Archive for category: Global Poverty

Key articles and information on global poverty.

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Dutch Government Encourages Development

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The Dutch government has given entrepreneurs a way to do business in developing countries, without jumping through hoops to do so. The Dutch Good Growth Fund offers a source of financing for development-related businesses to improve the economies of developing countries, create jobs and increase production capacity locally.

The Dutch Good Growth Fund (DGGF) is seeking win-win situations: helping locally and fixing globally. The DGGF is divided into three subsections:

  1. Financing small to medium businesses looking to make development-related investments in low-income countries. These are companies located in the Netherlands, investing in business in other countries.
  2. Financing enterprises within low-income countries. These are small businesses in other countries that a Dutch company will support.
  3. Financing small to medium businesses wanting to export to low-income countries. These are Dutch companies exporting to other countries.

This Netherlands based loan fund is comprised of 700 million Euros from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Out of the total loans, 20 percent of the funding goes towards businesses in fragile states, and another 20 percent goes to women entrepreneurs.  The funding applies to 66 countries throughout the globe, all of which have emerging markets and low incomes.

The program was launched in 2014, and has yet to make any significant progress. The idea is promising—helping us while helping others—but it does not seem to be working as efficiently as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had hoped. By targeting small businesses, the waves of success are inherently smaller.

These small waves of success, however, could amount to something big. The Dutch Good Fun Program is still only in its second year and it has already reached out to over 66 countries, helping their own local economy and boosting the morale of small business entrepreneurs. This is a program to watch out for.

– Hannah Resnick

Sources: Agripro Focus, Berenschot, Centre of Research on Multinational Corporations, Government of Netherlands
Photo: GNBCC

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Cholera Outbreak Among Burundian Refugees Contained

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A cholera outbreak in Tanzania that claimed the lives of 30 Burundian refugees and local Tanzanians has been curbed.

The epidemic occurred in western Tanzania near Lake Tanganyika, in a remote village that is overcrowded with refugees. Authorities estimate refugees consumed contaminated lake water, which facilitated the spread of cholera. A total of 4,408 cases have been reported.

A UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) spokesman, Adrian Edwards, said that no new deaths have been reported since last Thursday, and the number of new daily cases has fallen from around 915 per day at the height of the outbreak on May 18 to less than one hundred per day. According to Edwards, the situation is improving but it still could take several weeks to see cholera completely eradicated among this population.

The majority of the cholera victims are refugees of Burundi who are fleeing to avoid violence stemming from a failed political coup in Burundi’s capital, Bujumbura.

The influx of refugees from Burundi to surrounding countries has not stopped. The UNHCR estimates that over 100,000 Burundian refugees have escaped, leaving over 64,000 Burundians in Tanzania, and the remaining in Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. About 100 Burundians per day arrive to each of these surrounding countries.

The refugees that arrive in Tanzania must walk four hours through the mountains to reach the border. Some immediately are bussed to the camp called Nyarugusu, and some wait for boats that will take them to a camp called Kigoma. Tens of thousands wait by Lake Tanganyika, a tiny beach area that is only 800 meters by 500 meters. The overcrowding and high density of refugees on the move has facilitated the quick spread of cholera.

Many refugees are being moved from Lake Tanganyika because it is overcrowded and unsanitary. Kahindo Maina, a public health officer of the UNHCR, said, ”Our priority is to get all the refugees out of Kagunga because the situation is dire. We have built latrines and brought supplies to provide clean water but the terrain and the crowded situation does not allow for a good sanitary situation there.”

Refugees have been moved to the Tanganyika stadium in Kigoma where there are better facilities, and cleaner water and sanitation. Tanzanian health authorities, the UNHCR, the World Health Organization and other partners have helped stem the spread of cholera by the promotion of hygiene, treatment of patients, implementation of effective prevention measures and the creation of access to sanitation and safe water.

Other preventative measures provided by the Ministry of Health, the UN and NGO partners include airlifting medicine and providing medical supplies and protective gear. UNHCR spokesman Edwards explained that “together with the government and our UN and NGO partners, we are providing oral rehydration solutions, soap and water purification tablets, and increasing hand-washing facilities.”

Around 30,000 refugees have also been moved from the lake area to Nyarugusu. Here, they receive vaccinations for childhood illnesses, get dewormed and have nutritional assessments done. New latrine and sanitation facilities are being built.

