“Africa is suffering from a new AIDs crisis: ‘Air-conditioned Induced Decisions.’  Our leaders live in air-conditioned homes, travel in air-conditioned cars, work in air-conditioned offices.  And it affects the decisions they make.” ~Maiko Zulu, Zambian reggae music star and activist

I had a chance to meet Maiko Zulu last week.  He wears frustration and disappointment with his country on his sleeve (and in his music).  Zambia is a country that should be improving economically.  Driven by mining large copper and cobalt reserves, economic growth has been high for the last decade, not less than 5% per year and more than 7% as recently as 2010.  The Economist in 2011 listed Zambia as one of the world’s 10 fastest-growing economies. Since, 2000, average income per capita has grown by more than 40%, lifting Zambia from “low-income country” to a “lower middle-income country.”

But high economic growth and increased average income have not translated into reduced poverty or better conditions for most Zambians.  If Zambia’s national income was a dollar, the poorest 10% of Zambians receive less than $0.02 and the richest 10% control $0.43, making Zambia one of the most unequal countries on earth. Despite good news on growth and income, Zambia is becoming more unequal and poverty is actually rising.

This analysis comes from a very important report released last week, Equity in Extractives, launched by the Africa Progress Panel.  It looks closely at the 20 African resource-rich countries that depend on extractive industries and finds they are performing quite badly in converting their mineral and energy wealth into benefits for the public. A few factoids:

• Twelve of the 25 countries in the world with the highest child mortality rates are resource-rich African countries.
• Equatorial Guinea, rich with oil, is actually now classified as a high-income country with an average income of more than $27,000 a year, higher than Poland.  But Equatorial Guinea’s child-death rate is 20 times higher than Poland’s.

In general, the resource-rich African countries are badly under-performing on basic human development and poverty reduction, despite how much money they’re making.  This chart tells the story: on the left are the countries’ ranking on wealth (actually income), and on the right is their ranking on human development indicators.  That rightward slope means people aren’t getting the health, education, and opportunity that they deserve.  Most resource-rich countries under-perform in every indicator. (Tanzania and Ghana are notable.)

One of the most interesting bits of the report is a forensic analysis that shows that inequality is growing in resource-rich countries, or at least in those the report analyzed.  The data is hard to come by, but seems to show that not only is the economic growth and revenue from oil and mining boom not being shared, but the elite are capturing (stealing?) ever more of the money over time. This means less poverty reduction than there should be, and in some cases more poverty than there was.

More than that, revenues that rightfully belong to the people of these countries are diverted through poor governance, thereby robbing the majority of citizens from the chance to improve their lives via social services and government investment intended to diversify economies. By not widening opportunities away from dependence on extractives and creating more jobs, inequality is not addressed.

Gawain Kripke and Maiko Zulu in Cape Town last week.

The paper is important, and not only if you’re interested in extractive industries.  The analysis provides useful insights and ways to look at the issues that will interest anyone who cares about development and poverty.  The paper is studiously optimistic about the role extractive resources can play in benefiting development and poverty reduction.

Meanwhile, the truth of the inequality of growth is becoming more evident to the public in these countries.  As Maiko Zulu observes above, there is a disconnect between the public interest and those of the plutocrats and oligarchs who are running the countries.

“We can’t speak of economic growth when people are dying of poverty.”

Will disconnect eventually lead to discontent?  That’s a risky proposition that could lead anywhere…

To read the Equity in Extractives report, click here.

The chair of the Africa Progress Panel, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, has pushed back on an oil industry attack against the landmark US Dodd-Frank Act oil and mining payment disclosure provision. In an op-ed in today’s New York Times, Annan said the lawsuit launched by the American Petroleum Institute against the US Securities and Exchange Commission was a “strategic folly” and those companies supporting the suit, such as Chevron, Exxon, BP and Shell were “swimming against the tide of reform”.

Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, Chair of the Africa Progress Panel. UN Photo/Evan Schneider

The Africa Progress Panel’s 2013 report “Equity in Extractives” was released today in Cape Town and focuses on steps to take to ensure that Africa’s oil, gas and mining boom actually benefits the majority of African’s rather than a select few. The panel includes the former head of the IMF, Michel Camdessus; former US Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin; former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo; former first lady of Mozambique Graca Machel; and Peter Eigen, founder of Transparency International and former chair of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, among others.

