President Barack Obama was talking with Iowans in my neighborhood this morning. Although I was able to get inside the event, three ONE members were lucky enough to be invited to the backyard town hall. They all wore their ONE bands and pins, but unfortunately, they didn’t get a chance to talk with the president individually.
But outside of the event, I stood on the corner across the street with other ONE members in ONE shirts, holding signs that asked the president to support the Global Fund. I was proud to be out there to show support for ONE and the world’s poorest people!
While we were standing there, waiting for the president to leave, a lot of people asked me what ONE was about. We had a chance to tell them about our campaign for the Global Fund, and how we can help ensure that no baby is born with HIV by 2015. One of the women standing next to us was a nurse who had worked with newborn babies, and she too agreed that all babies, no matter where they are born, deserve a fresh start on a healthy life.
Finally, when the President was on his way out, we held our signs up high — and when he saw us, he waved and gave a big thumbs up!
Even though I didn’t get to talk to him, I am glad he saw ONE members today in Iowa and hope he remembers ONE and our signs.
But you can do more than hope that President Obama supports the Global Fund — you can call him right now and urge him to pledge $6 billion to the Global Fund to ensure that no child is born with HIV by 2015!
As promised a year ago, President Obama came to the UN today with his plan to chart a new course for advancing sustainable, equitable economic growth and reducing poverty for the world’s poor. For the first time, the US now has a Global Development Policy that sets forward a clear sense of unified purpose, goals and a modern structure for US development programs. He also offered up some tough talk about mutual accountability and said that selectivity would be a new priority in determining how the United States invests and partners with countries and citizens in the developing world.
The President outlined four pillars of his new policy:
Defining and measuring development: Raising people out of poverty and helping them on the path to more dignified and productive lives cannot be done solely through foreign aid. Trade, investment, and diplomacy are also essential elements that must be applied.
Changing the goal of development: We shouldn’t just want to “manage” poverty but we should seek the means to take citizens around the world out of poverty.
Prioritizing broad-based economic growth as an engine of sustainable development: Prosperity occurs more rapidly where governments attract private investment through friendly business environments, where corruption is not tolerated, where the rule of law and transparency are valued, and where governments are investing in the wellbeing of their own citizens, especially women.
Mutual accountability: The path forward is a two-way street where donors, including the United States, are held responsible to deliver on their commitments and governments and the people of developing nations are ultimately accountable for their own success.
President Obama also talked about selectivity – focusing American efforts where we have good partners and a comparative advantage to achieve results. Excellent policy but very hard to execute. How policymakers work through this process of identifying the best partners and investments to scale them up, while jettisoning marginal or poor performing development activities will be something to watch. These will be tough choices, and establishing clear criteria that are faithful to the principles laid out in the new Global Development Policy will be critical. In other words, will hard-nosed, evidence-based policy decisions consistently win out over entrenched, parochial interests and short-term, strategically-driven imperatives?
All in all, we heard good words today from the President and he will be soundly applauded, as he should be. And next week we will hear more of this excellent language when five of the most key US foreign policy and national security leaders – the Secretaries of State, Defense and Treasury, and the heads of USAID and the MCC – sit down to chat at the US Global Leadership Coalition conference. It could be a fascinating conversation about how ingrained institutional interests will be set aside to adapt to a common purpose for implementing the new Global Development Policy.
And there’s still at least one more piece of the policy architecture that will fall into place in the following month or so. The State Department/USAID’s Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review is nearing completion, a plan that will hopefully provide the operational blueprint for applying the principles set out by the President today.
Have a minute? Right now, thousands of people are tweeting directly at President Obama, asking him to commit $6 billion over the next 3 years to the Global Fund. It’s not every day we get a chance to tweet about something that really matters– but this is one of those days. In just over an hour, the White House has gotten 400 tweets in support of the Global Fund. Every tweet counts right now– we need you to join us.
If you’re not on Twitter, don’t fear! You probably know someone who does, so just forward this blog post on to them. One tweet might not make a huge difference, but if we organize around this moment we can be sure our voices are heard.
