Owen abroad

Archive for May, 2005

Lovely quote from Malcolm Rifkind, today appointed as the shadow to David Blunkett, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, who happens to be blind:

I will be looking at David Blunkett across the Despatch Box and holding him to account on behalf of the country.

Another very interesting post at Democracy Arsenal, this time reminding us of ten things the UN does well.

This will take a look at the top 10 things the U.S. does well or, in a few cases, not quite "well" but at least better than any other organization out there. The approach of D-Day on John Bolton makes this as good a time as any to remind ourselves why the UN matters and some of the ways that we count on it.

I commend to you an excellent article at Democracy Arsenal about Sudan, and the failure of the powerful nations to stop the genocide in Darfur. (The article is about United States policy, but the point applies equally to the United Kingdom.)

In the eyes of the world, Darfur is a test – maybe the most closely watched test – of who we are. If we put the quest for intelligence on terror above the battle against what we ourselves have called genocide, the answer to who we are is one that will push other countries away, rather than drawing them toward us. This will hurt us in more than just the war on terror. Yes, the fight against terror is important. More important than nearly any other U.S policy objective. But not more important than what we stand for.

The British Government’s new website on sustainable development is a commendably thoughtful contribution. WorldChanging.com has an interesting commentary:

Behavioral inertia is a tricky thing, but once overcome, large changes can happen at once. They draw an analogy to smoking–in the 1950′s, 70% of Brits smoked, but after a few decades of this four-pronged approach the figure is down to 28% and no-smoking-in-public-places laws are being considered in many locations, which would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.

AidsMatters reports that two recent reviews of Uganda’s celebrated "ABC" (abstinence, be faithful, condoms) approach to AIDS management have questioned whether abstinence and being faithful have contributed to the decline in AIDS in Uganda. First, researchers at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health reported in February that abstinence and fidelity don’t seem to have played a significant role in declining AIDS levels in Uganda’s Rakai district compared to condom usage. Second, Toronto’s Globe and Mail reports on recent studies that suggest that much of Uganda’s success in lower AIDS rates is due to deaths because of AIDS, a factor not previously given sufficient epidemiologic weight.