– Margaret Anderson
Sources: AllAfrica, Humanosphere, UNHCR 1, UNHCR 2
Photo: UNHCR

China-Canada Mining Partnerships

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Business deals between companies headquartered at opposite ends of the earth have become the rule, rather than the exception. These deals may make headlines for their magnitude, but not for their intercontinental nature. But recently, two such deals caught this writer’s attention. Though they received little coverage in the press, these deals exemplify the benefits of poverty reduction and development not only in countries experiencing development, but also in developed and undeveloped countries alike.

Both deals concern Zijin Mining Group Co., a Chinese firm, which late last month purchased large shares of two mines owned by Canadian firms. According to Bloomberg, Zijin bought a 50 percent share of the Porgera mine in Papua New Guinea from Toronto-based Barrick Gold Corp. and a 49.5 percent share of Kamoa mine in the Democratic Republic of the Congo from Vancouver-based Ivanhoe Mines Ltd. These deals infuse Canadian physical capital with Chinese financial capital, all while helping Papua New Guinea and the DR Congo grow their exports.

For Barrick and Ivanhoe, these deals amount to a crucial injection of capital. Both companies have faced financial difficulties recently: Barrick aims cut $3 billion of its $10 billion net debt by year’s end, while Ivanhoe declared bankruptcy at the beginning of this month after negotiations with creditors fell through. Both firms are expected to pursue expanded mining partnerships with Zijin in the coming years, so as to keep themselves solvent. For Western firms like Barrick and Ivanhoe, capital-rich corporations based in the developing world represent invaluable allies as global competition grows stiffer.

For Zijin, these deals not only offer a chance to get some cash off its hands, they also represent the culmination of decades-long poverty reduction efforts in China. Fifty years ago, a business like Zijin would have been unthinkable in China or any other low-development country; had China been a capitalist economy, foreign firms would have likely dominated its primary sector. But as China’s domestic industrial capacity grew, poverty rates in China plummeted. Firms like Zijin have turned poor countries into middle-income countries. Now, these countries are poised for a new stage of development as domestic firms go global by partnering with Western businesses.

Last but not least, these deals symbolize an opportunity for development and poverty reduction in Papua New Guinea and the Congo, where the mines in question are located. By aiding struggling Western firms, Zijin ensures that locals will remain employed and that transit infrastructure is well maintained. Employment and infrastructure are not only useful in and of themselves, they also give other businesses a chance to proliferate and make poverty reduction efforts simpler. Furthermore, these deals underscore what happens when a country outgrows its poverty—it begins trading intensively with other countries, many of which it helps to develop in the process.

Zijin, Barrick and Ivanhoe are not household names, and may never become household names. Nevertheless, these three firms exemplify how poverty reduction pays dividends for developed countries, developing countries and countries that have yet to develop. American firms take heed, partnerships with companies in the developing world help all countries, not just your bottom line.

– Leo Zucker

Sources: Barron’s Asia, Bloomberg, Financial Times, The Globe and Mail, The Northern Miner, The Wall Street Journal, Yahoo! Finance
Photo: Demanjo

FIFA World Cup Scandal: Migrant workers Dead in Qatar

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Qatar has an estimated budget of 62 billion pounds for the hotels, infrastructure, stadiums and other buildings that it needs for the 2022 World Cup. Qatar has relied on migrant workers from countries such as India, Nepal and Sri Lanka to complete these building projects. However, the work for migrant workers is extremely difficult and many are dying, most likely as a consequence of the harsh conditions that they are forced to live and work in.

Since 2013, Qatar has been under investigations by groups such as Amnesty International and the Human Rights Watch, who are worried that Qatar’s migrant workforce is being treated as modern-day slaves. According to a 2013 report from the Guardian, over 4,000 workers will die as a result of the conditions that they are subjected to while they prepare for the World Cup. From June 4 to August 8 in the same year, 44 Nepalese workers died, and half of those deaths were related to heart failure or workplace accidents.

Heart failure and heat strokes are common, since many workers are forced to slave away in extremely hot temperatures—up to 122 degrees Fahrenheit—and are sometimes not given access to free drinking water. This has led to many complaints from workers. More than 80 workers from India died from January to May 2013, and 1,460 complained to the embassy about problems related to labor conditions.

