Last Thursday, the Center for Global Development (CGD) released the 2009 Commitment to Development Index (CDI), their annual ranking of rich countries based on their policies to help the developing world. CGD has published the CDI since 2003 in an effort to move beyond looking at just aid and evaluate whether rich nations are living up to their policy commitments in all areas of development. The CDI ranks 22 rich nations for their policies and actions to support poor nations to achieve greater prosperity, good government and security. Namely, these nations are scored in seven major policy areas: quantity and quality of aid, trade, investment, migration, environment, security and technology.

Sweden topped the 2009 CDI rankings while none of the Group of 7 (G7) nations, the world’s most industrialized nations, were scored in the top 10. Among the G7, Canada scored the best, coming in at 11th, followed by France, Germany and the UK, all tied for 12th. The United States was ranked 17th, scoring highest in trade and lowest in overall aid. Collectively, the G7 did best in the investment and trade policy areas and worst in the aid and migration components. Rankings for Canada, US, Japan and Germany remained largely the same as in 2008, but the UK dropped from sixth to 12th, mostly due to falling scores on the aid and security components. France improved from 16th to 12th and Italy moved up from 20th to 18th. South Korea, only its second year included in the CDI, remained in last place.

According to the CDI, the G7 is not using their full potential to attack global poverty: “It is the United States, Germany, France, Japan and the other economies that have multiple linkages and potential in absolute terms to make a difference for poor countries,” said CGD president Nancy Birdsall, “their failure to use it to the fullest is a blow to the cause of truly shared global prosperity.”

The annual fall meetings of the World Bank and IMF in Istanbul this week focused on the “road to recovery” from the global economic crisis. While we didn’t see major new initiatives emerge from the meetings, the Bank and the Fund reaffirmed important commitments to help emerging market and developing countries cope with the impacts of the financial crisis. These include commitments to ensure the Bank and the Fund have adequate resources to respond to the crisis and timetables for governance reforms that would give greater voice and representation to emerging market and developing countries.

They echoed calls to: protect core spending on health, education, infrastructure, agriculture and social safety nets; revive global trade and investment; and establish a multilateral trust fund at the World Bank for the food security initiative. The World Bank and African Development Bank also announced this week that they would invest $215 million to bring high-speed, low-cost internet access to central African countries.

While important progress is being made at the institutions, some say it’s not going fast enough or deep enough. Nancy Birdsall, at the Center for Global Development, says the newly inclusive G20 is more progressive than the modest changes in governance being proposed at the World Bank and IMF. Several African finance ministers also issued a statement during the annual World Bank and IMF meetings calling for their countries to have a voice in the G-20, and another self-styled “group of 30” financial figures called for much more dramatic reforms at the IMF including ending the U.S. veto power and cutting the number of European board chairs.

We’ll be watching to see how these financial mechanisms and new governance proposals will benefit sub-Saharan African countries. In the meantime, read more of ONE’s analysis of the meetings here.

Audience members opted for seats on the floor and leaned against walls in a packed room at the Center for Global Development (CGD) yesterday at the launch event for Start With a Girl: A New Agenda for Global Health.

Supported by the Nike Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the report is a follow-up to the 2008 publication, Girls Count: An Action and Investment Agenda, and is part of a series of publications focusing on issues affecting adolescent girls, including education, health, and economic empowerment in the developing world.

The report, spearheaded by Miriam Temin and Ruth Levine, stresses the importance of including adolescent girls in global health programs and policies. The report sheds light on the realities of girls’ health and well-being in developing countries, emphasizing the link between the health of girls and their families, as well specific actions that will improve health prospects for millions of women and girls worldwide.

“When adolescent girls win, everyone wins. Girls are…agents of positive change for their future families and communities,” remarked Levine.

CGD Board Member and Executive Vice-Chairman of Magna International, Belinda Stronach started off the morning by introducing featured speaker, Melanne Verveer, the newly-appointed Ambassador of Global Women’s Issues at the State Department. Verveer spoke about the importance of focusing on women’s issues around the world, calling them both the keystone and most vulnerable population. She explained that we should, however, “look at girls and women not as victims…but as agents of change.”

Temin and Levine gave a brief overview of the report findings, including the most prevailing and serious health problems facing adolescent girls in developing countries. The report lays out an ambitious, yet feasible agenda of eight priorities for action which researchers believe will help to break the vicious cycles of ill health.

The eight actions are as follows:

1. Implement a comprehensive health agenda for adolescent girls in at least three countries.
2. Eliminate marriage for girls younger than 18.
3. Place adolescent girls at the center of international and national action and investment on maternal health.
4. Focus HIV prevention on adolescent girls.
5. Make health-system strengthening and monitoring work for girls.
6. Make secondary-school completion a priority for adolescent girls.
7. Create an innovation fund for girls’ health.
8. Increase donor support for adolescent girls’ health.

The event was followed by a brief panel discussion which featured participants from the World Health Organization, Office of the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator, and the NoVo Foundation.

The Start with a Girl report concludes: “A comprehensive agenda for girls’ health is within reach.” We have the resources. All we need is the will.

