Addressing global poverty (original) (raw)

• During the 1990s poverty was substantially reduced in most areas of the world, with the notable exceptions of Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. Despite the billions of dollars spent by the international community to combat poverty, the majority of the people in these regions remained mired in poverty with little hope for improvement. In the early 2000s both the United States and the UN launched new initiatives to tackle poverty. The American initiative, entitled the Millennium Challenge Account, aimed to concentrate aid on countries that met certain criteria, including good government, economic management, and transparency. Outside of the realm of national governments a wide variety of NGOs played an active role in humanitarian and developmental assistance, however the helpfulness of these organizations was sometimes questioned. In this episode of Great Decisions host Peter Krogh sits down with Carol Lancaster, former Deputy Administrator for USAID, and Washington Post columnist Sebastian Mallaby to discuss the ongoing efforts to end global poverty.