Paul Wolfowitz's turbulent tenure as World Bank president was marked by an aggressive anti-corruption agenda. Apparently, Germany is also disturbed by apparent corruption. The BBC is reporting that Germany is suspending its contributions to the Global Fund citing misuse and mismanagement. Looking forward to a robust discussion about the impact of corruption on development in the comments section.
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Back in 2007 I led a Katrina cleanup Alternative Spring Break trip to New Orleans, and we spent part of one day visiting the local FEMA offices. It was a bizarre experience for a lot of reasons - their building was really nice, and located outside of the city limits for some bogus-sounding reason. At one point one of the higher-ups tried to field a question about corruption by pointing out that the federal government has a lot of money, that some misappropriation is inevitable, and that it's worth the tradeoff to reach needy people.
ReplyDeleteHe was totally right but completely tone-deaf. Stepping up monitoring would cut off poor people from needed resources, and probably wouldn't have been worth the money saved (that's a tough judgment call). But aid agencies need to handle PR better than that - FEMA was in the middle of a shitstorm over massive waste on the one hand and people still waiting for temporary housing 1.5 years after Katrina on the other.
Speaking of PR, this is just for show and possibly political gain. Germany, allegedly the third-leading donor to the Global Fund, is supplying a trivial 1% of its budget. They'd think again if cutting off the funds were going to have a real impact.
As an aside, the US as usual doesn't get the credit it deserves for funding needy causes. Here are some charts showing how we dominate the list of Global Fund donors: http://www.theglobalfund.org/en/donors/statistics/?lang=en