These heavy hitters stand behind a report that says there “is no credible evidence to indicate that the Dodd-Frank requirements will impose significant additional costs, let alone threaten the competitive position of some of the world’s largest companies.” The report says that the “Cardin-Lugar” or Section 1504 provision of Dodd-Frank and forthcoming European Union disclosure requirements provisions represents an important opportunity for African civil society groups to work with multinational companies to “achieve higher standards of disclosure” but notes that some companies appear “to be squandering that opportunity” with the US lawsuit.

In advance of June’s G8 summit, the report says “all countries must adopt and enforce” project-by-project disclosure standards such as in the US and EU—“as major players in Africa’s extractives sector, Australia, Canada and China should be the next countries to actively support this emerging global consensus.”

Oxfam’s new Executive Director, Winnie Byanyima, is from Uganda, a country undergoing its own oil boom, and is in Cape Town for the World Economic Forum Africa. She said “African governments must use oil, gas and mining to raise revenue, but this boom must not steamroll the rights of communities living on top of Africa’s mineral wealth. It is important that local communities are informed and consulted about extractive industry projects that affect them.”

With the political boost from today’s African Progress Report we are one step closing to realizing the so far unrealized potential of Africa’s resource endowment.

As a mother of two, I now know that all my years of schooling did not prepare me nearly as well for working life as being a mother. As all mothers know, mothers are the ultimate project managers and multi-taskers, juggling many tasks at once, carrying out strategies but always being nimble to change course on a dime in the face of a temper tantrum, dirty diaper, or sick child. But for mothers in the developing world there are even bigger and more dire challenges, like where the next meal will come from, how to get medicine for a sick child, or finding potable drinking water. And yet, mothers in the developing world learn to cope with these challenges daily. That’s why so many are now realizing that investing in women is the key to feeding the planet and to economic growth.

According to a recent Gates Foundation report, “When women don’t control resources and income, their households may suffer from malnutrition. Men are less likely than women to reinvest their income in the health of the family.”  In a report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN, women are deemed to be the key to food security indicating that “if women had equal access to agricultural resources and services, food security would be greatly improved and societies would grow richer, and not only in economic terms.”

But it isn’t just NGO’s and UN bodies claiming a good return on investment when providing resources and opportunities to women, Goldman Sachs, the large investment firm also conducted research with the World Bank and concluded that “investments in women—particularly in education and labor force participation—lead to read GDP growth, as women take their earnings and invest them back in their families and communities.” And just last week the billionaire and investment guru, Warren Buffett also expressed his bullish take on women in an essay published in Fortune magazine where he declares his optimism for America’s future lies with American women, untapped resource!

So to all those mothers and multi-taskers, here is a list of 10 (thought there are undoubtedly more) tasks that women in the developing world take on each day:

1. Child rearing

This mother and child fled their villages and had just arrived at the El Salaam camp in North Darfur. Photo: Eva-Lotta Jansson / Oxfam America

2. Cooking

Cooking “arroz chaufa” (stir fried rice) in the communal pot, village of San Jacinto, Peru. Photo: Evan Abramson /Oxfam America

3. Growing commodity crops for sale

Etchi Avla on her cocoa farm in Botende, Ivory Coast. Photo: Peter DiCampo / Oxfam America

4. Selling at the market 

Since she received an Oxfam cash grant, this market vendor in Darfur is able to support her children, brothers and sisters. Photo: Elizabeth Stevens/Oxfam America

5. Fetching water

Jainaba Bojang carries a tub of water home from a bore hole and water pump in the village of Oupat, Gambia. Photo: Rebecca Blackwell:Oxfam America

6. Chopping and gathering firewood

Howa Abdullha comes back to Kebkabiye, North Darfur, carrying firewood she has gathered outside town. Photo: Eva-Lotta Jansson / Oxfam America

7. Laundry

Hencia Josena does laundry at work in a Haitian hospital. Photo: Liz Lucas/Oxfam America

8. Maintaining the house

Members of Ratnaweera family stand outside their new house in Sri Lanka.  Photo: Atul Loke/Panos for Oxfam America

9. Growing crops for food

This Cambodian farmer used system of rice intensification (SRI) practices to cultivate rice. Photo: Patrick Brown/ Oxfam America

10. Caring for elders

These three elders at the Internally Displaced Persons Magunga Camp noted that they had family looking after them. Photo: Liz Lucas/ Oxfam America

A little over three months ago, I sat attentively listening to the give and take between Nigerian Female Food Hero, Susan Godwin, and Chicago Council on World Affairs Senior Fellow, Roger Thurow. Thurow was moderating a panel at the World Food Prize Symposium called A Billion Hungry: Can We Feed the World Sustainably? Also part of the discussion were Sir Gordon Conway, scholar and author; plant breeding and genetics pioneer, Gebisa Ejeta, and Jane Karuku, President of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa.

