Ahead of a U.N. summit in Copenhagen next month, scepticism is growing that an agreement will be reached on a global climate treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol, due to expire in 2012.

The protocol set targets aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, which are believed to be responsible for the gradual rise in the Earth’s average temperature. Many scientists say that reducing carbon dioxide emissions is key to preventing climate change.

But authors Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner argue in their new book SuperFreakonomics that humanity can take an alternative route to try and save the planet.

“If the goal is to stop warming then geo-engineering solutions are worth considering because they are far cheaper, probably much more do-able and easily reversible,” Dubner told Reuters before a talk at the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce in London.

Related vlog: How to become a freakonomist

Negotiations to save the planet from catastrophic climate change are heading for trouble, five weeks before a crucial U.N. conference in Copenhagen.

The European Union has been at the forefront in pressing for binding, internationally monitored reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, and funding from industrialised countries to help developing nations switch to clean energy.

"We can now look the rest of the world in the eyes and say 'we have done our job. We are ready for Copenhagen'," European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso boasted last Friday after EU leaders papered over their differences over how to finance climate protection in the developing world.

Even in Europe, which last year adopted ambitious goals to cut its own output of carbon dioxide by at least 20 percent by 2020, there are signs of climate fatigue setting in.

This is partly because the Europeans have raised unrealistic expectations of a global treaty to replace the Kyoto protocol on climate change when it expires in 2012. The United States never ratified or implemented the 1997 Kyoto deal, nor did the main emerging countries.

The unresolved struggle in the U.S. Congress over a climate bill, and the reluctance of China and India to accept binding international curbs on carbon emissions mean the most that can be expected in Copenhagen is a political agreement based mostly on voluntary national pledges. Even that is uncertain. So the EU risks being stranded on its own moral high ground.

Last week's wrangle among the 27 EU leaders over how to share the cost of helping poorer states fight global warming was a foretaste of the likely discord in the 193-nation U.N. negotiations from Dec. 7-18.

The leaders agreed that it would cost about 100 billion euros a year by 2020 to help developing nations reduce carbon emissions, and that up to half of that sum would have to come from public money mostly from the industrialised world. But when it came to deciding who would pay how much within the EU, they stalled because of Europe's own wealth gap.

Poland led a cluster of nine ex-communist central and east European states that contend they cannot afford to contribute in proportion to their emissions, which are high due to a dependency on coal-fired power stations. They demanded that the EU apportion the burden based on national income instead.

That would leave wealthier west European states such as Germany, Britain and France bearing more of the cost. Unable to resolve the dispute, the EU created a working group to examine members' "ability to pay".

The Germans, the EU's biggest paymasters, are worried that Europe is seen as a soft touch. Chancellor Angela Merkel opposed putting a firm figure for EU climate aid on the table at this stage but said the Europeans would have to pay about one-third of the cost of public financing if there is a deal in Copenhagen. Many in Berlin feel that Europe has made enough concessions up-front and that it is time for the other major players -- particularly the United States, China and India -- to move.

There is also some concern that the U.S. Congress, struggling to enact a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions, will take fright at European estimates of the scale of international financing required to pay for a global deal. The Obama administration has requested only $1.2 billion to fund climate mitigation efforts overseas, while the EU estimate implies a cost of at least 10 times that much.

The Europeans papered over another internal dispute over how to shield energy-guzzling industries such as chemicals, glass, concrete and steel from unfair competition from countries that do not curb carbon emissions.

The EU has agreed in principle to hand out free carbon allowances to those energy-intensive sectors exposed to global competition, instead of making them buy pollution permits at auction, in the absence of a comprehensive climate deal. But France has led calls for Europe to go further and levy a carbon tariff on imports from states with lower environmental standards -- a move which EU critics such as Britain and Sweden see as protectionist.

So, if the Europeans cannot agree among themselves on how to share the burden, what hope is there for reaching a global accord at the UN summit?

 
Activists often say that the world is not paying enough attention to Sudan's Darfur crisis. But could the opposite be true -- that Darfur is actually getting too much attention, from too many organisations, all at the same time?

A rough count shows at least 10 international and local initiatives searching for a solution to the region's festering conflict. Many of them are at least nominally coordinated by the United Nation and the African Union. But with so many parallel programmes in play, the opportunities for duplication, competition and confusion are legion.

