingly ignored conventional wisdom and decided to join the WTO?

Men involved in a money exchange business in a market in Afghanistan. On December 17, 2015 Afghanistan was approved to join the WTO and will have until June 30 to ratify the agreement. Photo by Gerard Carreon for the Asian Development Bank.

Since 2002 the United States has poured over $100 billion into state-building and establishing democratic institutions in Afghanistan, but little has changed. In fact, the influx of money has created new revenue channels for an existing and growing oligopoly. In the absence of a free market with functioning state regulation, the oligopoly and local power holders have determined access to economic resources in many markets across the country. Lack of interest and capacity by political authorities has created weak formal economic institutions, largely unaccommodating economic policies, and regulatory failure. Continue reading →

By Daniel F. Runde

 Integrated development is a process that seeks to link the design, delivery, and evaluation of projects across different sectors. Integrated development is not a new phenomenon but has returned over the last 15 years as part of a search for greater effectiveness and coherence especially in the context of fragility and conflict.  Integrated development was applied in some sectors in the 1970s and 1980s with mixed success. There are important reasons why we should care about integrated development and its relation to democracy, human rights, and governance (DRG):

• First, the development “zeitgeist” is returning to more integrated approaches, making an impact on the practice and implementation of development, including in the U.S. bilateral context. The new Sustainable Development Goals (all 17 of them and their 169 sub-indicators), which are the “what” of international development, are to be approached in an integrated way.  The Paris/Accra/Busan/Global Partnership process – the “how” of development – presupposes an integrated approach to development.  Finally, the Addis Ababa Financing for Development process, the “how we are going to pay for development process,” refers to “integrated financing frameworks.”

In the U.S. context, the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), Partnership for Growth (PFG) and Country Development Cooperation Strategies (CDCS) reflect U.S. attempts to think about U.S. assistance in an integrated way, and one should expect expansion of these approaches in the future.  Recent changes in how the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) spends money also reflects integrated development concerns. Continue reading →

By Amy Chang

Estimates from the Indian Ocean tsunami and Kashmir earthquake demonstrate that the number of orphans created by such large-scale disasters typically stands at two to three percent of death toll. Following the Haiti earthquake, however, the media released stories claiming that more than a million orphans were created by the disaster—a figure that would amount almost four times the total death toll. These exaggerated figures have won international attention, causing U.S. families to flood adoption agencies with requests for inter-country adoptions. While recognizing the good intentions of these compassionate individuals, this outpouring of sympathy has resulted in less than ideal situations: children are forced to separate from their families without being correctly identified as orphaned, either placed in orphanages or flown away to live with new families without undergoing the proper release procedure. There is an increased opportunity for child trafficking after large-scale natural disasters, as organizations find it difficult to discern actors interested in well-intentioned adoptions as opposed to those who are child smugglers.

Children displaced by the Nepal earthquake play with building blocks in a temporary classroom created at one of the 83 open spaces in the Kathmandu Valley. USAID is building classrooms and child-friendly areas to create community and restore a sense of normalcy to the lives of children and families affected by the disaster. Photo by Kashish Das Shrestha for USAID.

In the post-disaster environment, these orphans’ fate is complicated by the multitude of actors who join relief efforts. In most cases, private firms, local and international NGOs, and individuals can all contribute to multilateral and government aid efforts, despite lack of experience in the adoption process. Security is relaxed to move aid in faster, and coupled with the outpouring of sympathy from donor countries, the process of adoption may be expedited. After the earthquake in Haiti in 2010, the United States employed the use of a “humanitarian parole” process where American families were allowed to expedite Haitian adoptions without checking to confirm that the child does not have existing kin. Family-tracing efforts after the Indian Ocean tsunami have taken months, or even years, to bear fruit; yet merely two weeks after the Haiti earthquake, 33 children were found being illegally taken out of the country by Baptist missionaries. Save the Children and World Vision quickly called for a halt to adoptions after the earthquake, recognizing that sentimental stories of Haitian orphanages struggling after the disaster may have led to premature overseas adoptions – separating these children from their families forever. Continue reading →