While it may seem like the best solution is for workers to go home, unfortunately, it is not that simple. Qatar and other Gulf Cooperation Council countries, such as Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, have instituted the kafala system—a system of sponsorship in which migrant workers are not allowed to change jobs or leave the country without a sponsor’s permission. Many sponsors hold the passports of migrant workers, making it impossible for them to leave. Workers are also often jilted out of the money that they were promised, and contracts are sometimes in English or other languages foreign to migrant workers, meaning that workers are forced to sign contracts that they do not understand.

Qatar promised that they would reform the kafala system after the deaths of migrant workers were bought to light. However, as The Guardian states, the system that Qatar plans to replace the kafala with will still ensure that employees are tied to their employers for the length of their contract, which can last for as long as five years.

An estimated 1,200 workers have died since Qatar began to construct its stadiums for the World Cup. However, this week, Qatar’s state news agency has issued a statement claiming that no workers have died during construction for the World Cup. They claim that no workers died while at work, and therefore argue that the assumption that the deaths of migrant workers are work related, is incorrect.

While it is most likely true that not all the deaths of migrant workers are work related, the fact remains that many of the deaths probably are a result of the poor living and working conditions that migrants are forced to face. Qatar is also hesitant to let reporters research the conditions of migrant workers in the country. In May of 2015, they arrested a group of BBC reporters who attempted to do so.

The problems with workers for the FIFA World Cup are representative of larger socioeconomic problems in Qatar. Qatar is the world’s richest country by income per capita. Its growing industry and infrastructure attract migrant workers determined to improve their living conditions by moving to such a rich country. However, migrant workers are treated extremely poorly. They are crammed into overcrowded living conditions of six to eight men in a room, and up to 40 men have to share a kitchen. The living conditions are unhygienic and bathrooms and washers are so dirty that some men are forced to use buckets of water to wash instead.

There are over 1.2 million migrant workers making up the workforce in Qatar. These workers are subjected to physical, verbal and sexual abuse. It is especially difficult for migrant workers who work in domestic situations. As the Human Rights Watch states, these workers are normally women, and they are especially vulnerable to sexual and physical abuse, as they are sometimes locked in the homes where they work and are not given protection under Qatari Labor Law.

The poor treatment of migrant workers might be an attempt by Qatar to keep its population under control. After all, over 80 percent of the Qatari population is now composed of migrant workers, meaning that 20 percent of the population actually benefits from the riches of Qatar, while the rest are forced to suffer. As one Nepalese migrant worker states, “No one respects our feelings, we are just labor, all people hate us.” Unless Qatar changes its laws and issues drastic reforms, it risks becoming a country where modern day slavery becomes more and more prevalent, and the gap between the rich and the poor continues to widen.

— Ashrita Rau

Sources: BBC, BBC, BBC, Business Insider, Human Rights Watch, Human Rights Watch, Migration News, The Guardian, The Guardian, The Guardian
Photo: The Telegraph

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The End of Hunger in Belo Horizonte, Brazil

 

 

Belo-Horizonte
Belo Horizonte, the third most populous metropolitan city in Brazil, is one of the most progressive actors in poverty reduction. Home to nearly 2.5 million, Belo Horizonte practices the Right to Food that perceives food as a human right rather than a commodity. Poverty rates have dropped dramatically in Belo Horizonte since policy makers enacted this act in 1993.

The Right to Food guarantees healthy and accessible food to all citizens in Belo Horizonte. Policy makers use systematic approach to effectively execute this law by implementing the following techniques:

  • Integrating logistics and supply chains of the food system
  • Tying local producers to consumers to reduce prices and increase food sovereignty
  • Utilizing government purchase to stimulate diversification of agricultural production and job creation
  • Implementing education about food security and good nutrition
  • Regulating markets on produce that guarantees the right to healthy, high-quality food

Certainly no policy goes without a financial cost—the Right to Food law calls for a 10 million dollar yearly budget. While seemingly large at first, this amounts to two percent of the overall budget of Belo Horizonte. Policy makers have established budgetary committees to foresee the maintenance of this budget in accordance with the economy. This novel distribution of funds has proven successful, largely due to the positive returns the Right to Food law has enabled in the job market.

The effects of the Right to Food law in Belo Horizonte are immeasurably positive for the future of poverty reduction. To ensure food distribution, Belo Horizonte implements affordable food stations that act as restaurants around the city. People of all walks of life, ranging from low-wage workers to businessmen, eat at these restaurants. This social integration eliminates the shame behind hunger and promotes a culture where everyone is deserving of food.

