Former World Bank Executive Pens Cautionary Tale for Foreign Aid Workers About Her Time in Myanmar

Award-winning former World Bank Executive discusses the moral questions presented by her position

ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA, USA, December 3, 2023 /EINPresswire.com/ — After a forty-year career in foreign aid delivery, Ellen Goldstein is releasing her important and morally complex memoir Damned If You Do: Foreign Aid and My Struggle to Do Right In Myanmar in early December. This intensely thought-provoking book focuses in particular on her time serving as director of the World Bank in Myanmar in 2017.

Goldstein’s work presents large ethical questions about providing billions of dollars in foreign aid to complex bureaucracies, who – in the case of Myanmar – even go so far as to kill their own people. Just as Goldstein arrived in the country formerly known as Burma, it descended into a dangerous military situation resulting in the displacement of three-quarters of a million refugees.

Now a global speaker on foreign aid policy, Goldstein is opening up about the flawed democracy she encountered and the human rights abuses she witnessed during that period of her life. Her memoir puts readers inside the mind of a woman trying to do what’s right in the face of a conflict that lessens her hope for a resolution every day.

Thant Myint-U, a Burmese-American writer of many novels of his own about the history of the country, calls Damned If You Do “A revealing insider account of international aid in Myanmar…with many lessons to be learned for our increasingly fragile world.”

With so many parallels to the violent struggles we’re seeing today, Damned If You Do is an essential read for anyone interested in international relations and foreign aid policy; it presents many of the complex logistical and philosophical struggles of what it really means to “make the world a better place.” Goldstein’s cautionary tale presents many thought-provoking questions that we should be asking ourselves before taking a stance on any foreign conflict.

Ellen Goldstein’s powerful, smart, and much-needed memoir for those invested in the politics of Myanmar, or anyone with a curiosity about the world of foreign aid, is set to be released on December 5, 2023, and is available at BallastBooks.com and everywhere books are sold.

Lindsey Dunn
Ballast Books
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