On April 5, the Federal New York District Court is expected to announce the sentence for Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer believed to be the inspiration for Nicolas Cage’s character in Hollywood’s “Lord of War,” who was found guilty of four counts of conspiracy, including conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization.

Viktor Bout (furthest on the left). Photo by Control Arms.

Though the sentencing marks a major victory for those who spent decades tracking Mr. Bout, it’s unlikely that he will ever serve justice for other alleged acts, such as supplying weapons to countries in violation of UN arms embargoes, selling weapons to abusive regimes unable to purchase weapons through the legal market, or fueling civil wars in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, Sierra Leone, and Afghanistan. That’s because Mr. Bout, like many arms dealers, is skilled at operating in the black holes of the international regulatory system and circumventing the jurisdiction of countries. Indeed, more can be done to prevent unnecessary death caused by the irresponsible and under-regulated arms trade.

If there’s one thing we’ve learned from Mr. Bout, it’s that the world needs an Arms Trade Treaty (ATT). While the United States and a few other countries have strict laws regulating the arms trade, many countries still have weak, ineffective, or no regulations. For example, only 52 governments have laws regulating arms brokers and less than half of these have criminal or monetary penalties associated with illegal brokering. If more countries had stronger laws on the arms trade, Mr. Bout may have been held accountable for the crimes he allegedly committed.

An ATT would require countries to adopt strong laws that would govern the flow of weapons in and out of their borders and prevent weapons from reaching the hands of warlords and human rights abusers. When the world gathers at the United Nations this summer to negotiate the treaty, governments must make the most of the opportunity and close the loopholes that allow arms dealers like Mr. Bout to flourish on the suffering of others.

Unfortunately, opponents to the treaty, such as the National Rifle Association (NRA), claim the United Nations will chip away at Americans’ right to own guns. This nonsense couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, an ATT would bring the rest of the world closer to the standards on international arms transfers followed by the United States; these standards do not affect US citizens’ Second Amendment rights. Unless more countries adopt rigorous standards and regulations, the United States and other countries will continue facing challenges apprehending irresponsible arms brokers.

For too long, innocent people have become victims of atrocious acts of violence and investigation because there are no international laws governing the cross-border sale of weapons. It’s time to close the loopholes and tackle the problem of the irresponsible arms trade.

Send a message to Secretary Clinton now asking her to support a strong Arms Trade Treaty on April 16.

If the ultimate goal of foreign aid is to help countries help themselves, then bypassing local organizations and governments in delivering aid defeats the purpose of aid. The United States and other donors know this, but it’s a hard habit to kick.

This bridge spanning the Sekong River, shown in 2007, is slated to be part of a highway connecting Laos and Cambodia. The bridge and highway will help Cambodians engage in trade with their neighbor. Brett Eloff / Oxfam America

Today, Oxfam releases a new report featuring new research from Ethiopia, Guatemala, Haiti, Malawi, and Tanzania, identifying the real challenges donors confront when they trust and support local leaders. We’ll be launching the report on Tuesday with remarks from Congressman Ted Poe (R-TX), Ghanaian Member of Parliament Albert Kan-Dapaah, health activist Martha Kwataine from Malawi, and businessman Evans Rweikiza of the Tanzania Private Sector Foundation.

The report outlines nine concrete ways the US can be a better partner and get the most out of foreign assistance. Here’s what we found:

Worried about corruption?

1. Support the good ones: promising leaders and agencies who are changing their societies
2. Support political and civil rights activists to hold them accountable
3. Make a habit of pairing an investment in good government with an investment in “watchdogs” in civil society and the media

Worried that poor people won’t have enough capacity to do it for themselves?

4. Support partners for the long-term, avoid doing it for them
5. Support local institutions directly, so they can grow in professionalism and capacity

Worried poor countries might have different priorities than US aid agencies?

6. Strengthen existing local rules and systems to avoid duplicating their efforts
7. Show some trust: fund the priorities that recipients identify wherever possible
8. But demand performance
9. And encourage transparency

The bottom line: instead of trying to avoid risk, donors should accept and manage risk that comes with genuine partnership, as the only way to get real and lasting development successes.