Poverty has reduced drastically in Belo Horizonte, Brazil since the Right to Food law passed in 1993. Benefits include:

  • Reduction of the child mortality rate by 60 percent
  • Reduction of child malnourishment under the age of 5 by 75 percent
  • Fruit and veg eatable intake increase by 25 percent

The Right to Food law is an award winning policy and serves as an inspirational example of how food redistribution saves lives. UNESCO named the Right to Food law, Best-Practice in 2003. The Right to Food law also received the Future Policy Award by the World Future Council in 2009.

Scholars regard Belo Horizonte as a progressive city in its utilization of existing resources. UN Special Rapporteur, Oliver de Schutter, reports: “I think we should use the example of Belo Horizonte as a lesson taught to us, food is not a commodity. It is a human right and it should be treated as such…”

Belo Horizonte did something the U.S. has yet to do, tackle poverty from a bottom-to-top approach. By recruiting the help of local farmers, Belo Horizonte helped the impoverished by teaching them ways to help themselves. Policy makers isolated the detrimental effects of competition in the market and eradicated them, thereby emphasizing the freedom in free markets.

The Right to Food serves as an example of the role democracy can play in helping the world’s poor.

– Tanya Kureishi

Sources: YES Magazine, FAO
Photo: Yes Magazine

Increasing Access to Education in Chad

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Located in Central Africa, Chad is ranked near the bottom of the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Human Development Index, 184th out of the 187 countries studied. Heavily affected by internal conflict and economic strife, Chad’s fragile government has experienced incredible difficulty in increasing access to primary education.

Due to severe economic disparities, there are a number of problems in Chad’s education sector, particularly in a lack of adequate supplies and tools necessary to create a functioning school environment. Many of the existing schools are simply structured, overcrowded with students, and understaffed, also lacking desks, chairs, or textbooks.

In 2012, the United Nation’s Human Development Reports revealed that only 62 percent of primary school educators in Chad were even qualified to teach. Additionally, the youth literacy rate for boys, ages 15-24, was 53.6 percent in 2012, while girls lagged behind with a literacy rate of only 42.2 percent. However, these numbers are an improvement from the past decade.

Chad’s government recently teamed up with an existing triple partnership between the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), the Global Partnership for Education (GPE), and Educate a Child (EAC), with the intention of ameliorating its education problem.

The plan for development involves two main components: restoring and improving the physical learning environment, and increasing the quality of instruction through providing necessary materials (textbooks, blackboards, desks, etc.).

EAC’s website states, “The Revitalizing Basic Education in Chad project works in targeted primary schools in the regions of Guéra, Ouadai, Sila and Logone Occidental, to supports the Government of Chad’s efforts to increase primary school completion rates from 37 percent in 2011 to 80 percent in 2020.”

GPE alone has donated $47.2 million to aid the project, providing ample funds to revamp schools across the country.

With the combined effort of these three organizations, 246,500 children will be able to enroll in and complete a quality primary education.

According to GPE, “Chad’s education sector has progressed slightly in recent years. The percentage of out-of-school children decreased from 43 percent in 2002 to 36 percent in 2011. The primary completion rate increased from 30 percent in 2006 to 35% in 2012. In terms of gender parity, 62 girls finished primary school for every 100 boys in 2012, improving slightly from 53 girls for every 100 boys in 2006.”

Not only is this partnership working in Chad, but also Comoros, Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, and Yemen, where it is getting 2.5 million children a quality education. If Chad’s current success is magnified, the lives of hundreds of thousands of children will be changed for the better.

– Hanna Darroll

Sources: UNICEF 1, UNICEF 2, Global Partnership for Education, Educate a Child
Photo: Relief Web

Affordable Housing Solution in Chile

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In 2004 in Iquique, Chile, the for-profit architectural company Elemental designed and built social housing units for 100 impoverished families. The company’s innovative and inexpensive design enabled this low-income community to remain in the city center, retaining access to jobs, healthcare, education and transportation, rather than being forcibly relocated to peripheral zones.

Since the 1960s, the community of 100 families had been illegally settled in slum housing. The living situation was “precarious,” a “maze without any security” with “delinquency problems,” said architect Alejandro Aravena.

In 2003 the Chilean government asked Elemental “to settle the 100 families in the 5,000-square meter-site” according to Archdaily. The government also provided a budget of 7,500 dollars per housing unit.

