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President Bush Announces "Millennium Challenge Account"
$10 Billion Increase in Development Assistance Proposed
Prior to attending the UN-sponsored International Conference on Financing for Development held in Monterrey, Mexico in March, President Bush announced a proposal to create a "Millennium Challenge Account" to provide $10 billion in new assistance (over three years) to developing nations. Poor countries would be challenged to combat corruption, improve their human rights records, provide education and health care, and pursue sound economic policies in order to access funds from the account. This was a significant signal of the administration's recognition that the United States must play a much larger role in fighting world poverty.
Congress must approve and allocate the funds to create this Account, which could begin to operate as soon as FY 2003. If funding is appropriated, this would represent a 50 percent increase over three years, leading to a $5 billion annual increase over current levels by 2006.
Key Issues
The exact criteria countries must meet in order to access the assistance remains undecided. In a letter to President Bush from InterAction - a coalition of 160 US-based international development and humanitarian organizations including Save the Children - the following issues were stressed:
- These funds should be aimed at reducing poverty in the poorest developing nations by building people's capacity and self-sufficiency through health, education, job and business skills, reducing hunger and improving the status of women and girls.
- With extensive experience in development and humanitarian assistance as well as a clear understanding of what constitutes effective, accountable programs, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) should be involved from the beginning in the design and implementation of this account.
- There are poor nations that will not meet the criteria under the new account, and people in those nations must not be forgotten. Even when governments are not deemed effective partners, ample development assistance must be provided to reach people through alternative channels.
- As stability is an important condition for effective development, assistance for the displaced, disaster response and conflict prevention must rise in tandem with these new development funds.
As co-chair of InterAction's Global Partnership for Effective Assistance campaign, Charles MacCormack, President and CEO of Save the Children, hopes to assist the Bush administration in fashioning the criteria for selecting nations that will benefit from this account, and ensuring that this important initiative becomes part of the budget.
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