You can read more about the report here.

-Robyn Mitchell and Jen Fraser

I’m here at the University of Pittsburgh at the panel we’re co-hosting with the Center for Global Development (CGD) on the G20 and global development.

Speakers will include:

Tim Adams, former Under Secretary for International Affairs, Department of Treasury
Nancy Birdsall, President, Center for Global Development
Donald Kaberuka, President, African Development Bank,
David Lane, President and CEO, ONE
Dr. Louis Picard, Professor, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Pittsburgh, moderator

The room is filling up and we should starting in just a few moments. I’ll update you on how it’s going in just a bit.

-Virginia Simmons

President Obama signed a Presidential Study Directive (PSD) on Monday calling for a government-wide review of U.S. global development policy. According to White House staff, the president has asked National Security Adviser Jim Jones and National Economic Council Chairman Larry Summers to lead the review. The review will include all U.S. government agencies involved in global development as well as Congress and constituents. Findings and recommendations from the review will be provided to the president in January. All of this is welcome news to many in the development community who have been tracking the growing momentum in Congress and the executive branch to strengthen U.S. global development efforts. And the directive signals that the White House is seriously thinking about how the U.S. engages with poor countries and promotes global development, including but not limited to stronger and smarter foreign aid.

While we wait to read the full details of the latest Presidential Study Directive (PSD) on global development (it’s not yet publicly available), we know that PSDs initiate reviews of policy procedures generally pertaining to national security and President Obama’s first PSD, Organizing for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, might serve as a good guide for what we can hope to see in the global development PSD. I’d like to see the global development PSD keep similar language calling for:

1. A full, interagency review of how to reform the White House organization to create an integrated, effective and efficient approach, in this case to strengthen U.S. and global prosperity and security;
2. Full participation from all the U.S. government agencies involved in global development (from State, to USAID, MCC, Treasury, Defense, Centers for Disease Control, Department of Agriculture, and many more) and a commitment to consult important stakeholders in Congress and among outside experts during the course of the review; and
3. Consideration of the recommendations from numerous bipartisan and expert studies on the issues (from the Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network’s New Day New Way; the Center for Global Development’s White House and the World: An Global Development Agenda for the Next President; the Brookings/CSIS’s Security by Other Means report; and many others).

Unlike the first PSD on counterterrorism, I hope that the global development PSD will include the USAID administrator among the addressees (even better if we soon have a new USAID administrator appointee—those growing impatient are casting their votes for the next administrator here!). I also hope to see some language encouraging the review to address the full range of U.S. policies—from foreign aid, to trade, climate change, migration and more—that affect how the U.S. engages the rest of the world, including developing countries. I’m also eager to learn how the White House will engage the multilateral development institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in the review and potentially other development donors from the UK, Germany, France, Japan, and elsewhere.

The White House call for a presidential study directive on global development comes on the heels of announcements from both the executive and legislative branches aimed at strengthening U.S. global development efforts including:

1. The Department of State has said it will undertake a Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR);
2. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman (D-CA) and Mark Kirk (R-IL) introduced the Initiating Foreign Assistance Reform Act (H.R.2139) that calls on the administration to develop a national strategy for global development and now has 100 Republican and Democratic co-sponsors;
3. Senate Relations Committee members Kerry (D-MA), Lugar (R-IN), Menendez (D-NJ), Corker (R-TN), Cardin (D-MD) and Risch (R-ID) introduced the Foreign Assistance Revitalization and Accountability Act of 2009 (S.1524) that calls for strengthening the U.S. Agency for International Development and monitoring and evaluation of aid programs; and
4. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Berman and his staff have begun the process of rewriting the outdated 1961 Foreign Assistance Act.

Together, these are welcome signals that the executive branch and Congress are committed to strengthening U.S. global development. The trick, as Sheila Herrling at the Center for Global Development points out, is going to be figuring out how to put them all together so that you end up with a smart, coordinated U.S. strategy for confronting poverty, inequality, conflict and disease that threaten prosperity and security globally and at home.

-Sarah Jane Staats

Last week, the Center for Global Development (CGD) hosted a launch for a new book called Performance Incentives for Global Health: Potential and Pitfalls. In the book, authors Rena Eichler and Ruth Levine, as well as members of CGD’s Working Group on Performance-based Incentives, describe a way to finance development which is receiving increasing attention – the transfer of money or services to patients or providers in exchange for taking action to improve health or meeting performance targets. The book examines the successes of these programs in Haiti and Rwanda, as well as Nicaragua and other examples from around the world.

In Haiti, institutional deliveries by skilled attendants increased by over 19% at NGOs which received payments based on results achieved in comparison to those paid based on inputs (like health workers trained, for example).

In Rwanda, provinces with performance-based financing reported the largest increases in the quantities of both curative and preventative care services. These provinces also outperformed non-performance-based ones in terms of effective management of deliveries and referral systems. As a result of encouraging results from these pilots, the Ministry of Health scaled up to a national model of performance-based financing.