One and a quarter acres is needed to accommodate 100 families, so Aravena immediately rejected various common social housing models. “Neither the 1 story isolated house nor the two story house or the block were a solution to the question we had to answer” explained Aravena in a video created by Coti Donoso, courtesy of the Chile-Barrio program.

Elemental’s solution was a spin off the common row house design: each housing unit borders an equally sized empty space that the individual family designs and decorates over time. The families’ ability to have freedom and control is critical to the success of the design; they do not feel a Western-constructed design is imposed on them. Rather, they transform their own living space into a home that meets their needs and desires.

Due to the budget constraints, Elemental decided to build parts of the housing units that locals would not be able to build themselves. Each unit was “stabilized for seismic durability and equipped with the barest of basics: plumbing but no fittings for kitchen and bathroom, an access stair, and openings for doorways. Once the modular outlines were completed, residents moved in and began finishing and customizing their spaces at their own expense and at a pace that their incomes allowed, adding color, texture, and vitality,” explained MoMA’s highlight of the design on their website.

“Due to the fact that 50 percent of each unit’s volume, will eventually be self-built, the building had to be porous enough to allow each unit to expand within its structure. The initial building must therefore provide a supporting, (rather than a constraining) framework in order to avoid any negative effects of self-construction on the urban environment over time, but also to facilitate the expansion process,” said Archdaily.

The size of the interior housing unit doubled in square meters for a cost of 1,​000 U.S. dollars per household. On his website, Arevena said that, five years after the project was executed, each unit was valued at “over $20,​000.”

Because of Elemental’s success in Iquique, the company has built over a thousand similar units throughout Latin America and plans to create more in the future.

– Margaret Anderson

Sources: Alejandro Aravena, Arch Daily MOMA
Photo: Flickr

Top 5 Barriers to Education Access in Honduras

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Globally, between 1999 and 2011, the total number of children not attending school decreased from 106 million to 57 million. Programs to encourage school attendance and improve the quality of education in developing countries are working.

Nevertheless, there is a country in Central America that retains the title of the second most impoverished nation in the Western Hemisphere. Honduras’ children continue to face many barriers to education. There is still much work to be done.

 

Top 5 Barriers to Education Access in Honduras:

1. Lack of physical school buildings

2. Lack of school supplies (desks, chalkboards, clean water)

3. Shortage of adequate teachers

4. Gang epidemic pulls young boys from school

5. Lack of proper toilets and sanitation at schools dissuades young girls from attending school

The good news is that it is very possible to breakdown these barriers so that children may be able attend school.

Students Helping Honduras, a nonprofit organization that recruits college students to build schools, is addressing each of these barriers. The nonprofit was started by Shin Fujiyama when he was a college student, and he has since been named a 2009 CNN Hero. Their goal is to build 1,000 schools in Honduras by 2020. Over 3,000 college student volunteers have worked in Honduras and the program is expanding.

In addition to the schools under construction, the organization also currently runs a bilingual elementary school, 2 homes for orphaned and abandoned children, a scholarship project and a villa project.

One of the strongest barriers to education access in Honduras is related to the gang epidemic spreading throughout the country. Young boys are persuaded to join gangs such as MS13 or Mara 18 with the proposal of protection from older boys. When the prospects for their education seem low in the first place, some boys will not attend school at all.

SHH works with boys in the community of Villa Soleada and offers them the opportunity to gain an education. Villa Soleada serves as an alternative form of protection to gang life.

With a commitment to local empowerment, community members work together with student volunteers. SHH is building schools one at a time to help decrease the 66.2% of Hondurans who currently live in poverty. When these barriers are addressed, children can receive an education that will help them secure jobs and support their families and communities.

— Iliana Lang

Sources: Students Helping Honduras, Save the Children Care Plancanada
Photo: Project Trust

Life in the World’s Poorest Country

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Imagine being lulled to sleep by the constant sound of bullets ricocheting off trees in the forests beyond your home. For many living in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), this horror story is reality. Located in the heart of Africa, the DRC has been named the world’s poorest country, but its massive amount of available resources has it set up to eventually become one of the wealthiest.