Why partner now?

The fiscal and economic crises faced by rich countries are putting strains on the volume of aid they are willing to provide. And yet, the scale of the global poverty challenge remains enormous, with one billion people still living with hunger and poverty. While the world is making progress fighting poverty and hunger, that progress simply isn’t coming quickly enough for the poorest. To meet their needs, we need to try new approaches, and work in ways that help poor people lead the fight. That means taking risks to try new approaches and trusting recipients more.

And yet, Congress is often reluctant to let development professionals take on the risk of innovating new approaches. USAID is working to put more trust in poor people and governments; Congress needs to give US government agencies more latitude to trust recipients and build true partnerships—despite these risks. US policy makers and taxpayers need to support these efforts, beyond any partisan line, so the US can support the visions and efforts of people and their government through more effective aid.

Providing aid that is more useful to recipients offers new opportunities—but only if the US invests in building true partnerships with its aid. It is up to US policy makers and taxpayers to support these efforts, beyond any partisan line, so the US can rise to the occasion and step up during this closing window of opportunity on the world stage.

President Obama’s decision earlier this month to deploy approximately 100 US troops to central Africa in support of regional efforts to defeat the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has attracted both praise and criticism. As one of the only international NGOs providing humanitarian aid in LRA-affected areas of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Oxfam’s primary concern is that any efforts to address the LRA learn from the mistakes of past counter-LRA efforts and ensure that the protection of civilians is at the center of any intervention.

This is not the first time that the United States has intervened militarily in pursuit of the rebel group. Since 2008, the US has provided more than 40 million dollars of logistical assistance, training, and equipment to support regional efforts against the LRA. In December 2008, the US supported Operation Lightning Thunder, a disastrous joint military campaign conducted by the armies of the DRC, Uganda, and South Sudan. The operation not only failed to eliminate senior LRA leaders, but led to vicious reprisal attacks against civilians in eastern DRC and South Sudan, which killed approximately 865 women, men, and children. There is an even longer history of military campaigns by Uganda–where the LRA originated–which did little to dislodge senior leadership while inflicting massive suffering on the civilian population of northern Uganda.

Marie-Paul Kimakosa, 18, with 12 month-old son Emmanuel Mbolina, and Mado, 3 (sleeping). Formerly of Ngilima village, Marie-Paul lost her husband, her father, grand-father, grand-mother to the LRA. Two cousins have been kidnapped and not returned. She fled to Dungu where she has settled with other Internally Displaced Persons. Photo by Simon Rawles/Oxfam.

Focusing exclusively on military solutions to the LRA only deals with one piece of the problem: it is no coincidence that the LRA preys on villages in the most remote and underdeveloped areas of central Africa. The lack of basic infrastructure or effective protection by police, the Congolese military, or international peacekeepers makes vulnerable people easy targets for killing, abduction, and looting.

Although military experts have suggested that the LRA may have been significantly degraded militarily, it nevertheless retains the capacity to displace, abduct, rape, and kill hundreds of thousands. Nearly 440,000 people remain displaced by the LRA in the region, not including those who flee attacks for short periods of time and then return home. Such violence and displacement further entrench poverty and vulnerability for hundreds of thousands. Accordingly, the US needs to do much more to make these communities less vulnerable by developing infrastructure such as increased phone coverage and roads, but also by helping to address the absence of effective state presence and protection which made these areas attractive to the LRA in the first place and continue to allow them to operate freely today.

This is not just good sense; it is also the law. In May 2010, President Obama signed the bipartisan Lord’s Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act of 2009, which made it the policy of the US to “work with regional governments toward a comprehensive and lasting resolution” to LRA-affected areas by providing humanitarian aid and “providing political, economic, military and intelligence support” for both military and non-military strategies to defeat senior leadership of the LRA and disarm and demobilize lower-level fighters.

