Targeting Of Aid Research Articles

Aid Targeting to Fragile and Conflict-Affected States and Implications for Aid Effectiveness

While significant amounts of foreign aid have been allocated to the group of so-called fragile and conflict-affected states in recent years, it is not clear whether that aid is targeted to where it is most needed. This article extends recent work by Carment and Samy (2017, in press), and focuses on aid targeting in fragile states by using the Country Indicators for Foreign Policy fragility index together with sectoral aid flows from the OECD Creditor Reporting System. Specifically, it considers six country-cases from a three-fold typology of states and evaluates the performance of these countries in terms of their fragility relative to the types of aid that they have received. The article argues that aid is poorly targeted in fragile states and by considering the sectoral allocation of aid it also contributes indirectly to the related issue of aid effectiveness.

AID preferentially targets the top strand in nucleosome sequences

AID initiates both somatic hypermutation (SHM) and class switch recombination (CSR) in Ig genes. AID-induced mutations are linked with transcription initiation and elongation. Transcription occurs in the context of chromatin and thus RNA PolII and AID need to deal with nucleosomes. Both nucleosome stability and positioning significantly influence the accessibility of AID to Ig genes and the SHM pattern. Interestingly, in the nucleosome, SHM process seems to have a preference for the top strand. To know whether the preferential targeting of SHM to the top strand is due to a post-AID event, we expressed an inhibitor of Uracil DNA glycosylase (UNG), Ugi, into DT40 cells containing the nucleosome positioning sequence (MP2) and compared the SHM pattern. We observed a similar preference to the top strand for the high-affinity nucleosome positioning sequence in UNG inhibited cells. Furthermore, to understand whether the primary sequence of nucleosome sequence is influencing preferential targeting, we introduced two copies of MP2 sequence in the reverse orientation (MP2R) into a variable Ig gene. We observed that the MP2R cells also demonstrated preferential targeting of the non-transcribed strand in nucleosome as compared to the transcribed strand, confirming that in nucleosome sequences AID has better access to Cs on the top strand. The preferential targeting of AID on the top strand suggests that RNA Pol-II stalls while it transcribes the stable nucleosomes, thus giving ample opportunity for the transcribed strand to form R-loops with the nascent RNA, thereby gives limited access to AID on the bottom strand.

Factors influencing overall satisfaction of Core Medical Trainees in the Yorkshire and the Humber region, UK.

This study explores the importance of various factors upon the overall satisfaction of Core Medical Trainees (CMTs) in the Yorkshire and Humber Deanery to aid targeting of improvement efforts. Responses for all CMTs in Yorkshire and the Humber to all questions and domains from the UK National Training Survey 2017 were correlated with a marker of overall trainee satisfaction. Questions with high and low degrees of correlation were identified, as well as recurrent themes. Clinical supervision appears to be closely related to overall trainee satisfaction, frequently correlating well, whereas educational supervision does not. Almost all themes with high correlation were regarding day-to-day experience, whereas those correlating poorly were regarding infrastructure issues. Assuming similar costs, to improve overall trainee experience the most limited resources are probably best targeted at those factors influencing day-to-day experience, such as freeing consultant time for clinical supervision rather than developing one-off trainee experiences.

Distinct Requirements of CHD4 during B Cell Development and Antibody Response

SUMMARYThe immunoglobulin heavy chain (Igh) locus features a dynamic chromatin landscape to promote class switch recombination (CSR), yet the mechanisms that regulate this landscape remain poorly understood. CHD4, a component of the chromatin remodeling NuRD complex, directly binds H3K9me3, an epigenetic mark present at the Igh locus during CSR. We find that CHD4 is essential for early B cell development but is dispensable for the homeostatic maintenance of mature, naive B cells. However, loss of CHD4 in mature B cells impairs CSR because of suboptimal targeting of AID to the Igh locus. Additionally, we find that CHD4 represses p53 expression to promote B cell proliferation. This work reveals distinct roles for CHD4 in B cell development and CSR and links the H3K9me3 epigenetic mark with AID recruitment to the Igh locus.

Multitranscriptome analyses reveal prioritized genes specifically associated with liver fibrosis progression independent of etiology.

