Congressman Jim Kolbe (R-AZ) has been selected as the recipient of the 2006 Commitment to Development Award. Sponsored by the Center for Global Development and Foreign Policy magazine, the award honors an individual or organization from the rich world that has made a significant contribution to changing attitudes and policies towards the developing world. An expert panel selects the recipient annually.
The panel commended Kolbe as "a rare and effective voice of reason on foreign aid." As chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, Kolbe helped to make the case for the Bush Administration's innovative aid program, the Millennium Challenge Account. But he was also frank about the broader problems of the U.S.'s highly fragmented and poorly administered aid programs.
The panel includes CGD president Nancy Birdsall; Stanley Fischer, governor of the Bank of Israel and former managing director of the International Monetary Fund; Foreign Policy editor Moises Naim; and Evelyn Herfkens, executive coordinator of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals Campaign.
This year for the first time CGD solicited public nominations for the award and then posted the nominations online for a "People's Choice" vote. A dozen screened nominations were posted and more than 1,000 people voted. William Easterly, a professor at New York University, won the People's Choice vote, with 207 votes, about one-fifth of the total. Easterly, a CGD non-resident fellow, is the author of the recently published book: The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good.
The selection panel praised Kolbe, an eleven-term Republican representing southern Arizona, for being "an early and wise proponent of the U.S. incorporating prevention of state collapse into its strategy for dealing with the world's more than 50 weak and failing states."
Kolbe, who will be retiring from Congress at the end of his current term, will accept the award at a CGD event next month to be announced soon. Kolbe is the first American to receive the Award.
Previous winners of the Commitment to Development Award are: Gordon Brown, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Treasury of the United Kingdom (2005); Oxfam's Make Trade Fair Campaign (2004); and the four ministers of development cooperation who created the Utstein Group: Clare Short of the United Kingdom, Hilde Frafjord Johnson of Norway, Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul of Germany, and Evelyn Herfkens of the Netherlands (2003).