To operationalize this law, nearly a year ago the Obama administration released a strategy with four key objectives: to 1) increase protection of civilians, 2) ‘apprehend or remove from the battlefield Joseph Kony and senior commanders’, 3) promote defection and DDR (disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration) of LRA fighters, and 4) increase humanitarian access to LRA- affected communities. Some progress has been made over the past year since this groundbreaking strategy was announced, but much more still needs to be done.

Oxfam has conducted annual surveys in eastern DRC for the last five years to better understand the threats and challenges people face as well as their suggestions for national and international actions to help them live in safety and dignity. In 2011, Oxfam interviewed 322 people across nine LRA-affected communities in Haut Uélé Province; 62% of all those interviewed—and the vast majority of women and children—said that they felt less safe than last year.

One important way to help people to feel more secure is to ensure that the Congolese security forces actually protect people from the LRA and other threats. Unfortunately, people interviewed by Oxfam cited the Congolese police and army as both protective forces and as abusers of power. Accordingly, US efforts to combat the LRA should include supporting the security sector reforms that communities say will most directly improve their safety, including providing for soldiers’ pay and welfare, garrisoning troops to reduce tensions with communities, enhancing discipline and justice, and providing training in human rights. Next week, I’ll write more about the non-military means the US should pursue to defeat the LRA and help protect the hundreds of thousands of people who continue to leave in fear of rebel attacks.

Update 25 October 11: Today I live-tweeted Congress’ first-ever hearing on the LRA from the House of Representative’s Foreign Affairs Committee. It was great to see the strong bipartisan support from Committee Members for enhancing US involvement in helping to reduce the suffering caused by LRA. Not enough attention, however, was given to the non-military aspects of the LRA strategy including encouraging the demobilization of lower-level fighters and providing humanitarian and development assistance. In response, Oxfam America released this statement reminding policymakers of the obligation under the law to take a more comprehensive approach.

This blog post was written by Emily Greenspan, extractive industries policy and advocacy advisor who authored Oxfam America’s report “Watching the Watchdogs”.

In recent decades, extractive industry companies increasingly have extended their reach to more remote and sensitive areas, as well as to more politically risky environments, in search of oil, gas, and other natural resources. At the same time, local communities, NGOs, and others increasingly demand more accountability of the corporations managing projects with the potential to cause serious environmental and social harm.

Within this context, expert panels – consisting of experienced, “independent” or third-party individuals who provide recommendations to project sponsors on social and environmental issues – have emerged as one approach to mitigate project risk for companies and communities. But in an era where public image can have a very real bottom line impact on corporate revenues, and given that expert panels typically have only advisory authority (a bark with not much bite), are these panels being used by companies and international financial institutions for image rather than for constructive advice?

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Headline: Kenya develops unique Bio-Ethanol Gel Biofuel for Kitchen Use,: “resulting in a viscous yellow liquid that burns slowly with a high heat output…”

Meanwhile, in the USA:

Headline: Feds announce recall of more ethanol fuel gel products: “The recall was made due to serious risks of flash fire and burns when consumers add pourable gel to an already-burning fire pot, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission… is aware of 65 incidents resulting in two deaths and 34 victims who were hospitalized with second degree burns of the face, chest, hands, arms or legs.”

So…Kenya develops a bio-ethanol gel just as ethanol fuel gel products are being taken off the shelves in the US because they are not safe.

Is there any chance that there’s a consumer protection agency in Kenya that could catch this potential risk?

A jatropha plantation in Mozambique where crops are used to produce biofuels. Photo by Brett Eloff/Oxfam America.

María Antonia León, El Salvador. “Before, I needed $15 weekly to buy the household necessities. Now I need $40, just for food.” Credit: Edgar Orellan

When international food prices reached an all-time peak earlier this year, many clamored to understand the drivers of this alarming trend. Oxfam dove headfirst into the discussion, pointing out the politics behind the food price crisis, and calling for reforms that would help prevent the most vulnerable from catastrophe.

But often missing from these conversations was a real understanding of how the food price crisis is playing out in communities across the globe. It may be easy for the average person to understand the impacts of higher food prices in their own life, but sometimes the big picture is too remote or complex to comprehend. That’s why we created the food price pressure points map, to provide a snapshot of how global prices are hitting home in some of the most vulnerable communities around the world.