Elimination or suppression of causative factors can raise the possibility of liver fibrosis regression. However, different injurious stimuli will give fibrosis from somewhat different etiologies, which, in turn, may hamper the discovery of liver fibrosis-specific therapeutic drugs. Therefore, the analogical cellular and molecular events shared by various etiology-evoked liver fibrosis should be clarified. Our present study systematically integrated five publicly available transcriptomic data sets regarding liver fibrosis with different etiologies from the Gene Expression Omnibus database and performed a series of bioinformatics analyses and experimental verifications. A total of 111 significantly upregulated and 16 downregulated genes were identified specific to liver fibrosis independent of any etiology. These genes were predominately enriched in some Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes pathways, including the "PI3K-AKT signaling pathway," "Focal adhesion," and "ECM-receptor interaction." Subsequently, five prioritized liver fibrosis-specific genes, including COL4A2, THBS2, ITGAV, LAMB1, and PDGFRA, were screened. These genes were positively associated with each other and liver fibrosis progression. In addition, they could robustly separate all stages of samples in both training and validation data sets with diverse etiologies when they were regarded as observed variables applied to principal component analysis plots. Expressions of all five genes were confirmed in activated primary mouse hepatic stellate cells (HSCs) and transforming growth factor β1-treated LX-2 cells. Moreover, THBS2 protein was enhanced in liver fibrosis rodent models, which could promote HSC activation and proliferation and facilitate NOTCH1/JAG1 expression in HSCs. Overall, our current study may provide potential targets for liver fibrosis therapy and aid to a deeper understanding of the molecular underpinnings of liver fibrosis. NEW & NOTEWORTHY Prioritized liver fibrosis-specific genes THBS2, COL4A2, ITGAV, LAMB1, and PDGFRA were identified and significantly associated with liver fibrosis progression and could be combined to discriminate liver fibrosis stages regardless of any etiology. Among the identified prioritized liver fibrosis-specific targets, THBS2 protein was confirmed to be enhanced in liver fibrosis rodent models, which could promote hepatic stellate cell (HSC) activation and proliferation and facilitate NOTCH1/JAG1 expression in HSCs.

Disaster Aid Targeting and Self-Reporting Bias: Natural Experimental Evidence from the Philippines

Aid from the government can play a critical role as a risk-coping device in a post-disaster situation if the recipients are properly targeted. We analyze the accuracy of disaster aid targeting and self-reporting bias in disaster damage and aid receipt by combining (i) satellite images (objective information on flood damage), (ii) administrative records (objective information on post-flood aid receipt), and (iii) unique survey data (self-reported information on damage assessment and aid receipt) on a large-scale flooding in 2012 in the Philippines. We find that damage is over-reported while aid receipt is under-reported, and as a result, the estimated targeting accuracy based on self-reported information is substantially downward-biased.

Saudi Arabia’s Economic Diplomacy through Foreign Aid: Dynamics, Objectives and Mode

Economic diplomacy is an important part of a country’s overall diplomacy, and foreign aid is an essential tool in a country’s economic diplomacy. With the accumulation of wealth, Saudi Arabia uses its petrodollars to carry out economic diplomacy, and by increasing the amount of aid and expanding aid targets, it achieves multiple goals. This article analyzes the policy objectives of Saudi Arabia’s foreign aid from the perspectives of political, economic and religious dynamics, and reviews the main models in this field, namely, strategic foreign aid, development-oriented foreign aid and humanitarian foreign aid. The author believes that Saudi Arabia’s foreign aid is double-sided. On the one hand, it actively implements the development goals of South-South cooperation and contributes to the promotion of global economic recovery and development; on the other hand, it promotes Wahhabi expansion and development, bringing certain threats to the world’s traditional security. However, since 2015, the Saudi government has begun to control, regulate, and minimize religious promotion to reduce certain threats that Wahhabism has generated.

Aid Targeting in Post Conflict Nepal

International aid plays an important role in the reconstruction of war-torn societies after the end of civil war, but its effectiveness depends on whether aid reaches the neediest recipients. We study how power sharing in Nepal's post-conflict transition affected the political capture of aid. We argue that despite the explicit inclusion of disadvantaged groups in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement from 2006 and the Interim Constitution, regions that neither aligned with the Maoist rebels nor the government during the civil war remained politically disadvantaged. A possible causal mechanism is the low threat potential of noncombatant groups, which results in under-representation during peace negotiations and in post-conflict institutions. We present statistical evidence that districts in which neither the government nor the Maoist rebels (CPN(M)) had political support during the conflict receive systematically less aid during the post-conflict period, regardless of economic need or damage caused by fighting. At the same time, support for the CPN(M) during the conflict is a significant predictor for higher post-conflict aid flows, but only in times when the CPN(M) holds government office.

