Emily in the News – Reporting from Haiti

Our fellow UN Citizen Ambassador Emily Troutman has spent the past several weeks in Haiti offering her help, recording her experiences and photographing the destruction and now the recovery of the nation. Recently she has been featured on AOL News (here) describing some of the medical issues now being faced by thousands. The admirable work of hundreds of doctors and nurses working tirelessly in makeshift hospital camps has already been the focus of numerous international headlines due ...

Is food aid missing the point?

Reading an article in the Globe and Mail (Canada pushes wealthy nations to keep food aid pledges) I came the following reader's response that (although not backed up by any evidence and rather lacking in tact...) really makes me question how we can improve the way aid is offered to the countries that need it the most. Aside from the usual issues relating to corruption or the costs of bureaucracy absorbing our donations - how much damage are our national agricultural subsidies causing to f...

A Billion for a Billion

The UN World Food Programme is calling for a billion global citizens who have enough food to eat to take action to help feed the billion people on the planet who go to bed hungry each night. It is  a terrifying fact that over a billion people on this earth suffer from chronic hunger. There are now also over a billion internet users. That is well over a billion people with access to modern infrastructure vs. a billion that cannot even access food. A billion people aren't going to donate t...

Global Resources for Global Priorities: Implementing a Currency Transaction Tax

Recently the UK Prime Minster Gordon Brown made clear his support for a Global Transaction Tax (also known as a Tobin Tax) as a means of insuring that any future financial crisis could be met quickly and effectively by pumping the accumulated funds back into the financial sector. Such a concept has been contemplated in the past on several occasions by not only the United Kingdom, but Canada, the United States and the EU as well.  However, despite the seductive nature of a tax with the pot...

Antonio’s Biscuit [World Food Program]

And you think you never read any positive news. I guess it just depends on where you look. Following the typhoons that recently swept through the Philippines, the World Food Program has distributed over 230 tons of energy biscuits to relieve the immediate food shortages that plagued many areas of the country. The boy in the picture to the left is Antonio, a 6-year old child at the initial drop-off. The biscuits may not taste good, but they're packed with vitamins and minerals desperate...