Barack Obama

From principle to practice: Making the US MDG plan a reality

Aug 3rd, 2010 9:12 AM UTC
By Erin Thornton

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On Friday, the Obama Administration unveiled the United States’ plan for meeting the Millennium Development Goals, eight ambitious targets aimed at reducing global poverty and disease by 2015.

Entitled Celebrate, Innovate and Sustain: Towards 2015 and Beyond, the strategy is the first official document to articulate the US approach towards the MDGs. It does so from a unique angle. To underscore the interconnectedness of the MDGs and the need for a comprehensive approach to achieve them, instead of cataloguing inputs to each of the eight individual goals, it lays out four overarching imperatives to guide US development policy broadly – leveraging innovation, investing in sustainability, tracking development outcomes (not just dollars) and enhancing the principle and practice of mutual accountability.

The strategy also outlines the elements critical to achieving these principles, many of which have been tested across a variety of US development programs over the past decade and are included in ONE’s recommendations to all member states ahead of the UN High-Level Meeting to review the MDGs. For example, the plan identifies good governance and broad-based economic growth as critical to achieving sustainable poverty reduction and preserving development gains already achieved. Investing in local capacity to strengthen service delivery is also included as a key component of sustainability, as is the empowerment of women and girls and the mainstreaming of gender into core development efforts. The strategy also has a welcome focus on results and accountability. It calls for a “relentless commitment to impact” through enhanced monitoring and evaluation and strengthened data collection capacity, and acknowledges the gaps between rhetoric and action on donors and partner country efforts to improve aid effectiveness.

With less than two months left before the UN meeting, the US has now taken the first step towards providing leadership in New York. However, a successful outcome in September – with a global, results-oriented action plan for 2010 to 2015 – will require some more details on how this plan will become a reality. The US has now articulated a solid set of principles to guide its efforts to fight poverty – something that has been missing in US development policy to date. To fully deliver on President Obama’s pledge to come to this year’s UN summit with a global plan to make the MDGs a reality, the next step will be to work with partners to turn these principles into a globally agreed strategy.

To do this, the US should first clarify how its four principles – innovation, sustainability, tracking development outcomes and mutual accountability – will complement other countries’ efforts to meet the MDGs and feed into the global plan that is adopted in September. All countries will be coming to the UN in September with their own strategies and commitments to achieve the MDGs. It is critical that these are bound together into a comprehensive package so that all actors can be held accountable to their commitments after September.

Second, the strategy says that across its development agencies the US will “retain, improve, and, when appropriate, also expand development-related activities that further these four imperatives.” Further details on this – including a clear timeline, process, and metrics for success – are critical to ensuring that the strategy is implemented.

Finally, as the Administration begins to develop a plan for implementation, it also needs to provide clarity on how this new strategy will fit into ongoing efforts to reform US development policy – including the Administration’s Presidential Study Directive and Congress’s rewrite of the Foreign Assistance Act. Coordination across the US government will ensure that all US development tools are maximized and that any new strategy is elevated as a cornerstone of US foreign policy for the long-term.

Women hold the key to a future free of extreme poverty

Flynn Coleman is one of this year’s winners for Concern Worldwide’s annual creative writing competition. The following is an excerpt based on her award-winning essay, which urges President Obama to support the Millennium Development Goals for the sake of gender equality.

What if just one of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) — achieving significant progress toward gender equality by 2015 — met its target, and in the process ensured that other MDGs would be realized as well?

In the developing world, women are gatekeepers and influencers in their villages. They have deep knowledge of local eco-systems and are the primary water gatherers, cooks, domestic organizers and healing agents for their families. When a mother is given a malaria bed net or attends a course on sexual education, she shares the net with her babies and an understanding of HIV and AIDS transmission with her partner and her friends.

Armed with a voice in community discussions, political decisions and leadership roles, women will rise above their poverty and pain. Most importantly, they will bring their children, husbands, brothers, mothers and friends with them. Women will apply the skills they learn in business school back to their hometowns and local communities.

Women will teach their children about sustainable living, ensuring environmental protection for the next generation. They will send their children to school, making sure they are wearing shoes and carrying pencils.

What if I told you that I know who holds the key to a future free from the torture of hunger, the lack of schooling, the isolation of discrimination, the grief of infant death, the confusion of sparse pre-natal care, the agony of disease, the devastation of environmental degradation and the pain of systemic injustice in the developing world?