Top of the bill on the international stage is the double act between the United Nations and the African Union. Their joint Darfur mediator -- Burkina Faso's low-profile former security minister Djibril Bassole -- spends much of his time shuttling between capitals, holding closed-session discussions with rebels, regional powers, Darfuri intellectuals and civilian groups.

The most high-profile initiative is a project launched at the Arab League for peace talks between Sudan's government and rebels hosted in Qatar. Those talks, currently stalled, are hosted "in coordination" with Bassole but their have their own separate identity -- Qatar has made its own statements and has held its own meetings with rebels.

During one crowded fortnight in August, both Libya and the United States held separate meetings with different sets of rebel splinter groups, urging them to reunite ahead of talks, with mixed results.

The Obama administration has since formalised its approach to Darfur with a new Sudan policy -- although it did not go into details on which carrots and sticks its Sudan envoy Scott Gration would be able to offer Khartoum and Darfur's rebels.

Egypt has held and hosted meetings with Darfur rebels and other major players. Russia, which says it wants to rebuild its influence in Africa, has appointed a Sudan envoy, and held a two-day symposium on Darfur earlier this month. China also has a Sudan envoy but has so far, mercifully, held back from organising its own conferences.

Former South African President Thabo Mbeki led a panel of African dignitaries around Darfur and produced a report packed with recommendations for the region. A group of veteran politicians formed by Nelson Mandela called The Elders have kept a watching brief in Darfur since their first visit there in 2007 and have continued to release statements and reports.

Inside Sudan, the Khartoum regime has trumpeted its Sudan People's Initiative, a mass congress of political parties, civil society groups (but no rebels) that met in November 2008 to recommend a set of solutions to the crisis.

The south's dominant Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) joined forces with opposition parties in September to release a Juba Declaration - a blueprint to solve Sudan's ills including its own Darfur plan.

And that isn't even counting the various Darfur peace plans and campaigns launched by mainly U.S.-based activists from Save Darfur and other coalitions - or the push for prosecutions by the International Criminal Court.

Cynics might say Khartoum and some of its key negotiating partners have an interest in encouraging the multiplication of Darfur's peace efforts.

Each new initiative creates another set of meetings, another set of processes, another collection of excuses to delay making the hard decisions that will end the conflict.

Regional powers may also be competing for influence in Sudan, an oil producer and Africa's largest country. "There has been a lack of a single clear strategy on Darfur so everyone is poking their nose in, trying to gain influence in Sudan," said Al-Tahir al-Feki, a senior official with Darfur's Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) rebels.

Only one thing is clear. When the Darfur crisis is finally resolved and the Nobel Committee comes to hand out its peace prize to the organisations responsible for sealing the deal, there could be a crowded podium.

-- Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own. --

Words of wisdom from an American leader: "The United States must be humble and must be proud and confident of our values but humble in how we treat nations that are figuring out how to chart their own course.

"If we are an arrogant nation, they'll view us that way but if we are a humble nation, they'll respect us."

President Barack Obama, the newly-minted winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, speaking about U.S. engagement with the rest of the world, including anti-American leaders? No, the exhortation for superpower humbleness came from George W. Bush when he was running for president in 2000.

Whether this was campaign rhetoric or conviction will never be known but if it was the latter, it ended eight months into Bush's first term.

The word "humble" disappeared from Washington's political lexicon after the Sept. 11, 2001 mass murders in New York and Washington and during the rest of Bush's eight-year presidency, the United States came to be seen, in large parts of the world, as the epitome of superpower arrogance.

"Humble" is back in fashion. Nine months into his first term, Obama told the United Nations General Assembly he was "humbled by the responsibility that the American people have placed upon me" and determined to meet the challenge of collective action. Three weeks later, he stood in the White House Rose Garden to say he was "deeply humbled" by the Nobel Committee's decision to give him the Peace Prize.

But like his predecessor, who was resented in much of the world, Obama is running into foreign policy problems as resistant to humility and the collective action the president often conjures as they were resistant to Bush's unilateral approach. Does Obama's rock star-like celebrity help?

So far, not really. In Germany, for example, 93 percent of those polled in a survey by the Pew Global Attitudes Project said they had confidence the U.S. president would do the right thing in world affairs. Would that translate into more German troops for the war in Afghanistan which is unpopular in Germany? Not likely.