U.S. Will Give Mozambique $1 Billion to Fight HIV – The U.S. says it will provide $1 billion over the next five years to help fight AIDS in Mozambique, including strengthening the country’s health system and improving access to treatment. The goal is for the government, aid groups, and private sector to harmonize their efforts to combat HIV and AIDS. (VOA) Pay attention to West African food crisis, says ambassador – U.S. ambassador Robin Renee Sanders argues that the international donor community needs to keep the food security situation in West Africa front and center so as to ensure that all vulnerable people have access to affordable, nutritional commodities to avoid any later crises. (Huffington Post)
Flying to the aid of Africans fighting illness – Journalist Caitlin Gibson interviews Johnathan Miller, founder of the Airborne Lifeline Foundation, a fleet of eight planes dedicated to transporting medical specialists and supplies to remote corners of Botswana to help villages combat HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis. (The Washington Post)
South Africa wants to join BRIC nations – South Africa wants to be considered among the leaders of the developing world along with Brazil, Russia, India and China, its president said, pushing for his country to be the first African member of the informal group that has growing global influence. (AP)
New corn varieties could combat famine during drought – A recent study has found new breeds of “drought-tolerant” corn that could help farmers fight the effects of drought and provide food in periods of low rainfall, with the potential to save consumers more than $500 million in drought related price increases by 2016. (Michael Onyiego, VOA)
Merck provides new funding to fight HIV/AIDS in Botswana – The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has partnered with pharmaceutical giant Merck to provide $60 million over the next five years to fight HIV/AIDS in Botswana, which has the second-highest rate of HIV/AIDS infection in the world. (Byron Butler, The Daily Tell)
U.S. charges 14 with giving support to Somali insurgent group – Federal authorities charged 14 people accused of providing funding and recruits to a militant group in Somalia with ties to al-Qaeda. Last month, the group claimed responsibility for bombings in Uganda that killed at least 76 people. (Greg Miller, Washington Post)
White House Party for Africa Leaves Out Leaders – President Obama celebrated the 50th anniversaries of 17 African nations, but he did not invite a single African leader to the forum. The State Department denies accusations that the President refuses to celebrate with corrupt leaders, noting that American officials have met with African leaders in other settings. (Adam Nossiter, NY Times)
President Paul Kagame under scrutiny – Despite Rwanda’s election marred by murder, censorship and meaningful opposition, Paul Kagame, the incumbent, is set to win 90% of the vote. Kagame is trying to focus on his past achievements – food security, record harvests, women empowerment, and the strengthening of government institutions. (The Economist)
Young Africans Seek U.S. Partnership to Boost Democracy and Development – AllAfrica.com reports on this week’s White House forum celebrating leading young Africans. “I don’t see Africa as a world apart; I see Africa as a fundamental part of our interconnected world,” Obama said at the forum. (Saratu Abiola and Carine Umuhumuza, AllAfrica.com)
This week, President Obama hosted the Young African Leaders forum here in Washington, D.C. The forum brought together 120 dynamic individuals from more than 40 countries in an effort to forge strong, forward-looking partnerships across the continent and with the United States.
President Obama’s town hall speech at the White House
The goal was to allow the participants along with their American counterparts to share their insights on everything from good governance, empowering young people and economic opportunity. The forum kicked off with a town hall meeting with the president at the White House.
I was fortunate enough to attend two of the forum’s events and meet with many of the young African leaders to discuss the importance of fighting extreme poverty and preventable diseases, and how our countries can work together as partners in that fight.
For most of us, August is the slowest month of the year. It’s a time to go on vacation, leave work a little early just for the heck of it, and because of the congressional recess, stop watching the news.
But here at ONE, we’re forging ahead and actually ramping up our work. This month, we’re focusing a lot of our efforts on ensuring that President Obama commits $6 billion to the Global Fund over the next three years.
For the Global Fund, the world’s largest health financier, 2010 is a replenishment year. Come October (we told you there was no time to lose!), the fate of the Global Fund’s financing for the next three years will be set in stone – and that’s why we’re urging the president to show real American leadership for the Global Fund right now.
The Global Fund has hit some serious home runs for malaria, HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis – all preventable diseases – since it started in 2002. By providing funding for vital prevention and treatment efforts, the Global Fund has helped save a whopping 5.7 million lives – roughly 4,000 a day. In fact, the Fund provides two-thirds of all international financing to fight malaria and tuberculosis and one-quarter to HIV/AIDS.
We don’t expect the president to fund the Global Fund by himself. International donors, including African countries, and groups from the public and private sector, will help contribute to this fight against preventable diseases. An estimated $17 to $20 billion could help existing programs continue their good work and scale up at a speedy rate to meet growing demand. The more money donors invest, the better chance the Fund has to eliminate malaria deaths and ensure that no babies are born with HIV by 2015.
This August, we’ll do everything in our power to help educate you on the Global Fund. We’ve got a blog series with a chock-full of personal stories and unique voices; a question-answer session (that you’ll be able to participate in) with our resident global health expert, Todd Summers; a quiz to test your Global Fund smarts; and to end our campaign with a bang, a secret Twitter mission (more on that later).
But in turn we need you, our members, to take action alongside us. In many ways, the fate of global health progress is linked with the success of the Global Fund’s replenishment in October. This is a critical moment for the world’s poorest people, and we need your voices now more than ever.
ONE is campaigning to ensure that the Congressional budget does not cut foreign assistance programs like Feed the Future that help people break the cycle of poverty and hunger.
The Horn of Africa is experiencing its worst drought in 60 years. More than 11 million people, mostly nomadic pastoralists and farmers in south-central Somalia, north-eastern Kenya, and south-eastern Ethiopia, are severely lacking access to food.
2011 marks 30 years since the first cases of AIDS were documented. Take a closer look at the specific, achievable goals we must hit by 2015 to make this year the beginning of the end of AIDS.
As aid agencies warn more than 9 million people could be affected by a food crisis in East Africa, world leaders are failing to keep their 2009 promises to tackle the causes of chronic hunger and support farmers in the world's poorest countries.