Roger Thurow and Susan Godwin at the World Food Prize Dialogue. Photo: Jacob Silberman.

Now, an online dialogue, The Future of Agriculture, is considering much the same question about addressing hunger in the face of many challenges ahead. This discussion also includes my acquaintances, Susan Godwin and Roger Thurow. Mrs. Godwin writes eloquently on the challenge of passing the legacy of farming on to the next generation in  My Daughter Wants to Be a Farmer. Thurow again plays the role of summarizing and connecting the dots at the end of week one of the conversation.

In the first week, writers like Bill McKibben, writer and founder of 350.org, and Jose Graziano del Silva, Director General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), argued that moving away from an agriculture dependent on fossil fuels could not only benefit the planet but set the stage for a more resilient and productive agriculture.

Joining McKibben and del Silva were thought leaders with very diverse points of view and from different parts of the world. All considered what future farming might look like if we better considered the role of women, risk, farmer-based knowledge, and less reliance on fossil fuel.

The discussion continues through this week with a new set of essays posted each day. So far the discussion has been lively. But to help build our understanding we need broad participation and dialogue. So please take some minutes each day to visit http://blogs.oxfam.org/en/future-of-agriculture. The essays are short; the implications for our future tasks are great.

After reading both Roger Thurow’s and Susan Godwin’s online contributions, I thought back to that hall in Iowa with over 800 people attending. Mrs. Godwin told how her community and other had asked her what she might offer to all the highly educated and important people that she might address in the US. She said that most important she would tell them how her work had improved the lives of her family and the other women in her community. And after a pause, during which the audience grew even more quiet, she declared, “I will tell them that I am a farmer!”

That day, that large crowd filled with educators, scientists, political leaders, and activists rose to their feet. They acknowledged that the hope for a well-fed future depends on the efforts of all stakeholders, and ideas from all sectors.

The Future of Agriculture discussion is no different. Join the conversation today.

Rohit Malpani is a campaigns advisor at Oxfam and leads the organization’s access to medicines campaign. Oxfam’s response to Progressive Economy’s “Trade Fact of the Week” 11/28/12 is cross posted from the Progressive Economy blog.

Oxfam disagrees with the analysis set out in your November 28 article about patent protection for medicines. The article incorrectly explains the TRIPS Agreement, and we do not believe there was ever a global consensus in support of the intellectual property (IP) approach promoted by USTR, as implied in your article.

The TRIPS Agreement sets out minimum standards for IP protection, and explicitly includes a series of exceptions and limitations to IP rights that may be used by governments in order to achieve public policy objectives, including improvement of health outcomes. We have long been puzzled by efforts to portray compulsory licensing as a legal tool that may only be used during health “crises” or “emergencies”. Put simply, this interpretation is unsupported by the text of the Agreement itself. Similarly, the Doha Declaration confirms the right of countries to use all IP flexibilities in TRIPS “especially”—not “only”—in relation to health emergencies and pandemics.

We question the “policy calm” that you state has existed for 10 years in relation to patented medicines. In fact, that “policy calm” has never existed. Instead, there have been on-going tensions due to the endless efforts of the USTR, under pressure by the multinational pharmaceutical industry, to renegotiate the terms and conditions of the TRIPS Agreement through other means, and especially to strip away the public health limitations and exceptions that were included in the TRIPS Agreement in 1994. Developing countries are finding increasingly that they must endure against these tensions and challenge the pressure because many patients in their countries cannot obtain the medicines they need – especially newer treatments that are still under patent protection, which tend to be out of reach. Certainly governments in poor countries should allocate more money to health care, but the exorbitant prices of many patented medicines, an increasingly familiar problem in the United States, are an absolute barrier to health care coverage in resource-deficient countries.