Does Foreign Aid Impact Civil Society?

The proportion of foreign aid targeting or utilising civil society is large and has grown significantly in the past decade. The paper investigates the impact of aid on civil society across countries. We use a recently available novel dataset that contains several measures of civil society for 173 countries from 1900 to 2016. We focus on three measures of civil society- an index of the strength of civil society, and separately two components of the index-whether women are prevented from participating in civil society and the involvement of citizens in civil society organizations. We follow Jones et al., (2016) and Clemenset al., (2012) and estimate several models that tackle simultaneity allowing for causal interpretation. We find that neither foreign aid or foreign aid targeting civil society has an impact on our measures of civil society. Civil society growth appears to be driven by initial institutions, these results suggest that foreign aid focusing on civil society may not be as effective at improving the functioning of civil society within developing countries. This result is robust to different specifications and attempts to account for simultaneity. We also examine aid heterogeneity and find that the donor country is important for aid effectiveness. Aid from China has a negative impact on a countries' civil society relative to western member countries.

What Does Wellbeing Mean in Different Cultural and Religious Contexts? An Analysis of the Conceptualizations of Wellbeing in Development Assistance aimed at Indigenous Peoples in the Andes

A central motivation for engaging in humanitarian development assistance, nongovernmental as well as governmental, is to facilitate wellbeing of people considered poor and needy. During the last decades, there has been a debate about a more comprehensive understanding of development and wellbeing. Wellbeing has become a main concept in humanitarian aid targeting needy people in the global south. This article focuses on how the concept of wellbeing is understood in varying traditions and contexts that meet in development cooperation: by Andean indigenous peoples, by Western aid workers based in evangelical Faith-based organizations working in the Andes, and by the Capability Approach ‘CA’, which has influenced development cooperation considerably the last decades. How will differences in understanding wellbeing by the actors affect the performance and the results of development cooperation? What consequences may it have for the cooperation if the aid worker is not aware of the differences?

Substantial Heterogeneity in Progress Toward Reaching the 90-90-90 HIV Target in the WHO European Region.

Background:Achieving the UNAIDS 90-90-90 target by 2020 is expected to end the HIV epidemic by 2030. We report on progress in the WHO European Region in meeting this target.Methods:The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) sent questionnaires to 55 countries in 2016. We report estimates for 4 stages of the continuum of HIV care (living with HIV, diagnosed, treated, and virally suppressed), corresponding to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS) target and explore differences by subregion and challenges with reporting data.Findings:Forty-four countries provided data for ≥1 stage, and 29 for all 4 stages. Estimated HIV prevalence was 0.19% (range 0.02%–0.84%, n = 37 countries providing stage 1 data). The proportion diagnosed of people living with HIV ranged from 38% to 98% (n = 37 reporting number of people living with HIV and diagnosed). The proportion on ART of those diagnosed ranged from 27% to 96% (n = 40 reporting numbers diagnosed and treated), and viral suppression rates ranged from 32% to 97% (n = 31 providing numbers treated and virally suppressed). The overall continuum of care estimate for 29 countries with complete data was 81-84-88, which differed by subregion: 84-88-90, 84-69-62, and 57-45-57 for the western, central, and eastern subregions, respectively. Challenges in reporting data included absence of a single data source for all stages, shortage of expertise, and lack of financial and human resources.Conclusions:There is an urgent need to strengthen HIV testing programs throughout Europe, particularly in the eastern subregion, and to remove constraints hampering access to testing and care. Recent changes to treatment guidelines should help reduce the numbers diagnosed not treated.

International development aid and young people's participation in societal development of the global south

ABSTRACT International development aid has in recent years sought to strengthen youths’ societal participation by cooperation between international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) and local youth associations. In this paper, we address and conceptualise some of the underlying causes that may enable and/or limit such efforts to support youth participation in the global south. We seek to contribute to the growing literature exploring the multiple scales of young people's political agency. A core argument proposed is that notions of generational relationality, as seen in the case of international development aid targeting youth, must include conceptions of power as a topological relation across space.

Understanding reasons for discontinued antiretroviral treatment among clients in test and treat: a qualitative study in Swaziland.