In Nicaragua, immunization coverage increased more than 30% in areas which implemented a cash transfer program similar to the one described in our blog post from last Tuesday, in comparison to areas that did not implement this type of program. Amongst the poorest, the increases in immunization rates were even greater than 30%.

Other countries in Latin America, such as Colombia and Mexico, reduced child stunting by 6.9% and 29% in girls through cash transfer programs. In Russia, providing food, travel subsidies, and other services for patients with tuberculosis helped to reduce treatment default rates from 15-20% to 2-6%, which means more people continued to receive the treatment they needed.

Performance-based incentives are not a cure-all for all health system problems, but they are a promising tool for increasing service usage and performance. As authors Eichler and Levine noted, this strategy may be particularly useful where current incentive structures fail to reward strong performance, where households face financial, physical and social barriers to access, and in weak-state settings.

-Rena Pacheco-Theard & Lisa Fleisher

As you know, last week the Center for Global Development and Foreign Policy magazine awarded ONE the 6th Annual Commitment to Development Award. This was a huge honor for us. Senators John McCain and Tom Daschle, along with Cindy McCain and Steve Radelet were there to discuss the successes of our ONE Vote ’08 Campaign and ONE’s impact on the 2008 US Presidential election. The event also featured an excellent panel discussion with star ONE volunteers Danielle DePas, Michael Castaldo, and Matthew McAllister.

This was a really great celebration of all the hard work from thousands of ONE members across the country. We compiled a short video of some of the highlights from the event (the panel discussion begins at 6:49). Enjoy!

-Chris Scott

I just got back from the National Press Club where the Center for Global Development and Foreign Policy Magazine presented ONE with the 6th Annual “Commitment to Development Award.” Senator John McCain, Cindy McCain, Tom Daschle, and others were in attendance to reflect on and celebrate the successes of ONE Vote ’08 this past presidential campaign cycle.

In talking about ONE, Foreign Policy Editor in Chief Moisés Naím noted that “unless one pushes for obvious ideas, they aren’t obvious for many. Now [these issues] are obvious to millions thanks to ONE.”

Mr. Daschle and Mrs. McCain spoke at length about the necessity of bipartisanship in the fight against extreme poverty—a bipartisanship of which they were obvious examples.

But by far the highlight and emphasis of the ceremony were the immeasurable achievements of ONE members and volunteers all across the country—today represented by Danielle DePas, Michael Castaldo, and Matthew McAllister who came to DC to accept the award. All three were invited to sit on a panel discussion with Steve Radelet and ONE’s Liesl Hickey to discuss topics such as grassroots activism, organizing, and how the US can lead in the fight against global poverty and preventable disease.

We’ll have further posts with photos and video from the event for you shortly. You can read more about the award here.

-Chris Scott

Today we are very proud to announce that the Center for Global Development and Foreign Policy magazine have selected ONE to be the 2008 winner of the Commitment to Development “Ideas in Action” Award. The award, given annually since 2003, seeks to honor individuals or organizations “from the rich world that has made a significant contribution to changing attitudes and policies toward the developing world.”

We are honored to receive this award which of course would never have been possible without the hard work and dedication of ONE members and activists around the world.

Some excerpts from CGD’s announcement below, and you can listen to the telephone press conference here.

Through its ONE Vote ‘08 initiative , ONE mobilized 2 million supporters to sign petitions, raise awareness in their communities, and encourage the presidential candidates to explain how they would improve U.S. policies that affect poor people in developing countries. After the election, ONE pushed for President-elect Barack Obama and other newly elected officials to keep their commitments to the world’s poor in the face of the global financial crisis.

ONE Campaign advocates-often sporting ONE Campaign t-shirts-were visible at town hall meetings and election events around the country in 2008, catching the attention of candidates and voters.

ONE also hosted high-level panel discussions on global poverty at the Democratic and Republican national conventions. Hundreds of students, activists, and convention delegates attended the convention events.

-Chris Scott

With the 2008 presidential election being held a week from today, it’s a great time to take stock of the progress made during the Bush administration and what challenges we’ll confront during the next administration.

Todd Moss, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, sat down for an interview about progress in US foreign aid under the Bush administration. He also discusses ideas for how the next president could potentially continue these efforts.

Excerpts below, full piece here

Q: What has the Bush administration done to strengthen U.S. engagement in Africa?

A: I don’t think it’s too strong to say that President Bush’s Africa policy is the most distinguished foreign policy legacy of the administration. Although few expected such interest eight years ago, the president has clearly been deeply and personally committed to strengthening U.S.-Africa relations. We have not only seen U.S. assistance levels to Africa skyrocket, but the whole debate about foreign aid and Africa has changed.

Q: How so?

A: A decade ago, Washington was still arguing about whether foreign aid was a waste or not and whether we had any real interests in Africa. Today, the discussion is about how to innovate, build partnerships, and fix our aid system. The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) have been game-changers. Africa’s debt problem is essentially fixed. We have seen a huge spike in American trade and increased private investment. The U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corp. has helped to launch more than a dozen private equity funds targeting the continent. American thinking on Africa has changed completely. It’s no coincidence that views of the U.S. are still overwhelmingly positive across Africa.

-Chris Scott