Top U.S. Foreign Aid Official Steps Down (NPR)

[eppur_se_muova]

Top U.S. Foreign Aid Official Steps Down

by Michele Kelemen

Weekend Edition - Saturday, January 14, 2006 · The head of America's foreign assistance agency, USAID, is stepping down after five tumultuous years on the job. Before leaving, Andrew Natsios fired some parting shots at the Bush administration for its approach to development.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5158012
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click on the 'listen' button. I heard part of this in the morning. He had to be bleeped a couple of times. USAID was meant to be nonpolitical, but its role has been increasingly taken over by the State Dept., which makes aid available to cooperative regimes.

[Ian David]

1. Related thread: Bush Recess appointments- A creepy "Facts of Life" Reunion

Bush Recess appointments- A creepy "Facts of Life" Reunion
Topic started by IanDB1 on Jan-13-06 02:18 PM (4 replies)
Last modified by Oreo on Jan-13-06 02:45 PM
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=2367067

See also:

Ellen Sauerbrey nomination: Call in Day TODAY, Tell the Senate, "No more Crony appointments."
by: Kankakee Voice
October 24, 2005 at 10:57:20 America/Chicago
Please join FreeChoiceSavesLives.org and eleven other groups in a national call-in day today to stop the Ellen Sauerbrey nomination!

Good news, our efforts to block Ellen Sauerbrey's nomination are getting tons of press! It is now up to the members of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations to decide whether to confirm or reject Bush's nominee.

If we hope to stop her, we need to flood the leaders of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee with calls opposing Sauerbrey's confirmation TODAY.

<snip>

TEN REASONS TO OPPOSE THE NOMINATION OF ELLEN SAUERBREY TO BE ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE FOR POPULATION, REFUGEES, AND MIGRATION

1. She has no experience protecting or re-settling refugees

2. She has no background in international crisis management.

3. She has stated her erroneous belief that "reproductive health services" is code for abortion, which raises serious questions about her commitment to family planning and reproductive health.

4. She led the Administration's attempt to derail efforts by 189 countries to reaffirm the Beijing Platform for Action, a historic agreement encompassing a broad-based agenda for promoting and protecting women’s rights worldwide.

5. She has no experience with managing a program even close to the size of the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (it has a $700 million budget).

6. She opposed the Convention on the Right of the Child (CRC), which every other country ratified.

7. She opposed the Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). The U.S. joins only Iran, North Korea, Oman, Qatar, Somalia, Sudan, and Syria in its failure to ratify CEDAW.

8. She told United Families International that she is "not terribly interested in the UN because we don't see it as a friendly forum."

9. She, in her swearing-in ceremony to become Ambassador to the Commission on the Status of Women, said that more than 2 million HIV positive mothers infect “over 700,000 innocent newborns yearly,” and uses that to advocate for mother to child transmission prevention, but does not offer a plan to prevent women from becoming infected with HIV or suggest treatment should be available to HIV positive women.

10. She perpetuated the distortion of the U.S. State Department findings on the role of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in China. (The Bush Administration has withheld its contribution to UNFPA, which provides essential family planning services to women in over 126 countries, based on assertions that UNFPA’s programs in China support coercive abortion.)

In Conclusion
Sauerbrey is a crony appointment who has neither the experience nor the expertise to fill such an important post.


More:
http://www.soapblox.net/chicago/showDiary.do?diaryId=442

See also:

Democrats Zero In On Another Nominee
Ability to Run Refugee Program Queried
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 26, 2005; Page A07

<snip>

Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes (D-Md.), whose staff played a key role in organizing opposition to Sauerbrey, named previous holders of the post, noting that many had extensive expertise in refugee matters. "It's really raising the question about the qualifications that you bring to handle this refugee issue," he said.

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said: "I think the concern here is just that the issues of refugee relief are a very specific and extraordinarily difficult task, and it doesn't appear that this is an area where you have specific experience."

Sauerbrey countered that her involvement in women's issues for the United Nations allowed her to travel widely and work "personally with women who have been the victims of conflict, of trafficking, of extraordinary degradation."

But Boxer said that Sauerbrey has shown "outright hostility" toward women's human rights and abortion rights at the United Nations.

More:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/25/AR2005102501533.html


See also:

Commission on the Status of Women
Forty-eight Session
8th & 9th Meetings (AM & PM)
http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2004/wom1439.doc.htm

[rodeodance]

3. kickypoo

[coldiggs]

2. good I think some high level res. will bring attention to all the S""t tha

t is going on

[quiet.american]

4. Thank you for this link. It really helped me out. n/t