IntroductionRetention on antiretroviral therapy (ART) is critical for the successful adoption of the test and treat policy by sub‐Saharan African countries, and for realizing the United Nations programme on HIV and AIDS target of 90‐90‐90. This qualitative study explores HIV positive clients’ reasons for discontinuing ART under the Max ART test and treat implementation study in Swaziland.MethodsClients identified as lost to follow‐up (LTFU) in the programme database, who had initiated ART under the intervention arm of the Max ART study, were purposively selected from two facilities. LTFU was defined as stopping ART refill for three months or longer from the date of last appointment, and not being classified as transferred out or deceased. Semi‐structured face‐to‐face interviews were conducted with nine clients and one treatment supporter between July and August 2017. All interviews were conducted in the local language, audio‐recorded, summarized or transcribed and translated to English for thematic analysis.ResultsRespondents described mobility as the first step in a chain of events that affected retention in care. It was entwined with precarious employment, care delivery, interactions with health workers, lack of social support, anticipated stigma and ART‐related side‐effects, including the exacerbation of hunger. The chains of events involved several intersecting reasons that occurred one after the other as a series of contiguous and linked events that led to clients’ eventual discontinuation of ART. The individual accounts of step‐by‐step decision‐making revealed the influence of multi‐layered contexts and the importance of critical life‐events.ConclusionsClients’ reasons for abandoning ART are a complex, inextricably interwoven chain of events rather than a single occurrence. Mobility is often the first step in the process and commonly results from precarious economic and social circumstances. Currently the health system poorly caters to the reality of people's mobile lives. Interventions should seek to increase healthcare workers’ understanding of the chain of events leading up to discontinuation on ART and the social dilemmas that clients face.

Human rights and basic needs: Jimmy Carter’s North-South dialogue, 1977–81

This paper reinterprets Jimmy Carter’s human rights policy from the perspective of North–South economic relations. It finds that the Carter Administration used the social and economic rights provisions of its human rights policy as a key stratagem in its efforts to reform US-Third World relations. It then shows how the Administration attempted to persuade Third World leaders to end their insistence in global negotiations for a radical ‘New International Economic Order’ in exchange for new forms of foreign aid targeting ‘basic human needs’, thus demonstrating the impact of global economic change on the 1970s global human rights revolution.

Leaving No One Behind? A New Test of Subnational Aid Targeting

AbstractThe Sustainable Development Goals endeavour to leave no one behind. This note tests whether or not donors have traditionally acted on this rhetoric by examining if aid targets areas of poverty within Nigeria, Senegal, and Uganda. Unlike prior research on aid targeting, the analysis covers aid from nearly all donors and does not aggregate variables into spatial regions. Instead, I measure the distance from geotagged survey data tracking poverty to aid projects started just after each survey wave. I show that projects are placed closer to richer people. This effect holds within countries and within first‐level administrative regions. Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The UK government and the 0.7% international aid target: Opinion among Conservative parliamentarians

This is the first article to use a detailed dataset of the 2010 - 2015 Parliamentary Conservative Party (PCP) to identify the drivers of MPs’ positions on legally enshrining a commitment to spend 0.7% of gross national income on foreign aid. We position every Conservative parliamentarian into three different categories on international aid - (1) aid critics, who openly opposed and/or voted the 0.7% target; (2) aid sceptics, who abstained in parliamentary divisions on the 0.7 target and (3) aid advocates, who voted for the 0.7% and spoke out for it. We then draw on a range of political and ideological variables to determine drivers of support or opposition to aid. By doing so we identify that Cameron achieved remarkable success in transforming opinion towards aid amongst Conservative parliamentarians. This article represents a quantitative challenge to the prevalent qualitative assumption in the academic literature, which claims Cameron’s modernistion project was a failure.

AID Invited to the G4 Summit

In this issue of Molecular Cell, Qiao etal. (2017) use both biochemical and structural approaches to report AID-preferred nucleic acid substrates, illuminating AID targeting mechanisms during CSR and SHM.