In his speech to the United Nations, Obama pointed out that American unilateral actions had fed "an almost reflexive anti-Americanism, which too often has served as an excuse for collective inaction." While anti-Americanism may be on the wane in many parts of the world, there is no sign of a corresponding increase of support for U.S. foreign policy on key issues.

Nor is there evidence of a wholesale decline in the tendency of a good number of U.S. political figures to assume that people from other countries think like Americans. That has been a perennial problem in America's dealings with the world. It was the reason, for example, why the Bush administration was so surprised by the resounding 2006 electoral victory of Hamas, the Islamist group shunned as terrorists by most of the West, in Gaza.

CONTRADICTION IN TERMS?

More recently, that's why some in Washington were taken aback by the angry reaction in Pakistan to a bill passed in Congress this month that tripled U.S. assistance over the next five years. It was meant as part of an effort to build a new relationship with Pakistan, whose cooperation Washington needs to fight Taliban and al Qaeda elements along the border with Afghanistan.

The bill contained language on conditions tied to the tripled aid that were seen by many Pakistanis as a humiliating violation of national sovereignty and an affront to dignity, an issue particularly sensitive in Pakistan, which is one of the few countries apparently immune to Obama's charm. (The Pew survey's favorability rating for the United States showed a drop from 19 percent in 2008 to a dismal 16 percent in 2009).

What seemed perfectly legitimate to lawmakers in Washington -- no disbursement of aid unless Pakistan demonstrated a "sustained commitment" to crack down on terrorism -- was seen as an insult by the Pakistanis. Which raises the question whether a humble superpower is a contradiction in terms.

Or whether humility will impress the leaders Obama has to deal with if he wants to succeed where Bush and other presidents failed - get North Korea and Iran to drop their nuclear ambitions, persuade Israel and the Palestinians to end their conflict, defang international terrorists and last but not least, achieve his dream of a nuclear-free world.

On that, he sounded a somber note when he commented on his Nobel Peace Prize: maybe not "in my lifetime." Sobering detail: Obama is 48.

(You can contact the author at Debusmann@reuters.com)

- Donald Steinberg, Deputy President for Policy of International Crisis Group, is a board member of the Women’s Refugee Commission and served on the UNIFEM executive director’s advisory council. The opinions expressed are his own. -

Preparations are now starting for the 10th anniversary of the passage of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security. This groundbreaking resolution was passed unanimously in October 2000 to address abuses against women during armed conflict, including sexual violence and displacement, and to bring women more fully into conflict prevention and peacemaking.

Resolution 1325 was properly hailed as a road map to promote, among other steps, women’s full engagement in peace negotiations, gender balance in post-conflict governments, properly trained peacekeepers and local security forces, protection for displaced women and accountability for sexual violence. It urged the Secretary-General to bring a gender perspective to all peacekeeping operations and other UN programs, and called for greater funding for measures to protect women during armed conflict and rebuild institutions that matter to women.

The key problem with the celebration plans is that there really is not that much to celebrate. The promise of Resolution 1325 is so far largely a dream deferred. Women continue to be raped and trafficked in conflict situations with impunity, both by rebel forces and by government militaries charged with protecting them. Women peace builders still face severe legal and cultural discrimination; coupled with sexual violence and threats against them, this imposes a victimization and danger that makes even the most courageous women think twice before stepping forward.

In recent peace negotiations in Indonesia, Nepal, Somalia, Cote d’Ivoire, the Philippines and Central African Republic, not a single woman served as a negotiator, mediator, signatory or witness. Men leading peace conferences still exclude women or shunt them off to ante-rooms while “real” negotiations take place, thus producing agreements that are disconnected from ground-truth and less likely to be successful and enjoy popular support.

The absence of women’s participation still silences their voices on issues of internal displacement, trafficking in women and girls, sexual violence, abuses by security forces, maternal health care and girls’ education. Such concerns are typically given short shrift in peace processes and reconstruction efforts, and provided inadequate funding. The UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) estimates that less than 6 percent of funds committed in donors conferences after peace accords are targeted in any way towards women.

The UN has failed to lead by example. The UN’s gender architecture on armed conflict is a hodgepodge, with no lead agency and no clear division of responsibilities between UNIFEM, the Special Adviser for Gender Issues, the Division for the Advancement of Women, the Commission on the Status of Women, the Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, the Peacebuilding Commission, the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, UNDP’s Bureau of Conflict Prevention and Reconstruction (BCPR) and others.

