Panel discusses progress, future of U.S. aid to Africa

This morning Senator Bill Frist (R – TN) moderated a panel entitled "American Leadership on Global Health" at the Minneapolis Convention Center. The discussion was hosted by ONE.org and focused on the progress made since President Bush approved PEPFAR (President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief), which nearly quadrupled aid to African nations.

One panel member said that while a large number of people are being treated, more are being infected. Everyone was in agreement that the focus needed to be on education for prevention purposes or else treatment would not matter. One mark of success is the expanded focus on other diseases affecting poor nations throughout Africa.

The need for more money to help ailing African countries was also discussed. Syndicated columnist Michael Gerson said, "Americans will be extremely generous when they feel they have an impact." Sally Canfield, senior program officer of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation emphasized the importance of contributions from the government as well as the private sector in order to have a successful fight against issues facing poor countries.
The group also discussed the Millennium Challenge Corporation. They discussed the continued need of MCC to challenge some of the poorest countries to work toward their own prosperity. Resources are currently being dispersed among the countries that have reached certain benchmarks, such as passing women's rights legislation.

The consensus of the panel was that only phase 1 had been completed and it was time to move to the next stage of expanding knowledge and "not creating an Africa that is dependent on US aid, but creating an Africa that is healthy enough to focus on prosperity in business."

If you are not outraged, you're not paying attention.

State Senator Jonathan Harris (D-Conn.), chairman of the Human Services Committee, said that two factors contributed to his state taking action in the "fight" against poverty: moral outrage and fiscal necessity.

At a discussion at the Center for American Progress (CAP) on "Tackling Poverty: The Role of State and Local Governments." Harris about the increasing poverty problem in his home state of Connecticut. Harris explained that even though Connecticut is the wealthiest state in the U.S., poverty rates, especially child poverty, have been high and continue to increase.

Harris created a Child Poverty Council to report annually on strategies and gains in child poverty reduction, and enacted legislation requiring the reduction of child poverty by 50 percent by 2014, or within 10 years. Harris also helped develop a community-state plan to embed proven strategies with an "untapped federal funding stream" from the Food Stamp Employment and Training (FSET) 50-50 match program, which strives to bring community and state together to reduce child and family poverty.

Joy Moses of the Half in Ten Campaign and policy analyst at the Poverty Program at the CAP Action Fund, talked about both organizations and their roles in fighting poverty. She explained that the most recent report set a national goal of cutting poverty in half within ten years and gave twelve policy recommendations on how to achieve this goal. Four of these twelve recommendations were proven to be successful: income tax credit, child tax credit, child care, and minimum wage.

Susan Golonka, program director of the Human Services Social, Economic, and Workforce Programs Division of the National Governors Association, said that states are finally using the word "poverty," and different commissions have been created around the world to help in solving the poverty problem. Golonka explained that the newest effort, the Governors Summit on Poverty, works to educate new leaders on the poverty issue while formulating state-wide comprehensive plans to reduce poverty through public-private partnerships.

Edwards’s new moral standard

The United States’s ability to fight global poverty was discussed by former Senator John Edwards (D-N.C.) at a conference held by the Center for U.S. Global Engagement. Edwards said that ending poverty is a non-partisan issue that must be seriously considered and that it is the responsibility of the next president to show Americans that their future is directly linked to the lives of people at home and abroad.

Edwards emphasized the need to improve educational standards in the developing world. He said that failed states, civil wars, and poverty cause developing countries to cut educational programs, allowing terrorism to thrive. He continued, saying children are indoctrinated to hate since the only educational options left for them are religious schools run by fundamentalists. Edwards also said the United States must fight disease by supporting preventative healthcare and work to end hunger, stating that 12 million American children went hungry in 2007.

Edwards rallied those in attendance by saying that the American Dream is supposed to be attainable for all and that Americans should not have to rely on organizations to assist them in a land of opportunity. He said Americans are ready to embrace a new moral standard, endorsing democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama as the candidate that can realize these goals.

No Easter for starving Sudan

By Ellen Ratner

This past Sunday was Easter, arguably the most peaceful, joyous and hopeful celebration in all of Christendom.

