The Foreign Service Journal, March 2012

M A R C H 2 0 1 2 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 33 the control of any one nation—Amer- ican leaders proposed longer-term, multilateral solutions, focusing partic- ularly on agriculture and nutrition. At a 2009 meeting of the Group of Eight developed countries in L’Aquila, Italy, the United States proposed and secured approval for a global initiative to strengthen the agriculture sector in developing countries, particularly by helping smallholder farmers improve their productivity. The initial commit- ment was to raise $22 billion over three years. Feed the Future is the American contribution to the L’Aquila initiative. TheWorld Bank coordinates the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program, which has also begun to carry out L’Aquila projects. Not only is U.S. leadership on such initiatives important, but our funding has a multiplier effect: other donors are more likely to contribute if the United States does. U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Rajiv Shah estimates that, overall, every dollar of U.S. aid brings in an additional four dollars from other donors. If America maintains and strengthens its leadership role, the world can make lasting progress against hunger. Joining Forces with Other Advocates New knowledge about the best ways to improve nutri- tion among pregnant women and children younger than 2 — and confirmation of its critical importance — led Sec- retary of State Hillary RodhamClinton and her Irish coun- terpart to launch the 1,000 Days Partnership in September 2010. The idea is to work for 1,000 days to improve nutri- tion among children in that “window of opportunity” be- tween pregnancy and the age of 2. The damage caused by malnutrition during this period is irreversible — but it is also preventable. Scaling Up Nutrition, a global movement led by devel- oping countries to improve nutrition for babies and tod- dlers, is a related initiative. In June 2011, the Bread for the World Institute and ConcernWorldwide hosted a meeting in Washington, D.C., to boost support for SUN’s efforts to build political will, develop workable strategies to solve nu- trition problems, and identify ways to overcome barriers to further progress. Many nutrition practitioners in low-income countries at- tended the Washington meeting, which coincided with Bread for the World’s biannual National Gathering. A group of 19 leaders of national organ- izations representing the women of different Christian denominations came away motivated to organize U.S. women of faith to help achieve the nu- trition goals set by SUN and 1,000 Days. We have also stepped up advocacy for greater aid effectiveness and sup- porting administration efforts already under way. Our members wrote to their elected representatives as part of a 2011 campaign for foreign assistance reform. As part of theModernizing Foreign Assistance Network, our goals in- clude a stronger focus on reducing poverty, clearer ac- countability for spending and its results, a transformed U.S. development agency, and assistance that meets the needs and wants of local people in developing countries. Promising Reforms Besides launching initiatives such as Feed the Future and the 1,000 Days Partnership, the Obama administration conducted a whole-of-government review of development that resulted in the release of the president’s Policy Direc- tive on Development in September 2010. That directive calls for elevating development as a foreign policy consid- eration, strengthening the focus on sustainable develop- ment outcomes, and taking other steps to make the United States a more effective partner in support of development. A few months later, in December 2010, the State De- partment and USAID released recommendations from their joint Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Re- view. USAID has already begun to implement a package of improvements, known as “USAID Forward,” which in- clude a new “Country Development Cooperation Strategy” aimed at improving development results at the country level. USAID has also set up a public Web site, the Foreign Assistance Dashboard (http://foreignassistance.gov/), to synthesize publicly available State Department and USAID budget data. There are plans to expand it to cover all U.S. foreign assistance programs. These reforms will bolster the goals outlined at the U.N. Fourth High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness, held from Nov. 28 to Dec. 1, 2011, in Busan, South Korea. We anticipate that 2012 will be another eventful year as we and our allies work to defend, expand and improve pro- grams that help reduce hunger and extreme poverty. F OCUS The facts show that development assistance did not cause, and cannot fix, the deficit.