Phew, Paul, initial panic over. You were agreeing with t'other Mike! (Outside of this Forum - Facebook, Flicker, LinkedIn, Twitter, email, etc, and also offline - family, friends colleagues - I'm normally known as Mike, although it's useful on here to be know by my full name as a differentiator.) Actually, I agree with other Mike on female education and contraceptives. The IPPF has done much on this, although Trump and his far rich religious evangelist supporters seem to be attempting to disrupt this work. I never knew about FGM until in the 70s a friend who worked for thge IPPF showed me one of their papers about it; I found it a difficult read ... Foreign aid does need to be monitored closely to see it's not used inappropriately; it seems sensiblke to target funds and other assistance for specific things like famine or disaster relief, but heavy handed control may have unintended consequences - perhaps assistance from less desirable state donors trying to buy into a region for influence and othger dubious reasons. The trouble with limiting child benefits is it doesn't necessarily stop couples having multiple children - or even multiple families - and it will usually condemn the resulting innocent children to poverty which may create further problems in the future when they are older.
Michael Ixer ● 2590d