MFAN’s recent event took a close look at the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) and how its principles and operational model are aligning with the President’s Policy on Global Development and overall efforts to improve aid effectiveness. ONE’s Marissa Glauberman wrote about our event on their blog and addressed the opportunities and challenges facing the MCC today.
On July 28, the Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network (MFAN) hosted a public dialogue on the foreign assistance reform agenda with Sheila Herrling, the Millennium Challenge Corporation’s (MCC) Vice President for Policy and Evaluation, and Gayle Smith, Senior Director at the National Security Council (NSC). Entitled “On the Cutting Edge of Aid Effectiveness: Best Practices and Lessons Learned from the Millennium Challenge Corporation,” the event was moderated by the Hon. Jim Kolbe, Senior Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund, and brought together a cross-section of development perspectives. The panelists examined how the MCC was working both independently and alongside USAID and other relevant agencies to maximize the effectiveness, accountability, and efficiency of U.S. foreign assistance dollars.
This week, MFAN is kicking off the second installment in our six-part blog series about our new reform agenda. For August, we’re looking at what it will take to have a strong, empowered 21st century development agency. In From Policy to Practice, MFAN suggests the following actions to strengthen the US Agency for International Development: provide USAID with the tools it needs to accomplish its mission (e.g. a working capital fund); give USAID full authority over its policies and budget; and mandate that a coordinated development strategy be prepared for each developing country with a U.S. presence that is prepared under the leadership of USAID.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry (D-MA) has introduced the Foreign Relations Authorization Act for Fiscal Years 2012-13, which calls for robust resources for U.S. diplomacy and development programs that are critical components of U.S. foreign policy in a challenging world. MFAN applauds Chairman Kerry for authoring a bill that demonstrates a strong commitment to the civilian tools of U.S. global leadership and pushes forward the vital reforms to U.S. foreign assistance.
The severe cuts to U.S. foreign assistance proposed yesterday by the House Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations (SFOPS) would fall hardest on the world’s poorest people, millions of whom are alive and thriving today because of U.S. leadership on international development over the last decade.
Below, please see a guest post from Ariadne Medler, Program Coordinator, Development Assistance and Governance Initiative Global Economy and Development Program, Brookings in which she previews the 2011 Development Assistance Committee of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development peer review of the United States.
MFAN will be taking a closer look at these pieces of legislation, through the perspective of our Partners, and, more broadly, how reform is affecting the way policymakers think about development issues. See below for the first piece in this recurring series from Aaron Emmel, Government Affairs Officer, PATH.
On Thursday, July 21, MFAN and Foreign Policy magazine co-hosted, “The New Middle East: Can Foreign Assistance Bolster the Arab Spring?” The event explored how the U.S. should leverage foreign assistance to protect and advance nascent democratic trends in the Arab world. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Tamara Cofman Wittes gave a keynote speech, followed by panel discussion…
My staff and I have been working assiduously on a wholesale rewrite of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961. In early September, I plan to release it in discussion draft form. This draft is the product of years of research, investigations, briefings, and consultations—with our partners in the field, with the Administration, and with a wide range of experts and organizations involved in development and international relations. And it reflects the input and feedback we have received from the concept paper and three discussion papers we have released since July 2009.
So why does it matter that there has not been a comprehensive annual foreign aid authorization or a new FAAct in over 25 years? We often hear that the President can find the authority needed to carry out any foreign assistance activity somewhere in the FAAct or in annual appropriations. That may be largely the case but it misses some key points.
