If you think about it, PEPFAR was never a great idea. An ambitious, idealistic, somewhat glorious idea. But not actually a good one. There was no way we could keep expanding it forever. Now, the Obama administration has made the difficult decision that we cannot keep increasing PEPFAR budgets to keep pace with new HIV infections. We can’t treat our way out of an AIDS crisis and we just spent ten years focusing on treatment and neglecting prevention.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton devotes her keynote address to the CARE conference in Washington, DC to the topic of nutrition. In the speech, she argues that nutrition is a cross cutting issue in which American dollars and attention can make the biggest difference. She outlines a new US approach to the issue around minute 12.
Israel, Slovenia and Estonia were invited to join the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a group of (now 34) wealthy democracies. The OECD does a host of things, from helping to stabilize its members' economies to serving as a focal point for assisting in the economic development of poorer countries.
Bad news: the cap didn't work. The 40-foot-tall, 98-ton, iron cap that BP was hoping to use to clog the leak over the weekend has become clogged itself, by "deep-sea crystals...a slushy mix of gas and water, and been tossed aside.
As Yahoo notes, the cap took two weeks to build and 3 days to put into place. During that time 85,000 barrels of oil have spilled into the Gulf.
A group of six UN rights experts are warning that Arizona's controverisal new immigration law may be in violation of America's international human rights obligations. From the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights:
Our friends at the Better World Campaign put together a helpful primer on how the United States pays the United Nations and its agencies. To accompany it, they organized a Q and A with the Better World Campaign's executive director Peter Yeo who answers questions about the UN's budget process.
The World Health Organization released its annual Global Health Statistics which provides a global snapshot of how the WHO's 193 member countries are progressing on the health related Millennium Development Goals. The figures are encouraging.
This may be a bit far afield for UN Dispatch. But hey, it's Friday afternoon and I have a chip on my shoulder.
Here's the story. Two days ago, a 17 year old fan of the Philadelphia Phillies baseball team ran onto the field in the middle of play, waving his towel with seemingly gleeful abandon. Security gave chase. But he was doing a pretty good job evading them until one officer whipped out his Taser. The kid hit the ground immediately and was promptly arrested. The video's been something of an internet sensation. Here it is.
Here's a good explainer from Al Jazeera about the political rifts in the leadership of South Sudan. In brief, the Sudan's People's Liberation Movement -- the dominant political party in South Sudan that has pressed for the South's independence from Khartoum -- is much less unified than it would seem. There are fears that the various factions may turn on each other when the South holds a referendum for Independence next January. This comes on top of worries that Khartoum may instigate conflict to gain control of some of the South's oil fields. Watch.