All are filled with dedicated people doing their best – the recent BCPR decision to deploy 10 new senior gender advisers is a welcome example – but they are under-funded, under-supported by senior officials and poorly coordinated. Their work is further complicated by the absence of time-bound goals backed by monitoring, accountability and enforcement mechanisms.

Some believe that these issues will be addressed in the on-going debate over restructuring how the UN deals with gender issues in general. But the ideal solution – a single agency with at least $1 billion in dedicated funding, a so-called “UNICEF for Women” – seems beyond reach. Even piece-meal reforms, including the oddly named “Composite Entity”, are locked up in the same issues that killed the helpful proposals made by then Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 2006. For women now being raped in eastern Congo, the single-minded focus on an institutional and architectural solution risks becoming more of a distraction than an ally. The answer lies more in specific actions than in big-bang structural changes.

It is not too late to ensure a 10th anniversary of Resolution 1325 that is worth celebrating. As a first step, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Deputy Secretary-General Asha Rose Migiro should appoint an advisory panel on 1325 of prominent international figures from developing and developed countries with past engagement on gender and armed conflict and knowledge of the UN system. More than a shop-talk or report-writing exercise, the advisory panel would propose and be empowered to help implement specific reforms and practical steps in the UN system, member states and the broader international community to better protect women in conflict situations and ensure their participation in building peace.

The panel should develop and help implement accountability mechanisms by identifying time-bound goals, proposing measurement criteria, determining responsibility for implementation, and defining rewards and sanctions to ensure compliance by individuals and agencies within the UN system. It would seek to reverse the shameful situation in which women fill only two of the Secretary-General’s 40 posts for country-specific special representatives. Among additional steps could be:

• Charging a single entity with overseeing the 1325 agenda, working in tandem with a permanent Security Council working group;
• Establishing a watchlist of countries and non-state actors of concern to be named and shamed into improving their records;
• Ensuring periodic reports by the Secretary-General to the Security Council on the status of 1325 implementation; and
• Enshrining the principle that sanctions will be adopted on governments and non-state actors that fail to meet international standards of protection.

If these items seem a stretch, it is important to remember that each of these measures now applies to the protection of children in armed conflict under UNSC Resolution 1612.

The panel’s success would not be measured by the reports it issues or the publicity it generates. It would come in changing the lives of women on the ground, securing seats for women in peace negotiations and post-conflict governance, preventing armed thugs from abusing women, holding government security forces and warlords alike accountable for sexual violence against women, preventing traffickers from turning women and girls into commodities, building strong civil society networks for women and ending the stigma of victimization that bedevils women leaders.

Now that would be an accomplishment worth celebrating.

- John Duncan is the United Kingdom Ambassador for Multilateral Arms Control and Disarmament. He comments regularly via Twitter and on his own Blog. The opinions expressed are his own. -

Former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan once remarked that in terms of people killed and injured every day, conventional weapons are the worst weapons of mass destruction in the 21st century.

Monday sees the start of a “Week of Action” to generate support for a new International Arms Trade Treaty, organised by NGO alliance “Control Arms” which brings together Amnesty International, Oxfam and IANSA.

Control Arms have been lobbying for an ATT for the best part of ten years; inauspicious timing perhaps in a decade that is increasingly refereed to as “the Decade of Stalemate” in the field of international multilateral diplomacy.

The low point of international efforts to curb the proliferation of conventional weapons was probably 2006, with the collapse of the United Nations Review Conference on Small Arms and Light Weapons in New York. But it was also the year that a group of seven countries (Argentina, Australia, Costa Rica, Finland, Kenya, Japan, and the UK) launched a process in the United Nations leading to the negotiation of a new legally binding treaty to regulate the international arms trade.

The humanitarian and moral case for regulation is unassailable, with hundreds of civilians being killed every day by weapons that have found their way into the hands of criminals, terrorists, insurgents and more recently pirates.

But economics is an equally important driver in this debate. As the discussion in the UN has moved forward, more and more companies from the arms industry itself have come to support the need for international regulation of what is now a global industry. The patchwork of arms export control agreements that currently exist has frustrated cooperation amongst responsible companies and served as a brake on inward investment. They have had the effect of creating competitors operating on different standards who are pushed towards the areas of the market where there is the highest risk these weapons will be misused or diverted.