A spatial analytic framework for assessing and improving food aid distribution in developing countries

Undernutrition is responsible for nearly half of all deaths of children under five years of age. In the developing world, where many communities rely on subsistence farming, one way of combating undernutrition is through food aid provided by governmental and non-governmental organizations. In this analysis we develop a flexible optimization based approach to support food aid planning capable of incorporating a variety of inputs to capture micro-scale food demand. We apply this optimization model to the specific case of Mali, one of the poorest countries in the world, with large food aid programs. The results are compared to the current distribution of food aid outlets as presented by the World Food Program and suggest that an optimization based framework provides quantitative-based insights of demand and resource allocation useful for planning efforts. In particular, the results indicate that a reallocation of existing food aid outlets towards more dense areas where vegetation is reduced could markedly increase access to outlets by those with food needs. The developed approach has potential to support ongoing efforts to reduce food insecurity and improve the cost-effective targeting of food aid in Mali and elsewhere.

Assessing development assistance for child survival between 2000 and 2014: A multi-sectoral perspective.

BackgroundThe majority of Countdown countries did not reach the fourth Millennium Development Goal (MDG 4) on reducing child mortality, despite the fact that donor funding to the health sector has drastically increased. When tracking aid invested in child survival, previous studies have exclusively focused on aid targeting reproductive, maternal, newborn, and child health (RMNCH). We take a multi-sectoral approach and extend the estimation to the four sectors that determine child survival: health (RMNCH and non-RMNCH), education, water and sanitation, and food and humanitarian assistance (Food/HA).Methods and findingsUsing donor reported data, obtained mainly from the OECD Creditor Reporting System and Development Assistance Committee, we tracked the level and trends of aid (in grants or loans) disbursed to each of the four sectors at the global, regional, and country levels. We performed detailed analyses on missing data and conducted imputation with various methods. To identify aid projects for RMNCH, we developed an identification strategy that combined keyword searches and manual coding. To quantify aid for RMNCH in projects with multiple purposes, we adopted an integrated approach and produced the lower and upper bounds of estimates for RMNCH, so as to avoid making assumptions or using weak evidence for allocation. We checked the sensitivity of trends to the estimation methods and compared our estimates to that produced by other studies. Our study yielded time-series and recipient-specific annual estimates of aid disbursed to each sector, as well as their lower- and upper-bounds in 134 countries between 2000 and 2014, with a specific focus on Countdown countries. We found that the upper-bound estimates of total aid disbursed to the four sectors in 134 countries rose from US$ 22.62 billion in 2000 to US$ 59.29 billion in 2014, with the increase occurring in all income groups and regions with sub-Saharan Africa receiving the largest sum. Aid to RMNCH has experienced the fastest growth (12.4%), followed by aid to Food/HA (9.4%), education (5.1%), and water and sanitation (5.0%). With the exception of RMNCH, the average per capita aid disbursed to each sector in the 74 Countdown countries was smaller than in non-Countdown countries. While countries with a large number of child deaths tend to receive the largest amount of disbursements, non-Countdown countries with small populations usually received the highest level of per capita aid for child survival among all 134 countries. Compared to other Countdown countries, those that met MDG 4 with a high reliance on health aid received much higher per capita aid across all sectors. These findings are robust to estimation methods.ConclusionsThe study suggests that to improve child survival, better targeted investments should be made in the four sectors, and aid to non-health sectors could be a possible contributor to child mortality reduction. We recommend that future studies on tracking aid for child survival go beyond the health sector and include other sectors that directly affect child survival. Investigation should also be made about the link between aid to each of the four sectors and child mortality reduction.

The preferred nucleotide contexts of the AID/APOBEC cytidine deaminases have differential effects when mutating retrotransposon and virus sequences compared to host genes

The AID / APOBEC genes are a family of cytidine deaminases that have evolved in vertebrates, and particularly mammals, to mutate RNA and DNA at distinct preferred nucleotide contexts (or “hotspots”) on foreign genomes such as viruses and retrotransposons. These enzymes play a pivotal role in intrinsic immunity defense mechanisms, often deleteriously mutating invading retroviruses or retrotransposons and, in the case of AID, changing antibody sequences to drive affinity maturation. We investigate the strength of various hotspots on their known biological targets by evaluating the potential impact of mutations on the DNA coding sequences of these targets, and compare these results to hypothetical hotspots that did not evolve. We find that the existing AID / APOBEC hotspots have a large impact on retrotransposons and non-mammalian viruses while having a much smaller effect on vital mammalian genes, suggesting co-evolution with AID / APOBECs may have had an impact on the genomes of the viruses we analyzed. We determine that GC content appears to be a significant, but not sole, factor in resistance to deaminase activity. We discuss possible mechanisms AID and APOBEC viral targets have adopted to escape the impacts of deamination activity, including changing the GC content of the genome.