The Upside-Down W: American Moral Imperatives
and Their Cost to the Women of the World
by Wilson Adam Schooley

The “sex worker” is a teenage wife and mother selling her body at a makeshift truck stop at midnight to feed her family. Her family’s tiny tin lean-to is empty of food and her husband and children are too weak to work because of diarrheal diseases from the open sewer running alongside it. No funding for safe water projects or basic diarrhea treatment reaches her area. She has unprotected sex with truckers because, although her country does receive money from HIV/AIDS programs, the funding does not support teaching condom usage to “prostitutes.” The HIV virus then joins the stream of poverty-borne diseases in her family, and potentially passes to her unborn children and to her husband, who passes it to other women when she is too sick to share his bed.

The Politics of Aid
by Gayle Smith

The politicization of foreign aid by the Bush administration marks a distinct departure from the past. Large allocations for the war in Iraq dwarf funding for MCC, PEPFAR, Africa, and global humanitarianism.

Foreign Assistance: Strengthen the “Third Pillar” of National Security
by Richard G. Lugar

In 2006, the Bush administration recognized the new strategic importance of foreign aid programs when it placed development alongside defense and diplomacy as one of the three pillars of the national security strategy.

Foreign Assistance: An Agenda for Reform
by Henrietta Holsman Fore

Americans expect the government to respond when they see suffering. Since 2000, the United States has launched the largest international development effort since the Marshall Plan, nearly tripling U.S. aid worldwide.

The Exportation of Ideology: Reproductive Health and Rights in U.S. Foreign Policy
by Suzanne Petroni and Patty Skuster

Through restrictions and funding conditionalities, the United States has ensured that foreign aid programs and policies reflect the ideology of the Religious Right, instead of effectively providing services and enabling organizations to promote women’s health and human rights.

Achieving Global Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights
by Serra Sippel

An urgent need exists for the United States to exercise a new collaborative style of global leadership that promotes and protects sexual and reproductive health and rights worldwide. Failure to promote these rights has a devastating impact on women throughout the world.

The Politicization of HIV Prevention: The Cynicism of U.S. Assistance to Africa
by William A. Smith

The reauthorization of PEPFAR to date has, in essence, occurred without serious debate and without a full airing of the significant problems it has generated. A compassionate step toward dealing with HIV/AIDS in the places most in need has become an opportunity to advance an extreme social conservative agenda.

With a Friend Like This…
by Regan Ralph

The hypocritical heights scaled by the Bush administration—touting democracy and human rights as justification for war; asserting that human rights are a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy while embracing torture and rendition—have hobbled the cause of human rights around the globe.

How Legal Steps Can Help to Pave the Way to Ending Poverty
by Muhammad Yunus

Unaffected by the financial uncertainty in the rest of the world, microfinance banks like Grameen Bank continue to do well. Owned by its borrowers, Grameen Bank relies on trust and incentive to prosper and has loaned approximately $7 billion since its inception, with repayment rates averaging better than 98 percent.

Human Rights Heroes: The Global Health Council
by Wilson Adam Schooley

From its inception through much of the 1990s, the Global Health Council was principally funded by U.S. grants. In 1998 the council’s new leader, Nils Daulaire, felt that the council should be an independent voice. Since 2004, the council took a deeply respected stand by no longer accepting funds with strings attached.