Together with other humanitarian groups, we have documented a persistent, severe lack of access to new treatments and quality health care across developing countries, with the lowest income groups most affected. Upgrading health infrastructure is a crucial part of the solution, as is use by governments of all the policy options available to them, including IP flexibilities, to promote the availability of quality, low-cost versions of new treatments for their populations.

Medicines, including but not only “essential medicines” as identified by the WHO, are an important component of healthcare. Depending on their affliction, patients need access to quality, effective treatments regardless of whether these are on the WHO essential medicines list (EML). Moreover, medicines are selected for inclusion in the EML based on a range of factors, including affordability; because patent-protected treatments are more expensive, they are generally not included in the list. This is a critical flaw in the papers cited in your analysis, which found—unsurprisingly—that many medicines on the EML are off-patent.

Health care also does not only refer to AIDS, TB and malaria. To say that India has a “relatively small patient population” with cancer and other non-communicable diseases is wrong. Today, the World Health Organization notes that 80 percent of all non-communicable diseases (cancer, heart disease, diabetes) are in low-income countries, especially as life-styles and eating habits undergo a dramatic shift. By some projections, there are up to 2.5 million cases of cancer in India today. Likewise, by 2025, India will have over 75 million cases of diabetes. These are not problems which can be addressed through charity and insurance. They require serious, Marshall-Plan like investments by governments to both prevent development of these diseases and, inevitably, to provide treatment to ensure that their own citizens can lead healthy lives.

Improving health outcomes in the developing world will require substantial investments in health infrastructure, services, and medicines. At the same time, we urge governments to use policy tools available to them to promote availability of quality, effective treatments at the lowest possible cost.

In late October, a week before Hurricane Sandy arrived on the East Coast of the US, I entered a maelstrom of food and people in the scenic region of Italy at the southern foot of the Alps. It was the Terra Madre event in Turin, northern Italy, the biennial occasion that draws over 200,000 people from around the world to celebrate and discuss food production, preparation and enjoyment. And next Monday is Terra Madre Day, a day to celebrate our locally grown and produced food.

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Carlo Petrini established both Slow Food and Terra Madre “to counter the rise of fast food and fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions and people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our food choices affect the rest of the world.”[1] At the opening ceremony, the sage of the Slow Food movement declared that “caring for food means caring for all living beings.” And after long applause, Petrini added that promoting the dignity, well-being, happiness and community means taking a “political approach.”

African garden display at Terra Madre. Photo: Jim French

I attended the October event as an Oxfam America delegate upon invitation of Slow Food USA. During the opening event, sitting by my side was Frederick Msiska, a farmer from Malawi. He coordinated a Slow Food Garden Project in his country and had come to help construct an amazing 400 square meter African garden in the Oval pavilion at Terra Madre. Showcasing the vast variety of vegetables, fruits, grains, and medicinal plants that grow on the continent, the garden was a visual symbol of the cultural communities working to support a diverse and healthy food system. It also expressed a political idea: the value in investing in and empowering small scale producers to help support a well-fed, fair, and sustainable planet.

Esther Jerome and Marianna Yatsyshina at Terra Madre. Photo: Giorgio Gori

Frederick Msiksa was joined by hundreds of small farmers from developing nations. These included Tanzanian Food Hero, Esther Jerome, and, Grow Method honoree from Siberia Marianna Yatsyshina. these small-scale producers represented the ideal of what can happen when people are given the means and resources to grow, prepare and market food. But they also spoke about the injustice that occurs when companies, governments or wealthy investors buy up or seize land and displace people, or when native fisheries are decimated by industrial operations, or when indigenous practices and skills are neglected and lost.

The theme of this Terra Madre: “Good, clean, fair.” seemed to me like a good fit with the GROW Campaign triad of Food, Justice, Planet. Slow Food’s broad global network is more often associated with the pleasure of preparing and consuming good food rather than justice issues.But, in a world now facing climate change, conflict over land and water, and the need to meet the world demand for food while eradicating hunger and safeguarding the environment, the common ground of Oxfam and Slow Food is growing.

A well-fed world is one that must cultivate justice and sustainability and produce nutritious and good tasting food.