What if I told you, that it was your daughter?

- Flynn Coleman, legal advocate for human, animal and environmental rights

Report: President Obama ‘hurt’ by criticism of global AIDS funding

Jul 21st, 2010 11:49 AM UTC
By Chris Scott

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With the ongoing International AIDS Conference in Vienna, the global HIV/AIDS epidemic has been thrust back into the spotlight the last several days. The Guardian has this report of the US response to criticism of recent AIDS funding:

Barack Obama has been personally hurt by claims he reneged on promises to increase US funding to fight Aids, the head of his administration’s efforts to counter the disease has said, rejecting the criticism as unjust.

Eric Goosby, who leads Pepfar, the President’s Emergency Plan For Aids Relief, has himself been targeted by noisy demonstrators at the international Aids conference in Vienna who have invaded the platform, accusing the US of allowing people with HIV to die. The issue of funding in an economic recession – and particularly the US government’s contribution – has been the tense underlying theme of the meeting.

Activists say Obama promised an extra $50bn (£33bn) for Aids by 2013 before he was elected but is now flat-lining Aids funding, with an increase of just 2.5% in 2011. Obama has made HIV/Aids part of a global health initiative that is to get an overall funding increase of 8% – but other initiatives, particularly on cutting the deaths of women in childbirth and their babies, will get a bigger increase.

Goosby said Obama was disturbed by activists’ charges, pointing out that the US is the world’s largest donor towards the fight against HIV/Aids.

“I think it has been frustrating to be presented as a non-contributor. The administration and the president have been hurt by the characterisation that the US has not stepped up to the plate and taken this commitment seriously in all arenas,” Goosby said.

The US provided more than 50% of total global health spending, he said, and in many sub-Saharan African countries Pepfar provided between 40% and 95% of the Aids treatment response. “That really reflects an extraordinary commitment, unmatched and unparalleled by any other country on the planet, not for one year but for the past seven years,” he said.

Before Obama was elected Pepfar had put 1.8 million people in the developing world on treatment, Goosby said. That was now up to 2.5 million and Pepfar was committed to reaching 4 million. “What other country has done anything close to that?” he asked.

Obama announces US AIDS strategy

Jul 12th, 2010 12:02 PM UTC
By Josh Lozman

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This week, President Obama will announce a national AIDS strategy to reduce the number of new infections. Many, including us at ONE, were startled and troubled by the news last year that the District of Columbia had an HIV positive rate that is still higher than many African countries. This pandemic is truly global and needs to be fought everywhere. We’ll keep you posted when the strategy is announced.

Here’s an excerpt from the New York Times report:

President Obama will unveil a new national strategy this week to curb the AIDS epidemic by slashing the number of new infections and increasing the number of people who get care and treatment.

“Annual AIDS deaths have declined, but the number of new infections has been static and the number of people living with H.I.V. is growing,” says a final draft of the report, obtained by The New York Times.

In the report, the administration calls for steps to reduce the annual number of new H.I.V. infections by 25 percent within five years. “Approximately 56,000 people become infected each year, and more than 1.1 million Americans are living with H.I.V.,” the report says.

Mr. Obama plans to announce the strategy, distilled from 15 months of work and discussions with thousands of people around the country, at the White House on Tuesday.

While acknowledging that “increased investments in certain key areas are warranted,” the report does not propose a major increase in federal spending. It says the administration will redirect money to areas with the greatest need and population groups at greatest risk, including gay and bisexual men and African-Americans. The federal government now spends more than $19 billion a year on domestic AIDS programs.

President Obama praises President Johnson Sirleaf’s “heroism”

May 28th, 2010 9:52 AM UTC
By Chris Scott

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AFP reports:

President Barack Obama lauded the “heroism” of Liberia’s President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf on Thursday, saying her commitment to democracy stood as an example for other troubled African nations.

Obama met Sirleaf in the Oval Office, and pledged the United States would stand with Liberia at every step of the way of its democratic development.

“I have been an extraordinary admirer of her work for many years now…. The United States and Liberia are close friends, longstanding partners, and Liberia is now emerging from a very difficult period,” Obama said.

“Part of the reason it has been able to emerge is because of the heroism and courage of President Sirleaf.”

“She is committed to the rule of law, made strides in reforming the judiciary and in all these endeavors I want to make sure the people of Liberia understand… that the United States is a constant friend and partner.”