Other groups like ActionAid and the Environmental Working Group have done fantastic work to describe the link between biofuels policies and rising prices and show just how vulnerable some countries are to price volatility. We hope our map adds to their great work, and advances this dialogue by providing new insight into the consequences of a broken food system. We also created this map to give people an easy platform to take action. That’s why we made it easily embeddable, just like a YouTube video. We encourage you to steal it, use it, and share it. Check it out and let us know what you think.

Want to put the map on your website or blog? Just go here to copy and paste the code to add this map to your own site.

This blog was written by Noah Gottschalk, Senior policy advisor for humanitarian response.

The Republic of South Sudan will become the world’s newest country on July 9, just over three weeks from today. Casting a shadow over the celebrations that should mark South Sudan’s first independence day will be the situation along the new country’s border with the north.

Since I last wrote about the contested area of Abyei, from which the United Nations now estimates over 100,000 people have been displaced, the situation has deteriorated, with fighting spreading to neighboring South Kordofan. Latest reports indicate 6,000 people are seeking safe haven around the UN compound in the state capital Kadugli, with estimates of nearly 60,000 more displaced and unknown numbers seeking refuge in the Nuba Mountains, their exact whereabouts and condition unknown. To further complicate matters, ongoing violence and serious fuel shortages are making it harder for people to flee fighting and for aid groups to reach people in need. Higher fuel costs also mean higher commodity prices, a serious problem in a place where 90% of people live on less than one dollar a day.

While aid efforts are underway to assist people who have fled Abyei, the UN has been investigating why its peacekeepers were unable to prevent the crisis from escalating in the first place. Last week, General Babacar Gaye, the former commander of UN troops in neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo and currently the top adviser to the UN’s Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) visited Sudan to find out for himself. His conclusions were damning. A spokesman said the peacekeepers “could have and should have had more visibility to deter any violence against civilians” and insisted that they would learn from these mistakes.

This family recently returned to southern Sudan after 21 years of living in the north, in the hope that after independence they would be able to have a better future. Photo by Caroline Gluck/Oxfam

Discussions in New York over the coming weeks will have a big role in determining if this will actually happen. South Sudan will get a new UN Peacekeeping mission when it becomes a new country. At issue is whether the new mission prioritizes the protection of civilians from violence with a mandate under Chapter VII of the UN Charter to physically intervene – with force if necessary – when civilians’ lives – including aid workers – are under threat. Some within the US government are reluctant to give the new mission the mandate to do so, worrying that it might be seen as undermining the new government of South Sudan. The reality, however, is that the new government, despite its laudable public commitments to protecting its people from violence, still needs support from the international community. The new government continues to work to transform its fighting forces into a professional army and to develop a civilian police service, and faces significant challenges in protecting southern Sudanese against the wide array of threats they face. North-South tensions are not the only such threats: civilians are also increasingly put at risk by violence between the SPLA and other armed groups, large scale clashes between communities, and the ongoing threat of the Lord’s Resistance Army.

As one of my colleagues working in Juba recently said, “Protection of civilians is an extremely complex, resource-intensive and politically sensitive task, one which arguably UNMIS was not set up to effectively do.” We can change that if the new mission gets it right from the start. It should have a mandate both to protect civilians from violence and to work with the new government to make it better able to protect its own people in the longer term, so in the future it can do so without a peacekeeping force.

In January, President Obama described the relatively peaceful referendum in which southern Sudanese overwhelmingly voted for secession as giving “the world renewed faith in the prospect of a peaceful, prosperous future for all of the Sudanese people — a future that the American people long to see in Sudan.” That future is at risk right now. But our government can and must make the right decisions to support the world’s newest country and its people, and to restore the hope we all felt just five months ago. Supporting a Chapter VII mandate is the best way to start.

