United States

USAID Chief Raj Shah in London

Jun 20th, 2011 10:28 AM UTC
By Gus Ackah

Off the back of the success of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization conference on Monday –where donors committed $4.3 billion to save 4 million lives in 5 years – USAID Administrator Dr Raj Shah delivered a lecture at the London School of Economics. His theme was results-based development assistance and the direction in which he is taking the agency since his appointment in late 2009.

GAVI was of course high on the agenda – and ONE congratulated Dr Shah on the US pledge of $450million to GAVI over 3 years. A multi-year commitment is a rarity in US development assistance, and Congress will need to approve, however it shows huge intent on behalf of the US.

He emphasised that GAVI showed the power of results-driven, effective, smart aid which is proven to be a cost effective way of ending the deaths of children from preventable diseases, such as pneumonia and diarrhoea. He also expressed the critical nature of the GAVI Alliance itself in that it combines philanthropy, the public sector and the private sector.

More broadly, Dr Shah stressed the integral role of development in US foreign policy, despite the constrained economic environment in which they and many other Western countries were currently operating. Another potent message in Dr Shah’s speech was the willingness of USAID to reach out to all civil society groups no matter their location or size and the emphasis on the continuing role for developed countries.

Agriculture is the “development challenge of our lifetime” he told us. He highlighted the role new technologies and infrastructure could play in agriculture policy and how effective investment in infrastructure for agriculture was already reaping benefits for countries like Ghana and Tanzania. Political will and breakthrough inventions in medicines and healthcare would be significant in future global development strategy he concluded.

As election nears, ONE members in the US work to get candidates thinking about the world’s poorest

Oct 28th, 2010 12:29 PM UTC
By Malaka Gharib

Here’s a member update from the other side of the pond: The United States’ version of the ONE Vote 2010 campaign is coming to a close.

With only a week left until Election Day in the US, ONE members from across the country are working hard to get their Republican and Democratic Senate candidates talking and thinking about extreme poverty.

ONE Vote 2010 organizer Chris Schaffer shakes hands with Illinois Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias at a state fair.

ONE members have enthusiastically followed the campaign trail to ensure that incoming senators have the world’s poorest people in mind as they take office, in the hopes that they will continue to support proven, life-saving policy and programs in Africa.

ONE members have been waiting for this moment for months. Since ONE Vote 2010 launched in July in the US, volunteers from key states have attended meetings, rallies and county fairs on the campaign trail. Although these volunteers have busy lives, they took time out of their days to represent ONE and our global poverty issues, helping to educate and engage candidates and voters alike.

According to our records, ONE members have met with our target Senate candidates 115 times. They’ve met other politicians (like Governor Palin, former President Bill Clinton and President Obama) a total of 66 times. And a handful of Senate candidates have even gone on the record, including Republican and Democratic candidates from New Hampshire, California, and Arkansas — publicly declaring their commitment to the fight against global poverty.

No matter who wins next week, incoming Senators will go to Washington knowing about ONE and our efforts to save lives — all because our ONE members used their voices.

If you’re interested, take a look around the ONE Vote 2010 site and see what our members have been up to on the campaign trail.

Supporting the International affairs budget in the US

Apr 16th, 2010 4:24 PM UTC
By Chris Scott

A ONE member hands over the petition to Senator Cornyn’s office in Texas.

On 1 February, President Obama released his request for the 2001 US budget. The Administration requested $58.5 billion for the international affairs budget – an increase of $6.1 billion over 2010 levels – including key investments in global agriculture and a more comprehensive approach to improving global health, including efforts to fight neglected tropical diseases and improvements to maternal and child health.

To ensure that President Obama’s $58.5 billion request becomes a reality, ONE members across the US have been hard at work calling, writing, petitioning, and even Tweeting their members of Congress.

Earlier this month, over 33,000 ONE members signed a petition asking their senators to sign on to a bipartisan budget letter circulating in the US Senate reinforcing this request. And all this week, ONE members in congressional districts across the US have been hand-delivering these petitions to their elected officials, and calling those senators who have not yet signed on. As of today, 24 senators signed the letter in support of President Obama’s international affairs budget request.

We’ll keep you posted in coming days, weeks, and months as the budget process moves forward in the US.

Feedback from the US-EU Summit

Nov 10th, 2009 10:36 AM UTC
By Eloise Todd

Last week leaders from the United States and European Union met in Washington DC for the regular US-EU Summit.

The team at ONE has reviewed the summit’s declaration [PDF] and picked out some of the key points.

Overall the document contains some very positive language on the need to work together to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2015 and development has been ratcheted up the agenda as a focus for cooperation. There’s also a separate annex on Development. The main point is that the US and EU want to work together with more urgency towards the MDG Summit and up to 2015:

‘we recognize that a coordinated international effort is needed to assist developing countries accelerate progress towards the MDGs’

The Declaration itself pledges to re-launch US-EU dialogue on development, and the first meeting to re-launch of this dialogue will happen at ministerial level very soon. Ministerial level meetings will thereafter be annual, with meetings of the re-launched High Level Consultative Group on Development to be held in between.

The Annex to the declaration outlines 3 areas for close cooperation between the US and EU:

• Food security and agricultural development: initial focus on Africa, will join efforts in a Global Partnership for Agriculture, Food Security and Nutrition; support for the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme.
• Climate change: focus on country-driven adaptation strategies and a pledge to concentrate on the development aspects of climate change.
• MDGs: ‘recognizes that a coordinated international effort is needed to assist developing countries accelerate progress towards the MDGs’. As well as Overseas Development Assistance, policy coherence for development, aid effectiveness and new innovative financing mechanisms mentioned.There are plentiful references to measuring outputs and results of development cooperation as well as a focus on Accra and aid effectiveness.

The declaration comes at a timely moment at the beginning of a new European Commission and Parliamentary mandate in Brussels, and gives us a good kick-off to help ensure that achievement of the MDGs remains high on the political agenda in both Brussels and Washington DC.