A few months ago, I was talking to my colleague Kimberly, about how difficult it is to talk about the future of agriculture in public without things spinning out of control. Most people don’t much care. But those who do, REALLY CARE. It doesn’t take long in any conversation, for example, before someone in the conversation begins accusing someone else of being part of a corporate conspiracy, or someone accuses a whole community of being “peasant romanticists”. The energy and anger of the interchanges sometimes seems out of proportion and quite unconstructive.

Oxfam has been engaged in agriculture policy and programming since our early beginnings—so we brush against these partisans all the time. Indeed, there are many partisans among us. Often, our favored course is to keep our heads low and avoid the rough and tumble.

But, that’s not really possible in the current era. With the launch of our GROW Campaign, we have put the issues of food, hunger, and sustainable, inclusive agriculture at the center of Oxfam’s public engagement and the heart of our policy agenda. So, how do we broach these subjects without instigating mortal combat and without making Oxfam a target of every possible interest and ideology?

Well, the best idea we came up with was to host a conversation and hope that good ideas and some elements of a consensus emerge. So that’s what we’re doing.

Starting Monday, we’re hosting a ten-day Future of Agriculture online discussion and debate. We’ve invited experts and leaders in the field to contribute provocative essays, and we’ll invite everyone else to weigh in. That means you.

Set your browsers and ready your keyboards. And jump right in!

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Guest Post by Rosa Musa of the African Women’s Development & Communications Network (FEMNET)

Rose Musa of FEMNET was a civil society representative from Kenya at the 4th High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Busan last year. Ilene Perlman/Oxfam America

Nairobi, Kenya – I set out early in the morning of September 10^th to join 35 other civil society colleagues from across the globe for a deliberation on the Sustainable Development Goals and the Post-2015 Development Agenda.

As the taxi meandered and navigated through the rubble and dust—characteristic of road work in progress—my gaze fell upon on a newspaper under the seat in front of me. The headline that caught my attention was utterly depressing:  Man Slaughters Five Sons After Quarrel with Wife. I went on to read the gory details of how battering his wife and threatening to kill her with an axe was a daily pastime for Mr. John Kiprono Kitui.

Working in an organisation that advocates for women’s rights in Africa, this is the reality we face every day. It demonstrates the challenges of matching policy and practice as 2015 approaches and we prepare to bid farewell to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The article ignited me. I thought, “How can this be explained in a world where gender equality is mainstreamed in all eight MDGs? Where countless conventions exist that are supposed to serve the hopes and aspirations of women?”

Those of us who work in the area of development and women’s rights clearly still have a lot of work to do.

As a pan-African organisation with members all across Africa, FEMNET works with and through women’s NGOs running programmes and projects at the national level.  The network collaboratively identifies our priorities, which currently range from women in leadership and governance to women’s economic empowerment to sexual and reproductive health to the institutional strengthening of women’s organisations and networks in Africa. FEMNET implements our programmes with the understanding that no society can be considered free or democratic unless all its members—especially women—have equal rights, equal access to opportunities, and equal control over resources.

And where tragedies like that of the Kitui family do not occur.

A starting point for realising this vision is implementation of the Busan Partnership Framework and all other processes that will follow the MDGs. More than anything else, as governments, donors, and other partners move from Busan to address development issues and aid financing, we need a paradigm shift that is truly transformative, just, and sustainable for women. Changes are needed in the aid architecture to achieve inclusiveness, to ensure legitimacy, and to correct the linked imbalances of power in the inexorably linked country-to-country and male-female relations.

FEMNET members demonstrating for women's rights. Photo courtesy of FEMNET.

Looking towards 2015 and beyond, civil society organisations must remain committed to the process by actively assisting donors, development agencies, and governments to transition from a narrow focus on aid delivery, to outcomes that ensure all human beings are treated equally. As a representative of FEMNET in Busan, I participated because we envisage an Africa characterised by women’s shift from victims to agents of change, using international legal and policy commitments to strengthen actions towards change at home.

We are all part of the solution.

This guest post is part of an Oxfam-sponsored feature on Devex entitled, “One year later, where do we stand on commitments made in Busan?“ 

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Credit: Oxfam America Action Corps and  Grazioso Pictures Inc.

