Secretary Hillary Clinton
One year ago, newly confirmed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke at the State Department and outlined her vision for “smart power”. Yesterday Secretary Clinton held a town-hall for employees at the State Department looking back at the first year of the Obama administration. During the event, Clinton touched on smart power and her work to elevate diplomacy and development to the same importance as defense.
An excerpt:
We began with the idea of “smart power” and the goal of elevating diplomacy and development and making them equal partners with defense. I’m pleased at how far we’ve come in doing that. Our budgets demonstrate both the commitment of the Administration and the Congress to this vision. We’ve strengthened relationships with historic allies. We’ve reached out to emerging powers. We’ve pursued constructive dialogue, even with longtime adversaries. We’ve broadened our definition of diplomacy to extend beyond government-to-government engagement, and to include NGOs, the private sector, and citizens and media in nations across the world.
As we’ve worked together to bring governments, the private sector, and civil society together in cross-cutting partnerships, we’ve seen some exciting examples. One is the use of technology on behalf of diplomacy and development, a subject I discussed last week in my speech at the Newseum.
Our civilian experts from State and USAID are supporting the Afghan and Iraqi people as they work to build democratic institutions, functioning market economies, combat violent extremism, and strengthen civil society. And we are working to promote effective, democratic, transparent governance in both those nations.
We’re also redoubling our efforts to deal with the long-term issues like poverty and hunger, climate change, non-proliferation, and others. And the Department has played a central role in advancing President Obama’s vision of a world someday without nuclear weapons.
We’ve put forward a new development agenda for the 21st century. We’re pursuing a policy based on partnership, not patronage. That means working directly with developing countries to help them identify their own obstacles to growth, crafting solutions to overcome those obstacles, and implementing programs that can be held accountable for results.
In close partnership with USAID, we’re supporting investments to make agriculture more productive. We’re helping farmers produce more in a sustainable way that, in turn, promotes economic growth. And we’re seeing the impact of that approach in many countries around the world.
Here’s video of the town hall:
Yesterday the Government of Haiti and other members of the international community, including U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, met in Montreal to discuss the recovery and rehabilitation process in Haiti. Canada convened the meeting, demonstrating strong leadership that should continue in the run-up to the 2010 G8 meetings, which Canada will host. The group committed to a ten-year rebuilding effort, guided by a set of principles: Haitian ownership of their own future; coordination; sustainability; effectiveness; inclusiveness; and accountability. The group also committed to the continued response of donors to Haiti’s most pressing post-disaster needs.
Acknowledging the crucial connection between emergency assistance and long-term development initiatives, the convening groups pledged to pursue longer-term, strategic objectives to assist Haiti. The participants emphasized that the Haitian government will be front and center of the rebuilding effort, and that any initiatives will also have a strong focus on accountability and effectiveness of the financing. As Secretary Clinton noted, “As we work together to design the mechanism that will be used to deliver assistance and create the conditions for sustainable development, we bear a responsibility to our taxpayers to assure that the money that our government commits will be well spent, transparently, and with results on the ground for the Haitian people.”
Here’s the video:
The strategic objectives agreed upon include strengthening democratic governance, for example, building effective, transparent democratic institutions that can respond to the needs of the people. Engagement will also focus on sustained social and economic development, including economic growth and poverty reduction. A third objective is maintaining rule of law which means supporting the UN stabilization mission in Haiti and integrating the security, law, and justice systems to achieve democratic governance and social and economic development.
While no group financial pledge was made at the meeting—Haiti made no financial requests as no comprehensive assessment has been conducted to determine the cost of reconstruction a few countries announced new commitments Participants also committed to meeting the basic needs of Haiti’s people, and working to construct a roadmap for Haiti’s reconstruction and development. In the short term this means restoring operational capacity of the Haitian government to meet the needs of its people, and conducting comprehensive needs assessments.
In March, an international conference will be held in the U.S., steered by the Government of Haiti, with major donors attending. At this conference, partners will agree on an effective coordination mechanism to address Haiti’s needs, clear and realistic benchmarks, and an ongoing tracking mechanism for implementation.
The prospect of strong support for the reconstruction effort coupled with the debt cancellation for Haiti that ONE is calling for (link to other blog post or site), which is being discussed in the decision-making bodies of multilateral creditors, will help Haiti get back on track to undertake after the earthquake.
Just a reminder that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will address the International Conference on Population and Development today sometime between 2:30 and 2:45 PM EST.
You can watch a live webcast of the speech here, and I’ll post any video and transcript as it becomes available in this post.
Between Tuesday’s speech on “Global Development in the 21st Century” and today’s opening remarks for USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah, Secretary Clinton has been on the ONE Blog quite a bit this week. And tomorrow she’ll commemorate the 15th anniversary of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD).
According to a statement from the State Department, the Secretary will “declare the U.S. Government’s renewed support for and dedication to reaching the ICPD and other related UN agreements, including the Millennium Development Goals, by 2015″. The speech, scheduled to begin at 2:30 PM EST, will be streamed live here.
I’ll post video and transcript when/if it’s made available.
Earlier today, I heard an inspiring, passionate speech by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the direction of U.S. global development strategy and its role in U.S. foreign policy.
In an event hosted by the Center for Global Development, the Secretary addressed a packed room filled with people from the development community, media, and top government officials who included Dr. Raj Shah, the new USAID administrator, and Daniel Yohannes, the CEO of MCC.
She started her speech with remarks about her personal interest towards development and why it is important even when there are people struggling domestically. She has seen the transformative effects of U.S. development assistance at work in Indonesia, Nicaragua, South Africa and in the West Bank, to name a few.
Development is vital for the security, stability, rights and prosperity of our world. It is a strategic importance as well as a moral imperative of the U.S. Therefore, it is time to “elevate development as central to diplomacy” and “make the USAID the world’s premier development agency.” She recognized the problems of the U.S. aid practices in the past and emphasized the Administration’s new approach driven by clear reasoning and common sense. She outlined the new direction and focus of the U.S. development strategy as follows:
- To adopt a model of partnership with developing countries based on shared responsibility.
- To elevate development alongside defense and diplomacy, and to integrate the 3Ds so that they are mutually reinforcing.
- To coordinate across the different U.S. agencies that conduct development work to create a “whole of government” approach to development, and to restore capacity to USAID by bringing experts in-house, rather than as contractors.
- To target key sectors such as health, agriculture, education, energy and local governance issues rather than spreading limited resources too thinly across sectors.
- To strengthen investments in innovation, technology, and drivers of change, such as mobile banking in poor countries and innovations in agricultural crops.
- To focus on women and girls, proven to yield one of the best returns on investment – “giving a man a fish feeds the man for a day, teaching a man how to fish will feed the man for the rest of his life, but teaching a woman how to fish will feed the whole village.”
She concluded her remarks by her determination to make development “better than ever before.” During the questions and answers, she acknowledged that there are many obstacles in adopting this new approach, and asked for the community’s support to urge Congress and the public to understand and support a more robust, effective and efficient development assistance program.
Secretary Clinton is speaking on “Development in the 21st Century” at the Peterson Institute for International Economics right now.
You can watch the speech live online on CNN.
UPDATE: You can read the full transcript of the speech here.
UPDATE: C-SPAN will likely stream the speech here.
At approximately 1:30 pm EST, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will be delivering remarks at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, D.C. In her speech, “Development in the 21st Century”, the Secretary is expected to share her views on new directions in U.S. global development policy and its importance at home and abroad.
ONE will have staff at the speech who will report back on what they heard later today. If I can track one down, I’ll include a live stream of the speech here, as well as video and full transcript. You can read the State Department’s press release here. More soon.