As someone whose job bridges both nuclear and conventional weapons proliferation, I am acutely aware that one of the key elements of making progress towards a World Free of Nuclear Weapons is to stop the uncontrolled proliferation of conventional weapons.

Next month, discussions will reconvene at the UN on the future Arms Trade Treaty. My colleague Grace Mutandwa has blogged on FCO site about the impact of the current absence of such regulation in her own country. Other Foreign Office colleagues will provide their own perspectives in the coming days. Readers can also follow the event on Twitter.

- Zoya Phan is international coordinator at The Burma Campaign UK. Her autobiography, Little Daughter, was published by Simon and Schuster in April. The opinions expressed are her own. -

If statements of concern were enough to influence the brutal dictatorship ruling my country, then opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and the people of Burma would have been freed many years ago. It is impossible to count the number of statements from world leaders condemning the dictatorship, whether it be for imprisoning Aung San Suu Kyi, crushing democracy uprisings, or blocking aid after Cyclone Nargis last year.

But while these statements are welcome, they are clearly not enough. Burma is not run by politicians or diplomats. The generals ruling my country are brutal killers. They spent years in the jungles of Burma engaged in a campaign of ethnic cleansing against ethnic people. They use rape as a weapon of war, torture and shoot on sight. Babies are snatched from the arms of their mothers and thrown into the burning homes of innocent villagers. Landmines are laid in church doorways, deliberately aimed at those going to pray. Why do the United Nations and so many other countries think that statements and soft diplomacy is the way to influence people who are involved in such horrors?

Now, once again, Aung San Suu Kyi has been taken to the notorious Insein Jail. Once again there is an international outcry. So far, once again, the generals are ignoring it. How many times will we have to go over the same old ground before the international community wakes up to the nature of the generals they are dealing with? These generals are not immune to pressure. They depend on international trade and investment for their survival. It funds their luxury lifestyles and pays for the guns they use to keep their grip on power. They crave international acceptance and legitimacy, which is why they are pushing ahead with sham elections next year. They are vulnerable to real pressure, but it has never been properly applied.

It is time to hold Burma’s generals to account. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Burma has said that the dictatorship is breaking the Geneva Conventions by deliberately targeting civilians in Eastern Burma. That makes them war criminals. Why aren’t they in an international court? The International Labour Organisation has said the dictatorship is committing a crime against humanity for its use of forced labour. Why aren’t they facing a case at the International Court of Justice? The United Nations has also said that Aung San Suu Kyi’s detention is illegal under international law. Why has no action been taken?

It is time to stop tip-toeing around the generals, and treat them like the criminals they are.

In most countries if someone commits a serious crime they are hunted down, tried and imprisoned. Imagine if someone committed a murder in London, and the response of the police was just to issue a statement saying they are deeply concerned by the murder, and asks the murderer not to do it again, or they’ll issue another statement.

Burma’s generals belong in jail. Until they face a real threat of being held accountable for their criminal behaviour, they will keep on jailing Aung San Suu Kyi, keep slaughtering ethnic civilians, and keep ignoring the international community.

- Sam Cook is the director of the PeaceWomen Project – a project of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom – the world’s oldest women’s peace organization founded in 1915 in the Hague. WILPF is an international non-governmental organization with national sections in 35 countries, covering all continents. Its international secretariat is based in Geneva with a New York United Nations office. The opinions expressed are her own. -

With the global financial crisis seemingly in every headline and a looming economic meltdown foremost on everyone’s minds, the observance of International Women’s Day on March 8 may not seem of immediate relevance. But it is.

Clara Zetkin, who is credited with first putting forward the idea of an international women’s day in 1910, would likely have a lot to say about where we are today. She and other committed socialists of the women’s and the peace movements in the U.S. and Europe whose work inspired this Women’s Day would probably not be entirely surprised at what the dominant economic and political power ideologies of the last century have delivered.

Of course International Women’s Day has grown beyond its working class roots in the early 1900’s. Alongside the women’s movement, we see now that global corporations and governments actively claim support of the day and its celebrations. The official website of International Women’s Day claims this fact as a positive achievement. But, as someone who considers herself part of the peace and women’s movements, this causes me no small measure of discomfort and adds to my mixed emotions about the day.