This blog was written by Noah Gottschalk, Senior policy advisor for humanitarian response

Tensions are running high in Sudan, where an upsurge in violence in the border region of Abyei has displaced tens of thousands of people and raised fears of a return to all-out war.

With just over six weeks to go before South Sudan becomes the world’s newest country, the world’s focus has largely been on the incredible accomplishments of the largely peaceful referendum held last January to determine the future of Sudan. The results of that vote, which was a key provision of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that ended more than two decades of conflict, were overwhelmingly for secession, and southerners have been readying themselves for what they had hoped would be a peaceful independence day.

Yet with the violence in Abyei – an area roughly the size of Connecticut that was one of the worst-affected areas during the war and has long been seen as a key flashpoint of conflict –the security situation is on a knife-edge. The conflict in Abyei comes at a time when southern Sudan is facing its most violent year since the end of the civil war in 2005. Not including these recent events, over 1,400 people have been killed in southern Sudan so far this year – already more than in the whole of 2010 – and at least 117,000 have fled their homes, as violence has dramatically increased in recent months.

The Sudan referendum happened peacefully, but violence has broken out in the border region of Abyei. Photo by Alun McDonald/Oxfam

The debate on the federal budget has become so boilerplate that I can’t force myself to read the opinion pages any more.

Michael Kinsley recently wrote a piece supporting the proposal to eliminate the US Institute of Peace. He’s dead-wrong on that, but he was right that most budget commentary these days is formulaic – checking off a list of requirements:

1. Expression of general support for deficit reduction.
2. Reference to babies and bathwater.
3. This program/agency/tax break is different. A bargain for the taxpayers. Pays for itself many times over. To eliminate or cut would be bad for children/our troops.
4. Cost is small (a) as percentage of total budget; (b) compared with budget of Pentagon; (c) compared with projected cost of health care.
5. Optional comparisons: to cost of just one jet fighter or 3.7 minutes of War on Terror.
6. Names of famous people who support this program or tax cut, especially Colin Powell.
7. This is about the other side irresponsibly pursuing an ideological agenda, penalizing programs it doesn’t like.

Ok – so today, I want to rebut a proposed budget cut. AND I want to accept Kinsley’s challenge not to use the checklist. Here I go…
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On this 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day, people around the world are celebrating accomplishments, marking progress and stock taking on where more work remains to ensure women are full and equal members of society. Among the organizations contributing to this dialogue, the FAO released its State of Food and Agriculture (SOFA) report, this year on the theme of Women in Agriculture: Closing the Gender Gap for Development. The SOFA report concisely documents a number of salient facts that put in stark light the importance of supporting women as farmers, food producers and caregivers. Among the important takeaways:

Organic cotton farmer Fanta Sinayogo in Mali. Photo by Rebecca Blackwell/Oxfam America.

• Women make up 43 percent of the agricultural labor force, though this is likely a low estimate given that women self-reporting on their labor in agriculture may not report all activities or may not count some activities as work.

• Systematic discrimination – legal and/or social – preclude women from receiving the same access as men to the resources they need in order to be fully productive. Whether it is land, extension and financial services, agricultural inputs, secure land tenure, labor-saving technologies, formal education, or even access to markets to sell their goods, women receive less access, less protection, and less support. In Africa, for example, women hold as little as five percent of land in some countries, with an average across the continent of 15 percent. As a result, women do not achieve their full productive potential.

• And the real kicker is that this has very definite, and roughly quantifiable, impacts on the amount of food produced and the number of hungry people around the world. In a survey of the literature, the report finds that men produce on average about 25 percent more than women, but that this difference is largely accounted for by gaps in the use of agricultural inputs. Closing this gap could significantly increase farm yields with a marked impact, potentially reducing the number of hungry people by between 100 and 150 million. Caveats about data quality and methodologies aside, this is a significant indicator of what can be achieved by providing women with equal access to resources.

The SOFA goes on to identify ways of closing the gender gap. None of them will be surprising, most derive directly from the identified need to increase women’s access and use of key agricultural inputs. Buried among the list of recommendations is the call to strengthen women’s rights and voice, the importance of which is hard to overstate.

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