Blog Contributor:
Josh Lozman
Josh joined the ONE team in August 2007, and currently serves as the Chief of Staff to the CEO and Senior Advisor on Global Health Policy. He previously served as ONE’s US Policy Director.
Josh earned his Masters of Business Administration and a Masters of Public Health with a concentration in Humanitarian Assistance from Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in their Health Policy and Management department. He is also a lecturer at George Washington University.
Prior to that, Josh was a Policy Consultant at the Center for Global Development and the Grassroots Coordinator for Global Health Council amongst other things. Josh has extensive campaign experience working for congressional and presidential candidates.
Dec 15th, 2009 12:30 PM UTC
By Josh Lozman
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 Suraya Pakzad is the director of Voice of Women, an organization that seeks to lift women out of poverty in Herat, Afghanistan. She needs your support and she has a message for ONE members – please sign the White House petition!
‘When Americans think about Afghanistan, you think about more American troops and security,” she said. “But there is a lot more at stake in my country besides security: the lives of millions of children, women and men who need education, employment and good health. U.S. foreign aid has been investing in this, but it can do so much more if it is reformed so that assistance is smarter, more strategic and better coordinated. We need this in Afghanistan and around the world. Let your leaders know that you think that development is an important part of U.S. foreign policy. Please sign the petition today.”
Suraya’s pioneering work led her to be recognized as an International Woman of Courage by the U.S. State Department in 2008, and Time Magazine voted her one of its 100 “Heroes” for 2009. At great personal risk, she has become the most outspoken advocate for women’s rights in Afghanistan. Suraya comes to the ONE blog by way of Women Thrive Worldwide, a U.S. coalition of 50 organizations and 40,000 individuals advocating for policies that foster economic opportunity for women living in poverty.
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Nov 5th, 2009 6:57 PM UTC
By Josh Lozman
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The United States is the biggest donor country to Africa, and if you read this blog often, you know that U.S. financing has prevented millions of needless deaths, and helped build roads, schools and clinics that form the backbone of growing economies and healthy societies. During this tight budget environment, development advocates need to advocate early and aggressively for programs we know are successful. And though the fiscal year 2010 (FY10) budget is not yet complete, the Obama Administration is already deep into crafting the budget for FY11.
ONE submitted our budget request to the Administration a few weeks ago, and we’ve already started our lobbying. I wanted to share that budget request with you today, and over the next few months, we’ll provide further details.
Broadly, ONE’s goals in this year’s budget request are to:
- Continue the scale-up of prevention, treatment and care for AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria in line with the Lantos-Hyde funding requests. This includes integrating those programs with broader health care support.
- Scale-up funding for maternal and child health programs, including vaccine delivery and broader primary health care services.
- Scale-up support for some of President Obama’s commitment to increase food security in the developing world
- Begin to increase funding for other priority development areas including education and access to clean water
- Provide support for the multilateral banks, including the African Development Bank, which have played a crucial role in dampening the impacts of the financial crisis in developing countries and play a significant role in improving agricultural productivity across Africa
These are just a few of the many priorities highlighted in this budget document. We look forward to working with you—our members and supporters—over the next year to secure the funding levels described in this budget.
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Sep 24th, 2009 9:00 PM UTC
By Josh Lozman
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The G20 has a lot to do tomorrow in Pittsburgh. But, I hope they take a moment to look north. Next June, some, maybe all of the members of the G20 will be about 300 miles north in Huntsville, Ontario for the next G8 Summit.
Development advocates have watched cautiously as the political center of global discussions has moved between the G8, the G20 and the United Nations. Which of these is the best forum to move the development agenda forward? No one has a definite answer on that; certainly all are important. But, no development advocate should doubt the importance of Canada’s G8. Canada’s G8 Summit in 2002 in Kananaskis really launched the G8’s focus on Africa that eventually led to the Gleneagles set of commitments that have since framed the discussion on development assistance to Africa. It is at Canada’s Summit when these commitments come due. How Prime Minister Harper and the Canadian government approaches that will be the subject of much of ONE’s work for the next 9 months.
