international aid

While health officials say they are making headway against the Ebola epidemic in neighboring Liberia, the disease is still raging in Sierra Leone, despite the big international push. In November alone, the World Health Organization has reported more than 1,800 new cases in this country, about three times as many as in Liberia, which until recently had been the center of the outbreak.

Under pressure from the number and intensity of humanitarian crises around the world, the International Committee of the Red Cross said Thursday it was trying to raise a record $1.6 billion to fund its 2015 operations.

In less than two weeks, Afghanistan’s new president, Ashraf Ghani, will head to London to meet with international donors. At the conference, scheduled for Dec. 4, he will seek billions of dollars to develop Afghanistan in a new era, as U.S. and international combat troops are preparing to withdraw by year's end. Afghanistan is facing a fiscal crisis; it recently ran out of money to pay salaries of civil servants.

The first wave of volunteers from Britain’s National Health Service arrived in Sierra Leone Saturday amid what the World Health Organization has described as an “intense” surge in cases.

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden has announced nearly $135 million in humanitarian aid to help feed civilians affected by Syria's war. Speaking in Istanbul on Saturday, Biden said the money will raise the amount of aid the U.S. has provided to more than $3 billion since Syria's crisis began.

International development is dying; people just don't buy it anymore. The West has been engaged in the project for more than six decades now, but the number of poor people in the world is growing, not shrinking, and inequality between rich and poor continues to widen instead of narrow. 

The United Nations Saturday called on G20 leaders to intensify their response to the deadly Ebola outbreak in west Africa, warning of a major food crisis if they fail to act.

One big problem lately with western humanitarian aid though is how volunteerism has turned into ‘voluntourism.’ ‘Voluntourism’ is best described by Rafia Zakaria as well-intentioned Western volunteers who travel to distant places with little to no regard for culture, history or ethical challenges they bring into communities that are not theirs. It is someone who wishes to combine charitable work with an exotic vacation.

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