It is not that I don’t appreciate the power and significance of an international day of observance of work for women’s empowerment and gender equality. It is not that I think we have no need of attention to these issues. It is not that I feel that all the important achievements are the ones behind us - as the bumper sticker pinned above my desk reads, “I’ll be a post-feminist in post-patriarchy.” No, I believe that International Women’s Day is an important reminder of the work that still needs to be done and it is certainly a powerful moment of solidarity across time and space.

It is fortifying to work with a sense of common cause with women from places as diverse as the cities of Latin America, the hamlets of Europe, the suburbs of North America and the villages and sprawling urban centres across Africa. It is inspiring to know that this work on a wide range of issues - from equal pay for equal work; to access to reproductive health services; and ending violence against women - is building on the work of generations of women before us. These are all reasons that make International Women’s Day a day worth celebrating. But they are also the reasons that I want to reclaim the day. Reclaim it back from the hands of empty ritual and rhetoric and from those that treat it like another public relations opportunity.

I’m not saying that governments and corporations don’t do “good things” or that they don’t invest in gender equality and women’s empowerment. But, when one looks at the bigger picture - including that revealed by this global financial crisis - those efforts seem less laudable. As with so many things, it is hard to get the true picture and see where priorities lie until you do the comparisons and look at the numbers.

As tax payers in the U.S. are aghast at upwards of $700 billion dollars going to “bail out” the financial system, little is said of the fact that this figure is also the approximate annual military budget of the U.S. Global military spending currently exceeds $1,204 billion dollars annually at 2006 prices. The combined budgets of the United Nations entities working on women’s issues amounts to approximately 0.005 percent of that.

The World Bank estimates the cost of interventions to promote gender equality under Millennium Development Goal 3 (universal access to education) to be $7-$13 per capita. The world’s military expenditure in 2006? $184 per capita. This is the financial crisis. That investing in weapons and war and creating human insecurity is prioritized over investing in peace, development and gender equality. This is what we should be questioning and working to change as we stand together on International Women’s Day. And if the governments and corporations of the world really want to show their support for this day, then ending militarism would be a good place to start.

– Ray Chambers is a philanthropist and humanitarian who has directed most of his efforts towards children. In 2008, the U.N. Secretary-General appointed him as his first Special Envoy for Malaria. The views expressed are his own. –

Malaria infects one quarter of a billion people each year. Nearly one million of those afflicted die, taxing overburdened health infrastructures and decreasing productivity in Africa, where 90 percent of cases occur.

In some countries on the continent, 60 percent of all outpatient visits are malaria related, with one quarter of worker absenteeism due to the disease. Taking all lost time and productivity into consideration, malaria costs Africa more than $30 billion annually.

The mosquito carrying the deadly malaria parasite makes no distinction when choosing its victim. Young or old, male or female, everyone in endemic regions remains at risk; however, International Women’s Day on March 8th prompts us to examine independently the immense burden women shoulder as a result of malaria.

The disease strikes infants, children under five and pregnant women in astonishing disproportion, as these segments of the population account for 90 percent of malaria deaths. Given the dual role of women as both victim and primary protector of victims, malaria clearly belongs under the umbrella of traditional women’s health issues.

It deserves particular recognition as a priority in maternal health, which the World Health Organization defines as pregnancy, childbirth and the six-week postpartum period.

Unfortunately, the early stages of motherhood in Africa can entail suffering, ill-health and even death, as one-in-five African newborns will not live to his or her fifth birthday.

Mothers confront an endless series of menaces, from malnutrition to dehydration, but almost nothing poses a greater threat to the well-being of their children than malaria, which claims three times as many young lives as HIV/AIDS.

Even those children who survive the disease often face lifelong challenges, as the disease robs their brain and body of nutrients at an early age. In turn, over 12 percent of children who do survive suffer long-term cognitive deficiencies.

Malaria raises additional implications with respect to maternal health. Pregnancy in Africa carries an inherent risk for mothers, too frequently resulting in maternal fatality.

When a pregnant woman contracts malaria, this risk becomes significantly greater. Moreover, pregnant women who have malaria also have a higher risk of delivering low-birth-weight babies, a major cause of infant mortality.

