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March 10, 2010

The UN Goes to Hollywood—But Is It Ready for a Close-Up?

Posted by Vijaya Ramachandran in News Tags: ,

This is a joint post with Lauren Young.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has been getting negative press about the relief efforts after the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile. Perhaps worst is a scathing report from Refugees International accusing the UN of ineffectual leadership, missing coordination, and weak communication while an estimated 1.2 million Haitians remain displaced. Though much of the report consists of standard blandishments (the authors spent just 10 days in-country), there is indeed evidence of serious negligence. To give just one example: the organization initially planned on allowing itself two and a half months—well into the rainy season—to distribute plastic sheeting to protect the displaced.   It took a personal intervention from a senior official to get this activity moved up. Read More…

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October 2, 2009

Wanted Now: A Pragmatic and Visionary Leader for the Improved UN Entity for Women

Posted by Nandini Oomman in Global Development, Global Education, Inequality Tags: , ,

This is a joint post with Geeta Rao Gupta.

In all of last week’s hoopla in NYC with the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) and the Clinton Global Initiative in full swing, news about an improved, composite U.N. entity for women (still to be formally named) went under the radar. The idea for consolidating several U.N. agencies into one has been in the works for about three years, but was finally adopted just two weeks ago. The resolution merely approves the creation of the entity and states that the Secretary General should announce the final plan for the structure and mission of the agency at next year’s UNGA. Now that’s classic UN style—to take one entire year to figure out what has already been figured out! It’s time for urgent and quick next steps, which if implemented smartly (not just politically) can make all the difference. Read More…

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September 10, 2009

Birdsall Urges Pittsburgh G-20 Summit to Prepare for Next Global Crisis

Posted by Lawrence MacDonald in Capitol Flows/Financial Crisis, Climate Change, Environment, Global Development, International Financial Institutions, World Bank Tags: , , , ,

nameCGD president Nancy Birdsall urged the United States to exercise leadership at the upcoming G20 Summit in Pittsburgh in a speech today at the Center for Global Development. Birdsall welcomed the emergence of the more representative group of world leaders, which has largely overshadowed the G8, and endorsed the view of major developing country participants that it should become the main steering group for global economic cooperation. She said that the G20, in addition to evaluating progress in addressing the current global financial crisis, needed to look ahead and begin to prepare for the ”crisis next time” by strengthening institutional arrangements for collective action. Read More…

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August 18, 2009

With Climate Change Negotiations Stymied, Mexico and Korea Offer Hope

Posted by Jan von der Goltz in Climate Change, Global Development Tags: ,

Ten days ago, CGD published my working paper on developing country positions in the climate negotiations, to coincide with the start of a week of preparatory talks in Bonn ahead of the December climate summit in Copenhagen. In her foreword, Nancy Birdsall wrote:

“Readers concerned and interested in the fate of the Copenhagen discussions will be dismayed and heartened, depending on the issue. To the extent the negotiating positions are just that, they may of course change; our website will provide periodic updates.” Read More…

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April 1, 2009

Welcome Kemal Dervis to Think Tank Row!

Posted by Nancy Birdsall in Global Development Tags: ,

Kemal Dervis

Let me speak for the development wing of the Massachusetts Avenue Think Tank Row community in rejoicing at the arrival among us of Kemal Dervis, as vice president and director of the Global Economy and Development program at Brookings, our friends and neighbors across the street.

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March 31, 2009

At The G-20 Summit, Nothing for Africa

Posted by Vijaya Ramachandran in Aid Effectiveness, Global Development, International Financial Institutions, Regions Tags: , , ,

Five years after Africa was centerstage at a meeting of the G7 heads of state in Gleneagles, it has all but vanished from the priorities of policymakers from the rich and emerging economies. At the G20 Summit in London this week, heads of state will debate new resources for the IMF, in the range of $250 billion. But these resources will likely be deposited in the New Arrangements to Borrow (NAB) facility, which will be far too expensive and out of reach of most African countries. Rather they will be used by Eastern European countries to bailout Western European banks—an arrangement that suits the large number of European countries participating in the Summit. Read More…

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April 11, 2008

The Global Food Crisis: Time for Action, Not Panic

Posted by Kimberly Ann Elliott in Climate Change, Environment, Food Aid, Food Crisis, Global Warming, Migration and Labor Mobility, News, United Nations, World Bank Tags: , , , ,

The New York Times yesterday (and Paul Krugman earlier in the week) called on rich countries to “step up to the plate” in confronting the food crisis in developing countries — in the short run by increasing their donations of food aid. and in the medium run by getting rid of economically inefficient, inequitable, and environmentally unsound subsidies for biofuels, especially corn-based ethanol.