As I glance outside my window, I can see the props of our wealthy civilization: Tall, sleek, buildings of glass and steel, late model automobiles, paved roads and stores offering an abundance of all that that makes life long, good and easy. Yet about one week ago on Palm Sunday, I looked out and saw something else. That day found me in a small village in southern Sudan. And what I saw were buildings of dried grass and open roofs, filled with people, some of whom did not resemble the people I see on the street today – they wore rags, not their Easter Sunday best. And these rags contained men, women and, heartbreakingly, children – so many, many children – who resembled only caricatures of human beings: Malnourished and stick thin, whose tight flesh hosted open, running and sometimes what might be gangrenous sores. Mothers' breasts were dry; fathers and older male children were too weak to gather food that simply wasn't there anyway.

These were the bodies of starvation and the faces of suffering. On Palm Sunday, I was in Southern Darfur.



But among those who suffered, I found little bitterness. I was literally taken by the hand and led to a church service of what is euphemistically called, "returnees" from Northern Sudan and Darfur.

These were the kind of Christians that Jesus would have felt instantly comfortable with. Aside from the church's open roof and dried grass walls, I walked on dirt floors and sat on "seats" of small logs. No cut stone, no stained glass, no elaborately robbed clerics to distract the worshipper from purely spiritual concerns. What there was were people, many of whom hadn't the strength to walk a mile. Yet they crowded into these humble walls to worship their God.

Many of these worshippers were "returnees" who had just returned to this, their home village, just a few days before. They had come from northern Sudan and Darfur.

Several days earlier, a plane from the United Nations World Food Program had visited the village. Sacks of vitally needed food were dropped off and filled the tents of the World Food Program. There were other villages that also needed food, and, as always, there was not enough food to go around. By Palm Sunday, the U.N. food had run out, and the returnees who now crowded the church got nothing.

I would hear their stories but needed no more proof than the gaunt, hollow looks of starvation and malnutrition that characterized each storyteller.

I met a woman who said she was hungry. My translator explained that she would have to live on leaves and water until the U.N. came back. She, like most of the returnees, would be sleeping outside. There weren't enough huts; nevertheless, it might be bearable as the rainy season hadn't yet begun. But remaining outdoors meant increased exposure to mosquitoes carrying malaria (a death sentence given the malnutrition) and an occasional scorpion. But it would have to do.

I have traveled to 60 countries, and up until two weeks ago I thought I had seen it all. The sights couldn't get much worse than Eritrea, the country with the world's lowest per capita GDP. Of course, I was prepared for Darfur.

I was wrong. I have never seen such poverty, such misery and suffering. There was malnutrition as well as no idea and less hope as to when or where the next meal was coming from. People in the prime of life had simply made the decision to die slowly, quietly. There wasn't surplus energy for anything else.

But there was also something else that came with the hunger and running sores – trauma that most Americans only read about in connection with the African slave trade of long ago. The people I met had been forcibly abducted as slaves (although in modernity's penchant for euphemism, they are officially referred to "abductees.") And slavery might have been the least of it. Many of these people were first forced to watch while the village's adult men, as well as some women, were brutally murdered before their eyes. These were fathers, sons and husbands.

After the murders, after being enslaved, came the long march which for many was a death march – always a few murders to keep the rest in line. I've reported on Florida farm workers living in substandard conditions, and I've seen the horrific slums of Kenya, but I've never seen anything like this. The other talk show hosts ranged from the hardest left to the farthest right. And all were moved beyond words at what they saw and heard. Food, not ideology, is what's needed here.

Somebody thought it would be a good idea to bring pens, and we did. How naïve! There is no paper, no school, not even medical care to fill out a doctor's report.

After Darfur I went to Dubai. It may be the world's richest city, beautiful and gleaming. Cranes are everywhere, the sign of work and progress. It struck me like New York City must've looked in the 1920s. I felt like it was another planet, and I could not make any sense of my experience just 24 hours before.

I vow now, in print and before the world, to do something about Darfur. After Hurricane Katrina, I made a similar promise and committed all my spare time to helping people rebuild. I helped raise more than $1 million for the town of Pass Christian, Miss. There's still plenty to do down there, but one thing I cannot do is let the wealth and comfort in which I live and my busy life spin so fast that I forget what I saw in Sudan.

I've been close to the refugee experience since I was a child. Some of my earliest memories were of my parents helping World War II refugees make a home in the United States. But America is not the open door that it was once was. The people I saw in Sudan must rebuild their lives there.

And we must help them. If we do not, we are not worthy of the proud name, "American."