Lots more to come on this topic, but for now check out this article from Tuesday’s Global and Mail discussing Canada’s G8.
-Josh Lozman
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Sep 24th, 2009 7:15 PM UTC
By Josh Lozman
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Oh, these UN weeks. Every year when the UN General Assembly meets (and this year, the Clinton Global Initiative and the G20 are putting their heads together, too), advocates for the world’s poor try to build momentum towards the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), eight targets designed to reduce global poverty and disease by 2015. In years past, we’ve entered these discussions with hugely complicated problems to solve. But this year is a bit different. There is big progress to report on MDG 4 – reducing preventable childhood deaths.
Last Thursday, UNICEF released a report announcing that the number of children dying each year before their fifth birthday had dropped to 8.8 million—the lowest number on record (an achievement that flew under most of the major medias radar screens). And while this is still 8.8 million too many deaths, it’s down from 12.5 million deaths in 1990. That means that doctors, nurses, community health workers, educators—even politicians and donors—have helped prevent 10,000 children from dying each day. TEN THOUSAND! One of these saved sons or daughters could hit upon the next big life-saving idea.
But there’s a catch. Right now, we actually don’t need any new big idea to take a significant step forward. Three million of the 8.8 million children are dying from things that we know how to prevent and treat: pneumonia and diarrhea. In the next year, vaccines for pneumococcal disease and rotavirus—two of the main causes of the diseases—will be introduced at approximately $7 a piece, a price cheap enough to realistically be distributed in the developing world. So we have the life-saving vaccines, and we know what it takes to distribute. Now we just need the money to do it.
The Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI)—an innovative financing organization that funds the purchasing and distribution of vaccines—will be largely responsible for purchasing the pneumonia and rotavirus vaccines. And while they’re running short on funds, exciting progress was made during the busy UN week.
At a UN event yesterday afternoon, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and World Bank President Robert Zoellick announced a landmark $5.3 billion international deal that would tackle women’s and children’s health in the developing world—and save an estimated 10 million lives. The $5.3 billion investment, which marks the culmination of a year’s work by the Taskforce on Innovative Financing for Health Systems, includes:
- New commitments by leaders of Nepal, Malawi, Ghana, Liberia and Sierra Leone to expand access to health services
- A $1 billion expansion of the International Finance Facility for Immunization (IFFIm)
- A new mechanism for making voluntary contributions when buying airline tickets, expected to raise up to $3.2 billion by 2015
- $515 million for results-based funding health programs
- $360 million worth of debt conversions
- Launch of a value-added (VAT) tax credit pilot, expected to raise up to $220 million a year
- The commitment to explore a second Advance Market Commitment for life-saving vaccines
While this exciting announcement is not going to fulfill all of GAVI’s financing needs, it hopefully sets an important precedent that other donors will soon follow. It would be quite an achievement if at next year’s meeting of the UN General Assembly, there is even more good news to report.
The lives of 3 million children depend on it.
-Josh Lozman
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Jul 22nd, 2009 5:29 PM UTC
By Josh Lozman
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Prior to departing for Asia, Secretary of State Clinton announced the launch of an effort to bring greater coherence to American tools for effective global leadership and the exercise of “smart power”. The Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR), built on the Quadrennial Defense Review model, is intended to provide a blueprint to guide U.S. diplomatic and development efforts, with specific attention on policy development, resource allocation, staff deployment, and the exercise of authorities.
Among the anticipated outcomes of this first-ever QDDR are:
- A clear statement of U.S. foreign policy and development goals, and expected results:
- The strategies necessary to achieve those results;
- The tools and resources required to implement the strategies;
- The means by which performance will be measured; and
- The links with the broader all-of-government foreign policy framework
This is a welcome announcement that comes after months of encouragement from Congress and the development community. In May, the House mandated a QDDR in its State Department Authorization legislation, providing a major boost to the effort of setting out a clear U.S. strategy for diplomacy and development.
