UDHR: 60 Years

So today marks the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. One year ago today the volunteer organization I was a part of joined a campaign to raise awareness of the declaration and the approaching anniversary. We were to be a small part of the campaign, but we were excited about it. Our effort fell apart, and the bigger effort doesn't seem to have done much better. Granted, I am writing this post at the beginning of the day, so maybe I'll be surprised by the end.

Fighting for human rights seems destined to break your heart. While there are some signs of progress, it is slow and incomplete. And more often than progress we see new and continuing tragedies. Oh I wish I could come to this fight always upbeat and optimistic, but realistically speaking, progress is way too slow. Around the world we see ongoing violence that is little noticed in places like Somalia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and even violence that is more well noticed but still nothing is done in places like Darfur, Kenya and Zimbabwe. I myself often pay more attention to conflict, but throughout the third world people still die when more food and basic medical care would prevent their deaths.

Looking back over the last 60 years, it is hard to see positive examples of the world rallying to protect human rights.

I started volunteering for human rights issues over a year ago. After having expanded my reading and visiting Zambia, I decided I needed to do more. It wasn't right for me to go on living an easy life in the face of what I was seeing and learning about. I decided that my short term goal was to volunteer and my long term goal was to change careers to have a focus on more urgent international issues.

The volunteering didn't work out. I imagine those volunteering will disagree, but I found that we weren't having much of an effect. When the problems you cover are thousands of miles away and require money and political action to make an impact, spending a few hours a week just doesn't do much. This experience has lead me to continue volunteering at the local level, where the results are more tangible. I can spend two hours a week and help a student improve in math. I contrast this with spending two hours trying to take baby steps to raise awareness of issues that groups with more resources and reach are also working on to limited effect.

The volunteering has also changed how I feel about my long term goal. My career goal is to make the most impact I can on an urgent issue (or issues). For international issues, there seem to be few jobs but many people talented people who want those jobs. Domestically though, I sense that there are way more job opportunities than qualified candidates. I am leaving open the possibility of finding work impacting major human rights issues internationally. But I believe that one cam accomplish more when focused locally.

This doesn't mean that I think local issues are more important. Human rights need to be protected everywhere and I will take jobs where I feel I am needed. But mobilization and help is easier locally. So for now, that is where I will focus my time.

If I can't work / volunteer to help international problems, what can I do? This is what I am debating these days. I will continue to donate money to worthy causes. I know these donations help, but they don't ease my conscience; in no way do I feel that my paltry donations are all I need to do for these issues.

As for this blog, I am not naive enough to think that it is having an impact. It is more a place for me to express myself than to really raise awareness. I am looking to find ways to increase awareness, but I have no good ideas. When the group I was a part of hosted the Women and Youth Panel, I found that we were preaching to the choir. The people that showed up already cared about these issues. Probably the greatest obstacle to achieving human rights is reaching people who don't want to be reached.

For now though, it seems that I will have to live with disappointment, as the world ignores major human rights issues, and deal with my feeling of powerlessness. Happy 60th anniversary.

Feeling Moody about Moody's?

There is definitely a lot of blame to go around for the current financial crisis, where products were judged to be a good investment but have turned out to be seriously flawed. In lite of this, a large portion of the blame must rest with the rating agencies. They gave high ratings to securities that they later had to significantly downgrade. The question then is why were they so wrong?

There seem to be three possible reasons. One, maybe the loss of value was not something that could have been reasonably forecast. I don't believe that this was the reason. It just seems too obvious that many of these securities were more risky then their ratings showed.

Two, a conflict of interest may have influenced their ratings. That there was a conflict seems clear. Moody's for example, is a for-profit enterprise, and its revenue, since the 1970s, comes from the agencies issuing the securities. Therefore, it is in their interest to please the issuers by granting high ratings. The article suggests that as Moody's became more focused on profits, it lost its independence.

Finally, maybe they just didn't do their research, or didn't do it well. The Times article also gets at this, although only briefly:

Even though the standards at many lenders declined precipitously during the boom, rating agencies did not take that into account. The agencies maintained that it was not their responsibility to assess the quality of each and every mortgage loan tossed into a pool.

It seems to me that Moody's failures are a combination of second and third possibilities I mentioned. I imagine though the difference between the first reason and the third reason is whether you think the things they used for the ratings were reasonable. And I argue that it wasn't reasonable. If they weren't assessing the quality of every mortgage what were they using to generate their rating?

The key though is more than just passing blame. There needs to be serious reform. Non-profit rating agencies are one answer. Changing the source of the rating agency's revenue is another - although that doesn't seem like it would work. And definitely improving their methodology is a must. Let's see if the public / politicians have the attention span to do this right.

Future for Afghanistan

I remember in the VP debate there was a back and forth over whether the strategy to pacify Iraq would work in Afghanistan. Biden remarked that the Iraq strategy wouldn't work - citing comments from the military leader in Afghanistan. At the time though, I didn't really know what they meant - which part of the Iraq strategy wouldn't work? Now I know.

Okay, so turning Sunni leaders against foreign Al Qeada in Mesopotamia fighters was far easier than getting Sunni tribal leaders who support the home-grown Taliban to support the new Afghan government. Is it hopeless?

It seems that it will just be much harder. We'll have to show that siding with the Taliban means joining the losing side and that through the government is the means to delivering real improvements to the people in their region. In other words, it will take real commitment, real resources (not just military) and time. This should have been the plan from the beginning. Well, hopefully now we have a president with a normal attention span who will see this through. The people of Afghanistan need it.