Welcoming Refugees from Afghanistan and Ukraine Is Also an Economic Investment

hschoech — Wed, 23 Mar 2022 20:44:55 +0000

The United States was once a major haven for refugees fleeing violent persecution overseas. Today it is much diminished. The US severely restricted refugee resettlement beginning in 2017. Annual refugee arrivals plummeted by 86 percent by fiscal year 2020—almost all before the pandemic. It is a door that mostly closed.

Today, with major humanitarian crises in Afghanistan and now Ukraine, that door remains mostly closed. Refugee arrivals in the US have barely begun to recover from the collapse. Afghans are being denied humanitarian parole. The U.S. government has offered Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, to Ukrainians, but it requires that they already be present in the U.S.

Blog Address:

Blog: https://www.cgdev.org/cgd-podcast

Author(s):

Reva Resstack

Cassandra Zimmer

Michael Clemens

What Did America Lose from Trump’s Mass Exclusion of Refugees? It Includes Billions of Dollars per Year

hschoech — Wed, 23 Mar 2022 14:16:12 +0000

The previous US administration sought to end all US admissions of refugees, people who face violent persecution in their home countries. After four years of work dedicated to refugee exclusion, Trump officials succeeded in slashing admissions by 86 percent. In this blog, I’ll show how the Trump administration's cuts to US refugee admissions led to 295,000 fewer refugees and cost the US billions in economic growth. First, I explore refugee admittance under the last administration, followed by explaining the economic and fiscal costs of this policy. Lastly, I introduce my new research on the ways cutting refugee and asylum acceptances continues to damage the US economy.

Blog Address:

Blog: https://www.cgdev.org/cgd-podcast

Author(s):

Michael Clemens

Price Spike Caused by Ukraine War Will Push Over 40 Million into Poverty: How Should We Respond?

egrant — Fri, 18 Mar 2022 16:23:37 +0000

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has sparked significant rises in energy and food prices. Our analysis suggests the scale of price spike will push over 40 million into extreme poverty. In this blog, we look at the outlook for commodity prices as well as the significant implications for hunger and poverty, and consider how policymakers should respond.

Blog Address:

Blog: https://www.cgdev.org/cgd-podcast

Author(s):

Ian Mitchell

Sam Hughes

Samuel Huckstep

The Ukraine Crisis Threatens to Worsen a Dangerous Dispute in Northeast Africa

jgaines — Fri, 18 Mar 2022 15:19:31 +0000

The effects of the conflict in Ukraine are reverberating across the world. In Northeast Africa, its ripples endanger the peaceful governance of food and water. Diminished wheat imports from Russia and Ukraine will make Egypt still more conscious of the threat posed to its agriculture by Ethiopia’s Grand Renaissance Dam. The coming months will be crucial, and diplomats and multilateral actors must be prepared to exert pressure to ensure a stable outcome.

Blog Address:

Blog: https://www.cgdev.org/cgd-podcast

Author(s):

Samuel Huckstep

W. Gyude Moore

Few Hits and Many Misses for Development in the FY22 US Spending Package

egrant — Fri, 18 Mar 2022 15:12:39 +0000

Nearly six months into the fiscal year, Congress finally delivered an FY22 spending bill last week. But even after stalled negotiations prompted worries that lawmakers would be unable to reach a deal at all, the final measure is something of a disappointment—failing to deliver sufficient resources to address several pressing US development and humanitarian priorities.

Blog Address:

Blog: https://www.cgdev.org/cgd-podcast

Author(s):

Jocilyn Estes

Erin Collinson

More Blended Finance? Not So Much: The Results of CGD’s Survey on Aid Agencies and Blended Finance

jgaines — Fri, 18 Mar 2022 15:02:38 +0000

The “billions to trillions” vision advanced the notion that some significant part of official development assistance (ODA) should be used to catalyze additional finance from other public and private sources. Seven years later, the expectations that blended finance would expand sharply to help narrow the gaps in financing the SDGs have not been met. We undertook a survey of development agencies to understand the current and future use of blended finance in development agency activities.

Blog Address:

Blog: https://www.cgdev.org/cgd-podcast

Author(s):

Nancy Lee

Mauricio Cardenas Gonzalez

Samuel Pleeck

Six Recommendations for Boosting the Humanitarian Response to the Ukraine Crisis

mverber — Fri, 18 Mar 2022 13:17:08 +0000

The refugee crisis caused by the war in Ukraine is shaping up to be the worst the world has seen for 80 years. There are also millions of civilians inside Ukraine—some displaced by the fighting, others still at home—who (either now or in the near future) will need assistance from humanitarian agencies like the UN, the Red Cross and international NGOs.

Here are six proposals for how the international community should respond.

Blog Address:

Blog: https://www.cgdev.org/cgd-podcast

Author(s):

Mark Lowcock

Can We (Actually) Finance Recipient Research Capacity with Aid?

hschoech — Wed, 16 Mar 2022 19:24:58 +0000

On March 14-15th, the US National Academies hosted a discussion on Africa-US science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) university partnerships, as part of an effort to design a new partnership mechanism. The program opened with representatives from African institutions talking about their experience with previous research partnerships. As the UK redesigns its mechanisms for funding research in the Global South and the US considers a new one, it is a good moment to listen to voices from (supposed) beneficiary countries on what would work better—because it seems like there is a lot to fix.

Blog Address:

Blog: https://www.cgdev.org/cgd-podcast

Author(s):

Charles Kenny

Two Years into the Pandemic, the Poorest Students Have Fallen Furthest Behind and Many Older Students Have Dropped Out

hschoech — Tue, 15 Mar 2022 04:00:00 +0000

It’s been two years since schools began closing around the world because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Even just one year into the disruption, children in some of the world’s poorest countries had missed out on “nearly a sixth of their expected lifetime education.” But at that point, data on actual learning loss and dropout rates were scarce, especially in low- and middle-income countries.

Blog Address:

Blog: https://www.cgdev.org/cgd-podcast

Author(s):

Laura Moscoviz

David Evans

At the ADB and the World Bank, which Instruments Are Fastest in a Crisis?

hschoech — Mon, 14 Mar 2022 19:27:46 +0000

When sudden shocks like the COVID-19 pandemic cripple an economy’s ability to rapidly raise revenue and reallocate limited resources, multilateral development banks (MDBs) can lead the crisis response. MDBs provide a range of instruments that support countries in different ways and at different periods of crisis.

Blog Address:

Blog: https://www.cgdev.org/cgd-podcast

Author(s):

Rakan Aboneaaj

Azusa Sato

Scott Morris