While the effects and consequences of malaria appear incredibly dispiriting, reason for hope exists, for we know that we can prevent deaths from malaria among women and children through the application of proven interventions, especially by having them sleep under a long-lasting insecticide-treated mosquito net (LLIN).

Equally as important as this knowledge, we also have harnessed the collective global will and resources to turn the tide against malaria.

In 2008, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon issued a bold call to action to provide all endemic countries essential malaria control interventions by the end of December 2010, a call that rallied a broad coalition of funding and implementation partners, who have pledged over $3 billion in malaria funding.

At this moment, we can point to definite indicators of progress toward our overall goal of universal provision, with data revealing that LLINs now have been distributed to more than 40 percent of the population in endemic African nations, compared to less than 10 percent in 2005.

Over 140 million LLINs have been distributed over the past three years, offering protection to nearly 300 million people.

At the highest levels, women have led us to this unique moment in history. Dr. Awa Marie Coll-Seck, Executive Director of the Roll Back Malaria Partnership, Margaret Chan, Director-General of the World Health Organization, and Ann Veneman, Executive Director of UNICEF, represent only a few of the women who have had a most profound influence in mobilising support.

Concurrently, women have been galvanizing around malaria at a grassroots level, with advocates such as the mother of African soccer star Michael Essien leading malaria eradication programs.

While these and other women have guided us to a point filled with such promise, we hold no hope of reaching our target without the full engagement of women everywhere.

As evidenced with other issues, the unified commitment of women to a cause historically has yielded dramatic results. The collective contributions of women to the malaria effort will prove absolutely essential, especially as we work to increase LLIN utilisation throughout Sub-Saharan Africa in the next 22 months.

On this International Women’s Health Day, the malaria community sits poised to complete an undertaking previously viewed as impossible and, in the process, alleviate the unique and terrible sorrow the disease imposes on women. And it is women on whom the success of this mission so dearly depends.

Earlier this month, Zambian economist Dambisa Moyo argued that Africa needs Western countries to cut long term aid that has brought dependency, distorted economies and fuelled bureaucracy and corruption. The comments on the blog posting suggested that many readers agreed. In a response, Savio Carvalho, Uganda country director for aid agency Oxfam GB, says that aid can help the continent escape poverty - if done in the right way:

In early January, I travelled to war-ravaged northern Uganda to a dusty village in Pobura and Kal parish in Kitgum District. We were there to see the completion of a 16km dirt road constructed by the community with support from Oxfam under an EU-funded programme.

The road is bringing benefits in the form of access to markets, education and health care. Some parents say their daughters feel safer walking to school on the road instead of through the bushes. Many families have used the wages earned from construction work to pay for school fees and medical treatment. This is the impact of aid.

Having lived and worked in east Africa, I have witnessed the positive effects of aid. But done badly, it can be very limiting and even has the potential to create more harm. To avoid this, it must be provided within an enabling environment in which it is used as a catalyst for change and not as an end in itself. Governments must show leadership through an accountable system.

For individuals, access to resources – including aid - is like an investment. Aid can build up poor people’s assets, support good governance and enhance skills and capacities to bring about transformation. But it can become a bane when it makes communities dependent, lazy and hopeless. Governments, aid agencies and the United Nations need to ensure the delivery of aid is well planned and coordinated, leading to higher self-reliance among poor communities.

Aid is also beneficial when trade is fair. There are several examples in Africa, like the case of coffee farmers in Uganda, where aid has been used effectively to improve the overall quality of the coffee seeds, thereby giving farmers better prices for their produce. When they have access to markets at home and abroad, they generate income which is ploughed back into increased output, better access to health and education, and overall improvement in the quality of their lives. To make this happen, developed countries need to stop procrastinating and put in place fair trade practices.

Aid works well if governments are accountable – in other words, when they are responsible and encourage active citizenship. On this continent, civil society is still weak and needs to be nourished. But stopping aid will not resolve frustrations about poor governance, which is partly a result of weak public scrutiny. Aid should be used to help fight corruption and promote accountability through active input from ordinary people.

As I have argued here, receiving aid is not just an act of charity. It should be understood as the right of poor communities to a life of dignity. As stated in international conventions, people have a right to good health, food, water and education. We all need to ensure the planet’s resources are equitably distributed. As Mahatma Gandhi said, you must be the change you want to see in the world.

So what do you think? Which argument is most convincing?