Comments for Chris Blattman

Comment on The World Bank gets conflicted in the blogosphere by William O

William O — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 15:55:59 +0000

Chris, I *strongly* recommend the following book on economic development, including violence and conflict: Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History, by Douglass North, John Wallis and Barry Weingast (Cambridge University Press, 2009). It contains some of the most cutting-edge findings in the political economy of development, as well as many great insights that I am sure would inform your work.
Best regards

Comment on Mules in the modern military by Shannon

Shannon — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 10:55:49 +0000

I’ve seen loads of donkeys in Mali, Kenya, and Botswana. Donkey riding seems a popular pastime among children on the Kenyan coast. Not so many horses, thus no mules.

Comment on Is Uganda a good place to be gay? by Nick

Nick — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 22:55:50 +0000

Hi Chris,
I’d like to quote you from this piece in a story I’m writing on Uganda for DNA, a gay lifestyle and current affairs magazine. Can I have your permission and what attribution would you like attached to it?
Nick Cook
DNA Magazine

Comment on Is Uganda a good place to be gay? by James

James — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:16:22 +0000

At the core is religion. The debate was stirred up by American evangelicals giving fiery sermons to a receptive audience. The fact is that there is a racial/religious element to it, not just in Africa but African descendants everywhere, including America, because religion is deeply ingrained into the culture. African-Americans in California were instrumental in passing the recent anti-homosexual amendment. Homosexuality is not accepted in any African community that I can think of, including throughout the Caribbean. Uganda is even more outrageous in harboring another problem not mention in the homosexuality coverage, that of child sacrifice, killing children for some spiritual purposes.

Comment on Is Uganda a good place to be gay? by Michael Yarbrough

Michael Yarbrough — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:15:43 +0000

Thank you, thank you, thank you for this. I am a graduate student (also at Yale, incidentally) who studies the LGBTI community in South Africa, and I have been saying this for weeks. One mustn’t underplay the depth and breadth of anti-gay feeling in Africa, of course, but the story is so much more complex than the MSM or–equally importantly–many popular LGBT blogs in the West have assumed. There’s also an undercurrent of racism in much of the coverage that I find troubling, depending as it so often does on stereotypes of the ignorant, histrionic African.

Although I might argue that SA has at least as sophisticated a public debate around sexual orientation as Uganda, not to mention a much stronger legal situation. But in any event, thanks for this very important point.

Comment on Is African poverty falling faster than we think? by bertha

bertha — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 13:25:07 +0000

Come live with us in the village for for 3 months and then analyse your claims.

Comment on Is faith based aid a failed experiment? by Matt Scott

Matt Scott — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 05:08:27 +0000

Thanks Chris for the thoughtful examination of the issues. As a World Vision staffer myself, I can state categorically that the organisation forbids proselytism in the strongest possible terms. Proselytism is the giving of aid *in exchange for* some religious transaction (listening to some message or acceptance of some set of religious values, etc). Not only do the industry codes of humanitarianism (Sphere, ICRC/NGO Code of Conduct, etc) require such a focus on needs only, the teachings of Jesus (read Matthew 25:31-46) require it also. So it’s not a question of being inspired to provide humanitarian and development assistance by our faith *or* by human rights values (rather loosely defined), but rather a mix of both. With 41,000 staff there’s a lot of room for interpretation. Clearly, we make mistakes and some of our staff get more zealous than organisational policy allows. But we partner all the time with organisations who don’t share our faith commitment, and most of the time it works out just fine. While we may differ on what motivates us, we are all committed pretty much to the same result: security, development, aid, dignity, opportunity, etc. What’s clear, however, is that the work is deadly serious – yesterday we lost six beloved staff members in Pakistan to terrorist violence. All of them were Muslims, working for a Christian NGO. Unfortunately the neat and tidy rhetorical categories that exist in blog posts don’t exist in real life, which is quite a bit more complicated. Thanks, Chris, for shedding light on some of that complexity.

Comment on The UN failure in Haiti by Dylan Grey

Dylan Grey — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 03:43:51 +0000

from an anonymous friend who is currently in Port-au-Prince with a large and well respected INGO:

“Haiti is hardly the place to judge the merits of UN coordination or the cluster system. There is no way any response could be undertaken at the scale and complexity required here in which you couldn’t pick holes. RI are taking easy shots; there’s nothing in that report people on the ground aren’t aware of or haven’t thought about, but just don’t have the resources to address.”

p.s. also, don’t forget that the UN was itself very much affected by the disaster – if I recall, wasn’t the country director killed in the UN building collapse?

Comment on Is Uganda a good place to be gay? by David

David — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 16:56:21 +0000

Thanks – this is a really interesting post and it is invaluable to have voices like yours to counter dominant media narratives for people like myself who are not otherwise well-versed in the nuances of issues like this.

Comment on Is faith based aid a failed experiment? by KS

KS — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:09:10 +0000

Chris has raised a very important point I think but Ranil especially points the major issue in all this debate – evangelistic, impartial, delivery of aid.

Faith-based does not mean evangelistic or impartial. But neither does none-faith-based or secular mean that agencies are impartial nor coming with an agenda they want to impose.