Jason Hickel - International development is in serious crisis. Charities are worried about the fact that public support for development is waning – that people just don’t seem to ‘buy it’ any more. According to a recent report by the development umbrella group Bond, ‘Efforts to eradicate poverty appear to many members of the public to have failed, and scepticism about the effectiveness of aid and global development initiatives has risen.’ People are less and less likely...
Last week more than 140 countries met at the United Nations (UN), to track progress on achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Despite UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon, taking a more optimistic view, a UN report earlier this year contends that most MDGs will not be met by 2015. The area lagging furthest behind in meeting MDGs is sub-Saharan Africa. There are more than one billion hungry people worldwide. A key target of the UN is to end world poverty and hunger, amongst other...