Independent research for global prosperity
Lawrence MacDonald, CGD vice president for communications and policy outreach, interviews a CGD expert in this weekly Podcast. The blog offers a short text summary.
When a catastrophic earthquake struck Haiti last year the U.S. government and public moved quickly to aid the survivors. The response was swift and compassionate. But America did not do something simple and low-cost that could have helped the survivors of this horrible event. It did not crack open the door and admit a small number of them to the United States.
When President Obama created the Global Health Initiative (GHI) in May 2009, health policy gurus welcomed it as a pioneering effort to make US involvement in global health more coherent, strategic and systematic. Two years later, there has been some modest progress but questions abound about how the initiative will take shape and deliver results.
Why are we providing some $1.5 billion per year in development assistance to a country that couldn’t be bothered to find bin Laden? Now that Osama is dead, what the heck are we still doing in Pakistan?
On this special edition of the Global Prosperity Wonkcast I asked these provocative questions of Nancy Birdsall, president of the Center for Global Development.
The United States has committed $1.5 billion per year over five years in an effort to support development in Pakistan, a fragile, nuclear-armed state of almost 190 million people that is in the frontline of the struggle against Islamic extremism. So, how’s that working out?
Congratulations to Sweden for ranking first in CGD’s 2009 Commitment to Development Index (CDI) for the first time since the creation of the Index in 2003. The United States, meanwhile, manages only a meager 17th place among the 22 wealthy countries ranked.