On October 14 at 4 pm, the Humanitarian & Development NGOs Domain of the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations will host a panel on The Obama Administration's Global Development Policy: Enhancing Coherence and Effectiveness. The event is open to the public and will be held at Weil Town Hall in the Belfer Building at the Harvard Kennedy School.
The panel will be moderated by Nicholas Burns, Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Politics at the Harvard Kennedy School. Among the panelists will be: Paul O'Brien, Director, Aid Effectiveness Team at Oxfam America; and Lant Pritchett, Professor of the Practice of International Development at the Harvard Kennedy School.
Six weeks ago, President Obama signed a Presidential Study Directive (PSD) authorizing a whole-of-government review of U.S. global development policy. What is significant about this PSD is that it looks far beyond foreign aid in considering how U.S. policies can impact global development. It has become increasingly obvious that agriculture, trade and energy policies, for example, have huge consequences for poor people in developing countries. Yet, there is little to no policy coherence across U.S. agencies, when it comes to advancing global development.
This is the first time that a U.S. administration will: look across all U.S. agencies that have a bearing on global development and ask essential questions about objectives, priorities and trade-offs; consider what resources and tools are needed to make U.S. development policy more effective; and recommend how to organize the U.S. government to better achieve its development objectives. The PSD is now underway and will be finalized by the end of January 2010.
The panel will: examine this important opportunity for reshaping U.S. global development policy; explore how it relates to other processes that seek to reform U.S. foreign assistance and related legislation; and discuss what works in development, from the perspective of NGOs and scholars, and how that should be reflected in this policy review process unfolding in real time