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December 5, 2007

A Surprise Consensus that International Institutions Need an Overhaul

Posted by Nancy Birdsall in Globalization, International Monetary Fund, United Nations, World Bank, World Trade Organization Tags: , ,

Here are Donald Rumsfeld, James Wolfensohn and somebody else agreeing on something. Guess who recently said the following:
1. “But most (global) institutions are rickety relics of a sixty-year-old worldview, a product of the way the planet looked at the end of World War II or the dynamics that shaped it during the cold war era.”
2. “In the first years of the Cold War the free world’s leaders created the new institutions necessary to prevail against Communism. …Sixty years later….in the face of new challenges… (these) institutions no longer serve our interests well….The next president will face the issue of reforming domestic and international institutions….”
3. “…global institutions have not adjusted to the changes around them… the world has changed much more than they have…. The Brazilian president suggested at a G7 meeting that the following year they ought to meet in Rio because there were so many more people in the developing world and within 40 years they would represent 40 percent of world GDP. The United States and the Europeans have not adjusted. They still think that the core group is the G7… and that the notion of having China or India… is just too exotic for them to take on….”
Here are the answers:

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March 12, 2007

Mission Impossible at the United Nations?

Posted by Nancy Birdsall in Globalization, United Nations, World Trade Organization Tags:

If you are interested in development, you have to be an admirer of the United Nations. But which part and what aspect of the United Nations? Certainly not the Security Council or the General Assembly. Sebastian Mallaby (who wrote the book on James Wolfensohn, The World’s Banker) writes elegantly if depressingly about the impossible challenge the new Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon now faces — as “less the leader of the international system than its prisoner”. Mallaby recommends the Kemal Dervis solution of weighted voting (set out in the 2005 CGD book A Better Globalization) to fix the Security Council, where the veto power of the 5 permanent members ensures that “the United Nations is condemned to tardiness and toothlessness”. But he also says that idea is going nowhere.
Mallaby continue: Some UN agencies that are accountable to their funders, the rich country donors, rather than to the General Assembly get things done (unlike the Security Council and the General Assembly) — WHO, Unicef, the World Food Program.
That seems good. Those are among the dozen or more involved heavily in on-the-ground work in the world’s poor countries. But wait. Among these better performing agencies, competition for funders’ contributions and lack of coordination leads to hopeless fragmentation of their efforts on the ground, and needless burdens on recipient country governments and local programs. Kemal Dervis is now head of the UNDP, and is responsible for fixing that too. See the recent high-level report, Delivering as One (pdf). But to succeed he needs much more vocal support from local and international civil society and NGOs who know the problem. Otherwise there is the risk that, like Kofi Annan, despite his being a superb leader he’ll end up mostly a prisoner of the UN system.

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February 2, 2007

The IPCC Debate on Sea-Level Rise: Critical Stakes for Poor Countries

Posted by David Wheeler in Africa, Asia, China, Climate Change, Environment, Global Education, Global Warming, Human Rights, Migration and Labor Mobility, Regions, United Nations Tags: ,

”SeaToday the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released the first part of its long-awaited Fourth Assessment Report. This is a major event, because the Report strengthens the scientific consensus about the threat from global warming if we don’t curb greenhouse gas emissions. The Report projects sea-level rise of 0.2 – 0.6 meters by 2100 but, citing uncertainty in the scientific literature, it simply excludes the possibility of future rapid changes in the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets. This conservative posture reflects the IPCC’s insistence on scientific consensus. However, according to press accounts from the IPCC’s Paris meetings, the experts continued arguing about Greenland and West Antarctica until their publication deadline arrived. In the case of Greenland, at least, no one believes that its ice cap will survive sustained temperatures in the range that the IPCC projects. Ultimately it will disappear, adding 7 meters to sea level. The argument is about timing, not results: No one expects complete disintegration in the 21st century, but there are worrisome signs that the process has begun. Eventual disintegration of the West Antarctic ice sheet remains controversial; if it happens, it will add another 7 meters to sea level.

