Posted: June 9th, 2011 | Author: Maha Rafi Atal | Filed under: Economics | Tags: development, Feminism, Gender, Hillary Clinton, Millennium Development Goals, women, World Bank | No Comments »
Have a quick post up at Foreign Exchange on a Reuters story from this evening, suggesting Hillary Clinton is looking to leave the State Department for the World Bank.
All of a sudden, we might be on the verge of having four women in the four most powerful development policy roles.
I celebrate this. But I am not satisfied. Because despite the increased visibility of women in development policy, the central role of gender equality in economic development is under-appreciated or misunderstood.
More on why women in power doesn’t necessarily mean empowerment for all women here.
Posted: September 29th, 2010 | Author: Maha Rafi Atal | Filed under: Economics, Foreign Policy | Tags: development, European Union, Millennium Development Goals, United Nations | No Comments »
On Foreign Exchange yesterday, I posted a recap of some of my impressions of the summit, as well as from the mass of literature I took away with me. Towards the end of the post, I made the following point:
“I would add something to this: to the extent that every one of these big summits is a test case for the whole idea of global institutions and global governance, a large part of the success will depend on the success of smaller international governance bodies from the African Union to the EU to the G20 to build consensus among their members first and then project that consensus in big global negotiations. At this summit, the Europeans seemed to understand that best. The point on which they rallied–the Tobin Tax–is problematic in that the subject of the tax seems arbitrary and not intrinsically linked to what it’s designed to fund, and that the implementation is still fuzzy, but it was also one of the more interesting ideas on the table and it would be JUST sufficient to raise the capital [about $25-30 billion] needed to reach our anti-poverty targets. But leaving aside the policy, it’s notable that the proposal was supported by a host of countries who don’t always agree with one another and in remarkably consistent language. In other words, we saw a brief glimpse of what long-awaited unified European foreign policy is meant to look like.”
The whole post wasn’t about Europe, so I didn’t go further. But I want to add some more to this: it’s worth noting that several of the top bodies involved with this work (the WTO and the IMF most significantly) have European heads and that a European government had the chairmanship of the whole Summit. To the extent that there were new financial commitments this year, they came from the Europeans–both from national governments and from the European Commission, and pointedly not from other first world nations. The U.S. announced that it was going to commit, essentially to a strategic review, which is a classic diplomatic fudge. Add this to the fact that the Europeans were saying, for better or worse, the most interesting and substantive things on stage–and that a relatively low level of drama was forthcoming from the UN’s usual extreme characters–and it really did feel to me like it was Europe’s week. Which is strange, as I was one of those people predicting total diplomatic collapse after Greece. But it is also wonderful, because I was one of those people gleefully cheering the Europe project on for years before that.
For the rest of my take on the summit, and some great stats on success stories across the developing world, read the whole post.
Posted: September 24th, 2010 | Author: Maha Rafi Atal | Filed under: Economics, Foreign Policy, Politics | Tags: African Union, aid, Andris Piebalgs, climate change, Commodities, development, ECOWAS, energy, European Commission, European Union, Forbes, G20, inflation, Millennium Development Goals, United Nations | No Comments »
My post at Foreign Exchange today is an interview with Andris Piebalgs, the European Commissioner for Development. An excerpt:
“Some of your member states have expressed support for a financial transactions tax as a source of funding. What is the Commission’s view of that?
It’s very clear that official aid will need money beyond .7, and then on top of that aid we will need to raise funds for a climate change pledge. We need to start thinking as though at the end of the day somebody will count the money and if you haven’t delivered, you will be responsible for the misery in the world.
Yes, the tax is logical. Why? We tax everything else. All activities are suffering from taxation. Technically, though, it should be difficult to administer. It needs global governance, and in that, it is a test case for the G20. If they can’t do this, it is on them to propose an alternative. We could tax air tickets, say. Much simpler, but much less popular.”
I really enjoyed the whole chat, and encourage you to go read it.
Posted: September 23rd, 2010 | Author: Maha Rafi Atal | Filed under: Economics, Foreign Policy, Video | Tags: Angela Merkel, Bernard Kouchner, Millennium Development Goals, Oxfam, social media, United Nations | No Comments »
I’ve got two posts up today on ‘out of the box’ thoughts about aid. Namely, the push for a more political/human rights approach, the push for a financial transactions tax, and the push for more reliance on public pressure and social media awareness campaigns. Me, I’m in favor of the first two. I’m also pretty seriously impressed by the two pols who made those arguments, Angela Merkel and Bernard Kouchner. Merkel for her ability to take what is actually a left-wing idea and fit it into a center-right argument. Kouchner for his astounding rhetorical gifts–I’ve never seen anyone own a press pool that way. I particular enjoyed when he told one reporter that she was asking a ‘non question.’ You can enjoy his witticisms here.
As for the third, everyone here will already know that I’m a skeptic about digital democracy. So I won’t repeat myself, just refer you to the interview.
Posted: September 22nd, 2010 | Author: Maha Rafi Atal | Filed under: Britain, Economics, Foreign Policy | Tags: aid, andrew mitchell, development, Millennium Development Goals, nick clegg, United Nations | No Comments »
Another hit from Foreign Exchange:
“Britain took the financial crisis harder than most, and the Liberal Democrat-Conservative coalition that took office in May ran on a promise to right the ship. Their solution: a dramatic austerity program that is making heavy cuts to a host of the country’s cherished public services. Opinion in Britain is pretty split about that, but recent polls show opinion is dead set against the decision to exempt overseas aid from any cuts, and, per an announcement from Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg this morning, to triple aid spending on maternal and child health.
I sat down with Andrew Mitchell, Britain’s Secretary of State for Development…”
Learn what he said here, or listen to an excerpt of my chat here.