Tom Murphy
NPR
New Hampshire, United States
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Past articles by Tom:
As Rain Keeps Falling, Sierra Leone Scrambles To Find Mudslide Survivors
Idalia Amaya, an emergency response coordinator for Catholic Relief Services, says the top priority is rescuing people trapped in their homes under the mud. → Read More
Why The Internet Loves And Hates Oxfam's Global Inequality Report
The annual report is intended for the rich and powerful who gather in Davos to talk about world poverty. And it causes the Twittersphere to flare up. → Read More
Find Out Some (But Not All) The Secrets Of China's Foreign Aid
More than 100 researchers spent five years poring over documents to come up with data about how much is spent — and on what. → Read More
Find Out Some (But Not All) The Secrets Of China's Foreign Aid
More than 100 researchers spent five years poring over documents to come up with data about how much is spent — and on what. → Read More
As Rain Keeps Falling, Sierra Leone Scrambles To Find Mudslide Survivors
Idalia Amaya, an emergency response coordinator for Catholic Relief Services, says the top priority is rescuing people trapped in their homes under the mud. → Read More
U.S. Suspends Applications For 'Innovative' Anti-Poverty Efforts
The Development Innovation Ventures has earned bipartisan praise for the grants it gives to programs that help the poor. So why is there a temporary suspension of new grant applications? → Read More
U.S. Suspends Applications For 'Innovative' Anti-Poverty Efforts
The Development Innovation Ventures has earned bipartisan praise for the grants it gives to programs that help the poor. So why is there a temporary suspension of new grant applications? → Read More
Nikki Haley claims credit for already planned cuts to U.N. peacekeeping budget
U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley declared victory after member nations agreed to a $600 million cut from the annual peacekeeping budget. Neglected in her Twitter declaration is that the cuts had already been planned, prior to Trump's election. The UN peacekeeping budget declined from $7.87 billion to $7.3 billion with the U.S. contributing a smaller percentage as compared to last year. → Read More
World Bank launches insurance scheme to fund pandemic responses
The World Bank has launched a global insurance fund aimed aimed at speeding up the international community's response to pandemic disease outbreaks. The impetus for the innovative financial scheme was the 2013-2016 West Ebola outbreak that, due in part to the global community's slow response, killed more than 11,000 people and ended up costing more than $10 billion to put down. → Read More
Investing in poor children saves lives, and money
The total number of children that die of preventable causes worldwide continues to decline, says the United Nations children's agency, but such progress disguises a still-massive and intolerable death toll. At the current pace of progress, UNICEF has estimated, some 70 million children will die before turning 5 years old by 2030 from easily preventable causes. → Read More
Threatened U.S. foreign aid program prevents malaria from killing kids in Africa
U.S. President Donald Trump wants to cut funding to one of the government's most effective global health programs. Trump's budget proposal reduces support for the President's Malaria Initiative (PMI) by nearly half, 44 percent. The PMI was launched by the George W. Bush administration to reduce the spread of malaria around the world. Research published earlier this month shows it has been highly… → Read More
South Sudan prevents famine but world still facing historic hunger threat
The situation for the 20 million people at risk of famine in South Sudan, Somalia, Yemen and Nigeria remains dire, warned the U.N.'s chief humanitarian. "Twenty million people remain at risk, and 10 million more could join them without sufficient funding and improved access," U.N. humanitarian coordinator Stephen O'Brien warned. → Read More
Corporations secretly lobbying UN to allow tax avoidance in its anti-poverty agenda
Multinational corporations are lobbying the U.N. behind closed doors to keep tax avoidance off the list of targets in the Sustainable Development Goals, say advocates of global tax reform. Many experts cite tax avoidance by corporations and wealthy individuals as a major driver of inequality and poverty worldwide. The United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), established by… → Read More
Worldwide decline in personal rights hampers social progress, study shows
A tool used to gauge 'social progress' beyond the traditional economic measures shows some gains in quality of life worldwide but also a decline in personal rights, freedom and social cohesion. The U.S. ranked low, due to violence, lack of an adequate social safety net and, surprisingly, poor access to information technologies. → Read More
Funding fails to keep pace with record number of people in need of aid
Humanitarian needs are growing worldwide and international donors are not keeping up. So far, only one-quarter of the money requested for 2017 is available to respond to crises ranging from Syrian refugees to the more than 20 million people at risk of famine. More money is needed due to deteriorating conditions in conflict regions and the recent rapid growth of violence in the Kasai province in… → Read More
Westerners don't want to take in more refugees, survey says
Despite the record number of refugees and displaced people around the world today, rich countries appear to be increasingly reluctant to provide them safe haven. Many Westerners do think that most refugees and displaced people are 'innocent victims,' according to a new survey commissioned by humanitarian organization Islamic Relief Worldwide, yet only a minority of those surveyed thought their… → Read More
Polio eradication gets financial boost but suffers setbacks in Syria and Congo
It is not quite time to declare it the 'best of times and worst of times' for the global effort to eradicate polio, but two new outbreaks of the infectious disease definitely puts a damper on the celebration regarding renewed international financial commitments. → Read More
Foreign workers send home three times the amount of money spent on aid
The amount of money that migrants around the world send back home increased by more than 50 percent over the past decade, according to a new analysis. Technically known as 'remittances,' the total amount of these cash transfers grew from $296 billion dollars in 2007 to $445 billion in 2016 - triple what is spent by rich countries on foreign aid each year. → Read More
Ethiopia running out of food aid money, magnifying regional threat
Food aid for millions of Ethiopians will run out by the end of June, according to the United Nations. The Ethiopian government appears to be playing down the crisis, for various reasons. But the UN says if nothing is done, the country's food crisis could expand and destabilize a region with two neighboring countries already facing famine. → Read More
Tillerson's 'less is more' strategy for foreign aid meets bipartisan skepticism in Senate
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson spent the past two days in Washington defending proposed massive cuts to the foreign affairs budget, using the 'less is more' approach. Critics on both sides of the aisle characterized his proposal to cut the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) by about 30 percent as "reckless" and "divorced from reality." → Read More