This morning, the White House launched the Presidential Policy Directive on Development (PPD). This is really a great moment for the US and for the development community . The PDD establishes development as a strategic, economic, and moral imperative for the United States. It establishes beliefs that I share and that we’ve talked about up here at UNGA in New York, that American leadership on development must be oriented toward transformative and sustainable outcomes, not just addressing immediate or emergency needs.
We want to help countries out of poverty and set in place effective, democratic institutions to create the next generation of emerging markets. We want to see science and technology change the prospects for development across the board: increased crop yields, cures for devastating diseases, and production of clean forms of energy. We want to see governments take on the responsibility for meeting citizens’ basic needs – with the technical know-how, the systems, and the sources of revenue to do it. Ultimately, we want to support the conditions that enable countries to sustain further progress on their own.
This is already happening in Feed the Future, the Global Health Initiative, and Global Climate Change Initiative, the centerpieces of the President’s ambitious commitment.
It was an honor to join the President as he announced it this afternoon at the MDG Summit. Be sure to check out our fact sheet for more details.
In planning to reach the millennium development goals it is crucial think long-term. Putting aid and assistance into sustainable development projects is key to relieving the U.S. from continuing to poor money into countries without achieving growth, only temporary relief. However, there are many factors that must be considered. Some emergency needs have to be addressed before broader goals can be reached. Basic human rights, such as access to clean water and food, must be reached before we can hope to achieve continued progress in maternal health or education. There seems to be a delicate balance though. This balance consists of working towards development from many angels. Even critics of human rights and political corruption in the Rwandan government cannot deny the developmental growth they have seen over the past several years. More children than ever are completing primary school and the economy is growing as well. This example shows that achieving these basic rights are important, but broader goals can be worked towards simultaneously. Even Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, was quoted congratulating their achievements. Yet no one can deny they still have a long way to go in other aspects of development and rights.
President Obama seemed to allude to a similar kind of balance in his address to the U.N. General Assembly. He speaks specifically of Human Rights and the importance of spreading those to all people and that economic growth and some forms of development are not good enough. The idea behind this seems to be that even some development is unlikely to remain consistent and stable without also achieving these basic rights within a country. Governments must be accountable to their people. Economic growth can still happen with corruption in politics, therefore, the economy is not the only aspect we can use to measure the success of development. With Obama’s announcement of his dedication towards reaching many of these goals, and reaching them with the long-term in mind, should bring hope to everyone. I am, personally, very pleased with the direction our development goals seem to be going.
So will the actual policy directive be released? The link you gave is to just a fact sheet at the White House. I’ve searched the WH site and the web and there doesn’t seem to a be a PDF of the actual PPD. When will this actually be released?
We are currently working in bringing ‘Equitable’ ‘Outcome Based’ education to developing nations. It is a self propelled technology based development initiative and we are very successful so far. Please check our website http://www.olk12.com. In order to bring a larger impact we need support and directions from such policies. I am wondering how and where can we join-in and bring our success stories to the forum for input and support for further growth.