The major issue that stands between this nation and a successful future is the rampant instability of government and daily life. Existing in a much more antiquated state than that of our own, 83 percent of all Congolese citizens live in rural villages and lack access to clean water and steady supplies of food. This means that around 125 out of every 1,000 babies die within three weeks of birth due to malnutrition. This instability has allowed the region to become a breeding ground for war. Roughly 5.4 million people have been killed during the war in the Congo, a death rate second only to that of the Second World War, leaving millions of orphans as a result of death by fighting and the spread of the AIDS virus. Of these millions of children, many are left starving with no certain way of getting access to food every day, leaving malnutrition as another leading cause of death in the region. The only sense of stability these children have known is the constant of war. Many are drawn to large militant groups because they provide a family-like structure and are a constant source of food and power. However, as the world’s leading powers have begun to catch wind of the atrocities being carried out in the Congo, it looks like all of this is about to change.

The heart of the Congo is home to the equatorial rainforest, making it rich in many natural resources of which companies pay millions of dollars per year to extract. The main issue that has risen during this process stems from companies attempting to take these resources free of charge, giving rise to more civil wars in the area. However, as more NGO’s begin to put boots on the ground in an attempt to bring this to a halt, many rural communities are starting to see a future in which they can succeed. The key to changing a life is giving someone a way to change their own. By teaching local citizens how to harvest resources and develop businesses to sell said resources, many communities have begun to rise from the ashes of war. Many organizations are practicing micro-lending in an attempt to create business and a sense of worth within communities. The Congo has the possibility to become a great nation where people are happy and well-fed, the government is stable and life is like a tropical vacation in a rainforest.

Although there is a long road ahead, every reaction has a catalyst and by bringing communities up one by one, we can create a difference beyond our best hopes.

– Sumita Tellakat

Sources: African Volunteer, The Atlantic, Our Africa
Photo: Flickr

Tom Emmer Shows Foreign Aid Need Not Be a Partisan Issue

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It’s not often that one hears a Tea Party conservative publicly supporting the use of the United States’ Federal Budget on foreign development aid. That’s what makes Rep. Tom Emmer’s, R-M.N., newfound support for the program both promising and surprising.

During a live online Q & A session held on May 12, Rep. Tom Emmer – whose conservative voting record includes challenges to Minnesota’s minimum wage and efforts to nullify the Affordable Care Act – described the ways in which his recent visit with recipients of U.S. foreign aid in Eldoret, Kenya influenced his perspective on the program.

“I have made the statement in the past that a dollar that we are spending for instance in Africa, in Kenya, is a dollar that we could probably be using at home to build a road or a bridge,” Emmer said. “Well, it’s not that simple.”

During his time in Eldoret, Emmer met with two dairy farmers who, with funding from USAID, improved their operation to such an extent that their increased income allowed them to accumulate enough money to send their three children to boarding school. “That bodes well for the future,” Emmer said, “and I guess I look at it this way: a dollar spent on that is a dollar that we won’t have to spend on additional bombs and bullets and God-forbid boots on the ground in the future.”

This sentiment is consistent with an argument commonly made by proponents of foreign development aid: investing in a greater quality of life for the world’s poor prevents them from looking for it in the form of violent extremist groups like ISIS or al-Shabaab.

The congressman also noted the potential benefits global poverty reduction holds for the U.S. economy. “Well, we need to have trading partners, both here within our boundaries, our borders, but [also] outside of our borders, because remember, 90% of the world’s future customers actually live outside of the United States,” Emmer stated. “We need to make sure that we’re constantly growing those markets so that we can realize a return of value, a valuable return on [our] products.”

Emmer’s change of heart is particularly encouraging given the staunch opposition to foreign aid among many leading Republicans, including presidential aspirant Rand Paul, who in 2012 argued the United States ought to eliminate foreign aid entirely. Indeed, this new stance is consistent with his recent deviation from the standard voting line of far right Republicans, a move that has earned him criticism from a number of his constituents.

That Rep. Emmer’s newfound attitude toward foreign aid so radically differs from that of more moderate Republicans like Paul shows that foreign aid doesn’t need to be an issue that is determined simply – and superficially – by party affiliation. A U.S. presence in impoverished nations, defined by effective economic assistance, creates opportunities for American companies abroad and increases the security of the United States by improving the lives of those whom extremist groups strive to recruit. These are outcomes that should appeal to Republicans and Democrats alike.

– Zach VeShancey

Sources: Think Progress, Business Week Think Progress Think Progress MPR News
Photo: University of Alaska Fairbanks