Last week, I managed an (almost) zero mile meal. My backyard chickens provided eggs for a crustless quiche, flavored by garden-grown cherry tomatoes and basil, with freshly dug roasted potatoes on the side. The food was all local—almost. You need olive oil, salt and pepper to flavor, well, everything. And for dessert there was coffee and chocolate, wonderful foods that don’t grow so well in Massachusetts—but that do come in fair trade varieties that ensure small-scale farmers and farm workers around the world get a fair deal.

The meal was a reminder that “Eating Local” is just one part of the food justice equation. Buying fair trade is another. And there are many more. As Oxfam prepares to mark World Food Day on October 16, we’re thinking a lot about all the components of food justice. We hope you’ll do the same by holding a World Food Day meal and talking about how you can fight world hunger from your kitchen table.

Oxfam’s GROW Campaign recently released a report, Food Transformations, which detailed the power of consumers to contribute to global food security. For instance, meat production alone takes up eight percent of the world’s water supply. If a family of four substituted lentil burgers for beef burgers for just one night, they would save the equivalent of 17 bathtubs full of water. That is a small change with a powerful impact. To help consumers harness this power, Oxfam has launched the GROW Method, five easy ways to feed your family healthy and delicious meals while ensuring everyone on the planet has enough to eat, always.

The steps seem simple and straightforward: waste less food, eat local and seasonal, support small farmers worldwide, eat less meat, and cook smart. But nothing is simple when it comes to the politics of  the plate. When the USDA raised the idea of employees participating in Meatless Monday this summer, it sparked a political firestorm. Meanwhile, a stalled Farm Bill threatens to harm food security from Michigan to Mali, and ethanol mandates are requiring much needed food to be used as fuel. As food prices rise and Oxfam and other organizations warn of a potential global food crisis, the price of political and personal inaction also rises. Order our free World Food Day 2012 resources, and consider holding a World Food Day Meal to celebrate the culture and community, power and politics of food.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton makes her first visit to South Sudan Friday, making her the highest-ranking US official to visit the world’s newest country. Her trip could not come at a more important time. The UN Security Council gave South Sudan and Sudan until August 2 to move forward with political negotiations and enabling humanitarian access to Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile, where more than 665,000 people have been internally displaced or severely affected by conflict according to the UN. Both countries are now in violation of this ultimatum, putting them at risk of UN sanctions. In the meantime, civilians on both sides of the border are suffering, including 4.7 million people in South Sudan—half the country’s population—who do not have enough food to eat.

A new borehole drilled by Oxfam in Warrap State, South Sudan. Photo by Noah Gottschalk

The official purpose of the trip—part of a seven-nation tour of Africa—is to “reaffirm U.S. support and encourage progress in negotiations  with Sudan to reach agreement on issues related to security, oil and citizenship.” The US has remained deeply invested, both through ongoing high-level diplomacy and through the provision of significant humanitarian and development assistance, in trying to help South Sudan find its way out of the worst crisis since the end of the two decades’ long civil war. By sending America’s most senior diplomat, however, Washington is signaling its escalating concern as well as its impatience with the slow pace of progress.

In his remarks marking the country’s independence just over one year ago, President Obama expressed his confidence that “the bonds of friendship between South Sudan and the United States will only deepen in the years to come.” But being a true friend means speaking hard truths, and Secretary Clinton must use the opportunity of her visit to express concern with the political developments which are having such a massive humanitarian impact on South Sudanese civilians and putting at risk the hard-won gains of peace.

In December, I watched Secretary Clinton address the International Engagement Conference on South Sudan in Washington. In one of the most frank speeches of the two-day event, she welcomed the new nation to the international stage while clearly outlining the challenges ahead. While lauding the new country on achieving its “quest for peace and dignity”, she urged South Sudan to “move forward”, “leave war behind”, and “finalize [the] hard-won peace”. Her discussions with senior South Sudanese officials in Juba, including President Salva Kiir, will not be easy. As Clinton herself recognized, South Sudan has many reasons to be skeptical of continued diplomacy, and progress depends on a “willing partner in Khartoum”. Nevertheless, both countries have no other option but to end their political and economic crisis through negotiations. By sending this message, Secretary Clinton joins the growing voices in South Sudanese civil society urging the government to make the difficult compromises necessary to stop the spiraling crisis in the immediate term, and over the long run, to enable a brighter future for the people of both Sudan and South Sudan.