Counterpoint.

Thank you for your letter, with the UN Chronicle (No. 3, 2001) that includes my article. I think the volume is excellently designed and edited and captures the food issues in the global context very well.

Unfortunately, your editor has changed a section of my article, which results in saying the opposite of what was initially intended. The original sentence was: "Thus food insecurity today predominates in those world regions which have least and latest been touched by the comprehensive bundle for 'good' globalization of agriculture mentioned above." Your editor erased the words "least and latest" in this sentence, which turns the meaning around in a wrong direction.

Joachim von Braun 

7 November 2001

We owe you an apology for the inadvertent omission of that critical phrase. It has been rectified on our online edition (www.un.org/ chronicle), where the article is posted.

The UN should honour such unselfish, dedicated fighters for common but noble causes (as in story mentioned below) and publish it suitably among developing countries in order to try to root out corruption, which is bedevilling all developing countries and keeping them away from real development.

Sankara Subbu, New Delhi 

15 January 2002

(Referring to an article in Volume XXXVII, No.1 2000, "Villages as a Positive Force for Good Governance--The Right to Information: India's Struggle against Grass-roots Corruption".)

The interview with Wendy Fitzwilliam was so interesting that I read it twice. I, as a black woman, was so proud of her achievement and her attitude, and I strongly agree with her about re-educating young men and also their parents' attitude. We are an NGO called Caribbean HIV/AIDS Awareness Consortium (in St. Kitts) that, like Ms. Fitzwilliam, is trying to get the message across to our young people through the media, with projects like music videos and talk shows involving youth.

Barbara Patrick, Coordinator

24 January 2002

I just read Beatrice Weder's article "Of Institutions and Development of Infrastructures, of Corruption and of Foreign Aid", and I have a few questions.

Where do the data come from? (i.e. 1 per cent increase in foreign assistance translates to a sustained increase in growth of GDP.) How is sound management defined? How are poverty, and the decrease in poverty, measured?

Kelly Rigby

10 September 2001

These estimates were done by the World Bank and are published in: Assessing Aid: What Works, What Doesn't, and Why (The World Bank and Oxford University Press, 1998): 14. The exact dimensions of sound management (essentially macroeconomic stability) and of the poverty measures used are given there: "Sound management consists of the institutions and policies that will lead to rapid development and poverty reduction in a particular country" and these emerge from actual experiences. I hope this is useful.

Beatrice Weder