Oxfam launched this message for ministers meeting in The Hague. Photo by Ton Vrijenhoek
When dozens of ministers from countries around the world met in The Hague yesterday to talk about the future of Afghanistan, the fate of 8.5 million people hung in the air. That’s the number of Afghans who face chronic uncertainty about whether they will have enough to eat. Already the health of more than a million young children and 500,000 women is at risk because of malnutrition.
Those numbers hit hard when you weigh them against the findings in a new field report from Afghanistan produced by Oxfam America. The report says that the US spends 20 times more in military activities and operations in the country than it does on development. And the money that does go to development isn’t always well coordinated: The report cited one case of two separate contractors, both funded by USAID who, by chance, discovered they were doing almost the same project in the same place. Read the rest of this entry »
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