Despite broad applause from the American development community for the initiative, concerns remain around how the QDDR process will proceed. The effort will be co-chaired by the Deputy Secretary of State, State’s Director of Policy Planning, and the USAID Administrator. With no Administrator nominated, the voice of development in leading the QDDR will be less strong. Having development experts participate closely in the QDDR exercise will also be critical. Secretary Clinton stated a commitment that the QDDR will be inclusive and informed by consultation with civil society and Congress.
It is also unclear how the QDDR relates to another effort, expected to be launched out of the White House in the coming weeks, that will focus on U.S. development policy, including aid, trade, investment, and other related tools involved in global development. There is also some unease about placing diplomacy and development too closely together and not providing sufficient space for development or institutionalizing a framework in which short-term foreign policy interests prevail over long-term poverty reduction efforts.
-Josh Lozman
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Jul 5th, 2009 10:40 PM UTC
By Josh Lozman
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As we approach the G8 meeting next week, one of things we’d like to see them commit to is fully funding the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. We’ve known for a while that the Global Fund is facing its first ever financing gap. This is tragic since the Global Fund is sustaining millions on lifesaving AIDS medications and providing tens of millions of bed nets to protect mothers and children from malaria. See the article below from Reuters that explains the funding gap and the potential crisis if it is not filled.
As the G8 convenes this week, we hope that they will, amongst 8 of the largest economies in the world, find the $3 billion needed to keep the Fund fully financed.
Excerpts from Reuters article below, full piece here
GENEVA, July 3 (Reuters) – The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is facing a budget hole of about $3 billion as the recession dries up foreign aid, the Geneva-based funding body said on Friday.
Spokeswoman Marcela Rojo said that $170 million is still needed to pay for the programmes the Global Fund committed to supporting last year, and it will need $2.5 billion to $3 billion to maintain and finance programmes planned for 2010.
“The Global Fund will need a substantially higher amount than the one pledged at the last replenishment in Berlin in 2007 ($10 billion),” she told Reuters, saying fundraising drives in 2010 “will be absolutely critical”.
-Josh Lozman
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Jun 10th, 2009 7:05 PM UTC
By Josh Lozman
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‘Shouldn’t there be a greater sense of urgency? Isn’t Africa facing severe political disruption, even conflict, if the economic crisis isn’t contained?’ was one of the questions from the 50 or so journalists who came to the launch of the APP’s annual report by Kofi Annan, Graca Machel and Linah Mohohlo (Michel Camdessus missed his plane, stuck in a flood).
It’s clear from the many discussions going on here that there is no consensus on how bad the impact of the global economic crisis will be on Africa. Some are pointing to rebounds in commodity prices and recovering global financial markets as evidence that the crisis has bottomed out. Others that the worst is yet to come, jobs are still evaporating and financial flows dropping. A lot of scary statistics on poverty levels and malnutrition are flying around.
Surprisingly, journalists’ questions at our launch did not focus on aid levels or effectiveness. Dambisa Moyo was not even mentioned. She is supposed to be here but had to cancel. Most questions were about the quality of African leadership. This is welcome given the central message of the report.
Graca said that leadership is lacking in Africa: it needs to be ‘focused and sustained, thinking 30 or 40 years ahead, and able to make tough decisions about priorities given the myriad social and economic problems that people in Africa face’. She’s right, but quality leadership is in short supply everywhere. Kofi said that accountability is a sound basis for economic growth. Obama would agree with that.
The report launch took place just before the opening by Jacob Zuma of this year’s Africa Summit of the World Economic Forum, one year before the World Cup hits South Africa. Cape Town is sunny and surprisingly warm, given that it’s winter here. There’s a lot of talk about Africa needing to become more competitive, to identify champions, and to score goals. Expect a lot more.
-Michael Keating, Africa Progress Panel
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