Obama said Sirleaf’s example should be taken as inspiration to other African nations including, Guinea, Ivory Coast and Niger.

Sirleaf said her country had made important progress, and she thanked Obama for his and America’s support.

Africa’s first elected female head of state, Sirleaf said that she would not hide the fact that Liberia had challenges, but added that all basic freedoms were alive in her country today.

“We said that we were going to make Liberia rise again. I come today on behalf of the Liberian people to say that we have made a lot of progress,” she said.

White House Global Development Plan Ready: Worth the Wait But Now for the Tough Part

Cross-posted at the Huffington Post:

Global development advocates have been waiting and waiting for President Obama to signal how he intends to act on his bold and ambitious commitments to fight poverty and to promote growth and stability around the globe. The wait appears to have been worth it. Last week, a preliminary draft of Presidential Study Directive (PSD) – A New Way Forward on Global Development – found its way into the media, perhaps not the preferred means of disclosure, but one that offers enormous promise for a new vision of development as an elevated and core element of US foreign policy.

The draft PSD threads together multiple goals to be pursued by American investments in global development, bringing stability to nations emerging from conflict, attacking poverty, enhancing economic growth and supporting universal values. It brings a refreshing coherence to a policy agenda that has often times been marked by fragmentation, neglect, and contradiction. It recognizes successes from the past – like the provision of life-saving medicines and delivery of humanitarian aid – and proposes to integrate those into new priorities that address the challenges faced today. And it establishes a permanent means to routinely review and adjust policy priorities through a US Global Development Strategy, signed by the President every four years.

This new approach calls for a “deliberate development policy,” moving away from a process of making trade-offs through implicit decision-making, to an explicit identification of policy objectives, an order of prioritization, and resource alignment that will achieve them. The PSD draft envisions a system that maximizes the potential of innovation, differentiates between widely divergent development landscapes — from Afghanistan to Ghana — and holds partner governments and societies accountable for results. Under a new business model, there will be greater emphasis on prioritizing sectors in which the US invests, including health, food security, and governance, and establishes and better defines divisions of labor with other donors. US policy will align with partner country national strategies, will leverage non-public development actors that have become such critical elements in fighting poverty and promoting growth, and will strengthen multilateral approaches to global challenges. All of this will be done utilizing rigorous evaluation procedures, measuring impact, and adjusting strategies when necessary.

Importantly, the New Way Forward commits to a bipartisan approach in partnership with Congress. It implies establishing the “grand bargain” with lawmakers, seeking greater executive flexibility in program and policy management in exchange for a commitment of heightened accountability for results to elected officials and the American people.

This is an impressive and encouraging statement of White House policy. But now for the hard part. First, the President needs to sign the PSD, something we hope will take place this week. And now that we’ve seen a draft, we will be watching closely that the final document fully endorses, or better yet, further strengthens the policy principles set out in the leaked version. As with any policy statement, the test will be in the implementation. The plan is bold but will be meaningless without strong and continuous leadership and monitoring from the White House. The wait is over – we hope – and now the real work begins.

Bono meets with President Obama

ONE’s co-founder Bono met with President Obama and members of his national security staff earlier today to discuss the Administration’s development strategy heading into the upcoming G8 and G20 meetings in Canada and September’s UN Summit on the Millennium Development Goals. They talked about Bono’s recent trip to Senegal, Ghana, Mozambique, Kenya and South Africa and about how good governance and increased trade and investment are critical to driving economic growth on the African continent.

Bono made the following remarks after the meeting in the Oval Office:

With the first blackberry president, we discussed the power of new technology to empower activists and entrepreneurs across Africa, part of a new rising generation that’s boosting growth and governance and defying stereotypes.

A recurring theme was innovation. We agreed that there are simple technologies that need to be made more available to transform not only public health, but also agriculture, helping farmers check prices and weather patterns. While acknowledging these are difficult times for donor economies, we discussed the President’s food security initiative and agreed to encourage other countries who signed up to keep their commitment to invest $22 billion over 3 years.

The President and his team are preparing for the UN development summit in September where it will have to be admitted that not enough has been done – north or south of the equator – for and by the world’s poorest economies to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, which have as their target a halving of extreme poverty by 2015.

We also discussed the real results American aid is achieving — malaria deaths cut in half across the continent of Africa, 3 million Africans on life-saving AIDS medication and 42 million more children going to school. This is momentum that can be built upon now.