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December 4, 2006

Happy Trails, Yosemite Sam (Bye Bye Bolton)

Posted by Administrator in News, United Nations Tags:

”John
For multilateralists, today’s news that John Bolton has resigned as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations offers a glimmer of glad tidings in this otherwise grim holiday season. There was a time, not so long ago, in which the United States was looked upon in many disparate parts of the world as an enlightened, even benevolent force for world order and the advance of universal principles. Over the past six years, the Bush administration has presided over a catastrophic decline in the global prestige of the United States, thanks in no small part to its reckless disregard for the requirements of international legitimacy and its disdain for standing global institutions. No single person, not even President Bush himself, has embodied this unilateralist ethos more than Bolton.
Today’s Washington Post article on Bolton’s departure tiptoes around the damage that Bolton and his colleagues have done.

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November 3, 2006

Development Goals and the Art of the Possible

Posted by Michael Clemens in Aid Effectiveness, Global Health, Globalization, Millennium Development Goals, United Nations, World Trade Organization Tags: ,

The Copenhagen Consensus Project recently asked a group of 24 UN ambassadors and other diplomats to prioritize a list of 40 global development interventions. The US was there. Their interesting report places heath and sanitation on top, with education and hunger somewhat lower. Trade, financial, and environmental policies received lowest priority, due in part to political infeasibility. Bismarck said that politics is the art of the possible; development is largely a political, not a technical problem, and the Copenhagen Consensus group understands that. This approach, which focuses on what is possible in this world instead of what would be possible in an ideal world, is a refreshing alternative to the Millennium Development Goals or MDGs.
Most African countries will miss most of the MDGs. This is not because African governments and international donors are doing nothing good in Africa. Instead, it is primarily because the goals were set without regard to country context, and are thus impossible ( See: What’s Wrong with the Millennium Development Goals?) for many countries to meet. Indiscriminate utopian goals of the past, such as the UN goals for universal primary schooling by 1980 or the UN goal for gender parity in education by 1995, have been abandoned roughly 6 to 8 years before the due date as people come to grips with the reality that change in the developing world is slow and complex. Based on this historical evidence, I guessed in a working paper two years ago that sometime before 2009 the MDGs will be mostly abandoned in favor of some new set of goals.

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September 27, 2006

Pity the Fools: The UN’s embarrassing aid proposal

Posted by Todd Moss in Africa, Aid Effectiveness, Global Health, Regions, United Nations Tags:

There have been many many bad ideas over the years about how to help Africa, but here’s my vote for the worst one in a long while: UNCTAD’s proposal to create a new UN agency to manage a doubling of aid flows to the continent.
Before we get to the proposed solution, the analysis of the problem is deeply flawed. According to the press release:

a new “aid architecture” is needed, drawing in part on the Marshall Plan that helped revitalize European economies after World War II. That plan, paid for by the United States, recognized that shock therapy and piecemeal projects had not helped in getting Western Europe back on its feet and offered instead a generous, multi-year and coordinated funding approach, with each State drawing up long-term recovery plans with no outside interference.

This is a strange interpretation of the Marshall Plan! US assistance to Europe only lasted a few short years and, even at its peak, was never more than a few percentage points of GDP of any receiving country (a fraction of current inflows to many African countries). More importantly, as Brad de Long and Barry Eichengreen demonstrated years ago in The Marshall Plan: History’s Most Successful Structural Adjustment Program (PDF), the success of the Marshall Plan had little to do with capital infusion and mostly was about the attached conditions—precisely the opposite reading of UNCTAD. How UNCTAD decided that the Marshall Plan is a model for hands-off, long-term predictable funding is utterly baffling.
It gets worse:

…existing multilateral aid mechanisms, such as the World Bank´s International Development Association (IDA) and the International Monetary Fund´s Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility, have not lived up to expectations and are not suited to administering doubled aid….These funds along with various new mechanisms related to a doubling of aid might best be merged into a new UN fund…

Really? Merge IDA and the PRGF, plus all the new aid coming down the pipeline, into a single UN agency? Any guesses for what might be the donors’ reactions? The suggestion is so naively ludicrous that I first thought it was a joke (or perhaps a hoax designed to finally goad Congress into pulling the US out of the UN?). It’s no accident that the World Bank and IMF are designated as the lead multilateral agencies for, respectively, development and fiscal stability. Nor is it an accident that they were set up as distinctly separate from the UN.
This proposal is, in the end, quite a sad indication of the desperation of some marginalized agencies to find a shred of relevance. But rather than making the case for the UN to take more responsibility, this report has instead shown exactly the opposite.

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September 19, 2006

Our Man, Andrew Natsios, in Darfur

Posted by Administrator in Africa, Human Rights, Regions, Security and Development, United Nations Tags: , ,

Map of Sudan, highlighting DarfurWith a U.S.-brokered peace plan on life support, President Bush announced to the UN General Assembly today the appointment of former USAID administrator Andrew Natsios as Special Envoy to Sudan. This welcome if belated step reflects the deteriorating situation in Darfur, where — two years after the U.S. found Khartoum complicit in genocide — bands of janjaweed militia continue their policy of murder, rape and ethnic cleansing. The urgency of taking action has only increased with the prospect that the African Unions’s undermanned and under-resourced mission in Darfur (pdf) may leave at the end of the month.
As reported in today’s Washington Post Bush to Name Envoy for Darfur, Bush had long resisted such a step. Credit for his change of heart reflects the tireless lobbying of a broad coalition of advocacy organizations – ranging from evangelical Christian and women’s rights groups – and a partnership of strange political bedfellows on Capitol Hill, including both Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Norm Coleman (R-MN).

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September 8, 2006

UN Women’s Agency Proposal Moving Faster than Expected

Posted by Administrator in United Nations Tags:

In a speech that took even insiders by surprise, UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, Stephen Lewis, announced yesterday that a high-level UN Panel will recommend the creation of a new UN Agency for Women. The recommendation by the High-Level Panel on UN Reform would pave the way for the proposal for a new agency to be submitted to the UN General Assembly, where approval is considered likely.

Lewis spoke at A New UN Agency for Women: Who Needs It?, an event co-sponsored by CGD and the International Center for Research on Women. (The proposal, transcript and video of the event will be available on CGD’s website by Monday). Although Lewis choose his words carefully, he was clearly excited about the momentum he sees building for creation of this new UN agency. He said that the new UN Agency for Women, if approved in the form recommended by the high-level panel, would be headed by an Assistant Secretary General and have a first year budget of $200 million.

Although the announcement is exciting news for supporters of the proposal, many key questions remain: How will this UN agency actually make a difference for women at the grassroots level? Will this agency be given the resources and status that ensures it can be effective? How will this agency avoid the bureaucratic obstacles plaguing many other UN agencies? These are among the questions that advocates for this proposal will need to address in the coming weeks to ensure this idea lives up to its promise.

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June 8, 2006

Cutting off Its Nose to Spite Its Face: U.S. Undermining the United Nations

Posted by Administrator in United Nations Tags:

In a sharply worded speech Tuesday in New York, UN Deputy Secretary-General Mark Malloch Brown took the Bush administration and Congress to task for a self-defeating approach to the United Nations. Even as they turn to the UN to accomplish a variety of indispensable tasks, he complained, U.S. political leaders fail to defend the world body from scurrilous attacks from the likes of “Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.”
For example, a New York Times report (registration required) said:

In a highly unusual instance of a United Nations official singling out an individual country for criticism, Mr. Malloch Brown said that although the United States was constructively engaged with the United Nations in many areas, the American public was shielded from knowledge of that by Washington’s tolerance of what he called “too much unchecked U.N.-bashing and stereotyping.”

The ultimate outcome of this cynical strategy, Malloch Brown rightly notes, will be to discredit the United Nations in the eyes of the American people and deprive the US of a key arrow in its foreign policy quiver.

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