Seizing Opportunities to Enhance U.S. Aid Effectiveness: The State of Play and Ways Forward

Posted on 14 April 2010

The Humanitarian & Development NGOs domain of practice at the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations is pleased to host a panel on Seizing Opportunities to Enhance U.S. Aid Effectiveness: The State of Play and Ways Forward.

Wednesday, April 21, 4.00 pm – 5.30 pm
Weil Town Hall (Belfer L-1), Harvard Kennedy School, 79 John F. Kennedy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138

The panel will be moderated by Professor Nicholas Burns, Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Politics, Harvard Kennedy School.

The panel will consist of:

Steve Feldstein, Professional Staff, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, U.S. Congress
Karen Hanrahan, COO, Quadrennial Diplomacy & Development Review, U.S. State Department
Paul O’Brien, Vice President for Policy and Advocacy, Oxfam America
Jonathan Quick, President and CEO, Management Sciences for Health

This policy panel will consider three important policy processes now underway – the Quadrennial Diplomacy & Development Review (QDDR) being advanced by the State Department, the Presidential Study Directive (PSD) being carried out by the National Security Council to review U.S. global development policy, and efforts to rewrite the U.S. Foreign Assistance Act within the U.S. Congress – and the historic opportunity they offer to reshape U.S. foreign assistance and global development policy to be more effective, coherent and integrated. 
 
The panel will bring NGO perspectives, drawn from decades of working in poor communities worldwide, together with U.S. government policy perspectives.  How does the QDDR weigh diplomacy and development as U.S. foreign policy priorities?  How should the U.S. government’s development capacity be strengthened – and how should it relate to diplomacy and defense imperatives?  What major principles should guide U.S. foreign assistance reform in order to dramatically enhance aid effectiveness?  What are the political prospects of such aid reform legislation being passed?  How will the PSD relate to  the QDDR and aid reform?  These are some of the questions that will be considered in the panel discussion and the Q&A to follow.