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32. GAVI's Future: Steps to Build Strategic Leadership, Financial Sustainability, and Better Partnerships
- Author:
- Amanda Glassman, Lisa Carty, J. Stephen Morrison, and Margaret Reeves
- Publication Date:
- 06-2011
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- On June 13, the GAVI Alliance convenes its first pledging conference in London with the aim of securing $3.7 billion to immunize an additional 250 million children by 2015. Founded in 2000, GAVI is an innovative partnership that combines donors, partner governments, UNICEF, WHO, civil society, and the private sector. It is designed to accelerate the financing and delivery of selected vaccines and related health services to the world's most disadvantaged populations. As GAVI enters its second decade of operations, it has established itself as a quiet success. And as it strives to sustain and expand its model of operations, it simultaneously strives to make itself better known and understood; better led, managed, and resourced; better assured of essential high-level political and financial support; and better served by well-functioning relations with its many essential partners.
- Topic:
- Development, Economics, Health, and Foreign Aid
33. Beyond Aid: Migration as a Tool for Disaster Recovery
- Author:
- Michael Clemens and Kaci Farrell
- Publication Date:
- 06-2011
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- Natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, and hurricanes can devastate people's lives and a country's economy, particularly in the developing world. More than 200,000 people perished when a catastrophic earthquake struck Haiti in January 2010, and Americans responded with an outpouring of private and public assistance. Those relief efforts, as they nearly always do, focused primarily on delivering aid. The United States barely used another tool for disaster relief: migration policy. This policy brief explores the various legal channels through which the U.S. government could, after future overseas disasters, leverage the power of migration to help limited numbers of people. We describe what could have been done for Haiti, but the lessons apply to future scenarios.
- Topic:
- Humanitarian Aid, Migration, Natural Disasters, and Foreign Aid
- Political Geography:
- United States
34. Migration as a Tool for Disaster Recovery: A Case Study on U.S. Policy Options for Post-Earthquake Haiti
- Author:
- Royce Bernstein Murray and Sarah Petrin Williamson
- Publication Date:
- 06-2011
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- After a natural catastrophe in a developing country, international migration can play a critical role in recovery. But the United States has no systematic means to leverage the power and cost-effectiveness of international migration in its post-disaster assistance portfolios. Victims of natural disasters do not qualify as refugees under U.S. or international law, and migration policy toward those fleeing disasters is set in a way that is haphazard and tightly constrained. This paper comprehensively explores the legal means by which this could change, allowing the government more flexibility to take advantage of migration policy as one inexpensive tool among many tools for post-disaster assistance. It explores both the potential for administrative actions under current law and the potential for small changes to current law. For concreteness, it focuses on the case of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, but its policy lessons apply to future disasters that are sadly certain to arrive. The paper neither discusses nor recommends "opening the gates" to all disaster victims, just as current U.S. refugee law does not open the gates to all victims of persecution, but rather seeks to identify those most in need of protection and provide a legal channel for entry and integration into American life.
- Topic:
- Humanitarian Aid, Migration, Natural Disasters, and Foreign Aid
- Political Geography:
- United States
35. New SME Financial Access Initiatives: Private Foundations' Path to Donor Partnerships
- Author:
- Benjamin Leo
- Publication Date:
- 06-2011
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- In recent years, a number of private foundations and organizations have launched ambitious initiatives to support promising entrepreneurs in developing countries, on both a for-profit and not-for-profit basis. Many of these programs have focused exclusively on building business capacity. While these tailored programs play an important role in supporting small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) development, their overall effectiveness remains hamstrung in part by continuing constraints on entrepreneurs' access to expansion and operating capital. Simultaneously, the U.S. government, other bilateral donors, and international financial institutions (IFIs) have launched a series of initiatives that provide both financial and technical assistance to SMEs in developing countries. Surprisingly, collaboration or formalized partnerships between private foundations and donor agencies has been somewhat limited-particularly on a strategic or globalized basis. This paper is targeted for these private foundations, especially those focused on women entrepreneurship. First, it provides a brief literature review of the rationale for and against SME initiatives. Second, it presents an overview of existing targeted USG and IFI programs. Lastly, it offers several new, incremental options for private foundations to establish focused partnerships with donor agencies in support of their ongoing organizational goals.
- Topic:
- Development, Humanitarian Aid, and Foreign Aid
- Political Geography:
- United States
36. Cash at Your Fingertips: Biometric Technology for Transfers in Developing and Resource-Rich Countries
- Author:
- Alan Gelb and Caroline Decker
- Publication Date:
- 06-2011
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- Cash transfers are often a good way for developing countries to address economic and social problems. They are less expensive than directly providing goods and services and allow recipients the flexibility to spend on what they need the most, but for many developing countries, the technical requirements for large-scale programs have been prohibitive. Now, however, biometric technologies have improved and become ubiquitous enough to allow the confident identification and low cost needed to implement successful cash-transfer programs in developing countries. This paper surveys the arguments for and against cash-transfer programs in resource-rich states, discusses some of the new biometric identification technologies, and reaches preliminary conclusions about their potentially very large benefits for developing countries. The barriers to cash-transfers are no longer technical, but political.
- Topic:
- Development, Economics, Science and Technology, and Foreign Aid
37. The Best Things in Life are (Nearly) Free: Technology, Knowledge and Global Health
- Author:
- Charles Kenny and Ursula Casabonne
- Publication Date:
- 05-2011
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- Casabonne and Kenny argue that two major factors underlie improved global health outcomes: first, the discovery of cheap technologies that can dramatically improve outcomes; second, the adoption of these technologies, thanks to the spread of knowledge. Other factors have played a role. Increased income not only allows for improved nutrition, but also helps to improve access to more complex preventative technologies. Institutional development is a second key to the spread of such complex technologies. Nonetheless, evidence of dramatic health improvements even in environments of weak institutions and stagnant incomes suggests that the role of these factors may be secondary.
- Topic:
- Development, Health, Poverty, and Foreign Aid
38. Growing Business or Development Priority? Multilateral Development Banks' Direct Support to Private Firms
- Author:
- Guillermo Perry
- Publication Date:
- 04-2011
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- Direct support to private firms in developing countries constitutes a large and growing share of multilateral development banks' financial activities. This trend contrasts with the advice MDBs gave developing countries until a decade ago to privatize or liquidate the development banks supporting private firms, or to transform them into nonbanking development agencies. Opinion has changed since then, especially after development banks successfully intervened in the recent financial crisis. In this brief, Guillermo Perry assesses whether arguments in favor of such MDB direct support are valid and whether MDBs are living up to priorities coherent with such arguments. He finds that they do so only partially. His recommendations include deepening MDB support to small and medium enterprises, reducing the procyclicality of MDB lending, increasing the share of MDB loans and guarantees to private firms that are made in domestic currencies, and paying more attention to firms in infrastructure and social sectors and to those introducing new products, exports, or technologies.
- Topic:
- Development, Foreign Aid, Foreign Direct Investment, and Financial Crisis
39. Find Me the Money: Financing Climate and Other Global Public Goods
- Author:
- Nancy Birdsall and Benjamin Leo
- Publication Date:
- 04-2011
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- The global community faces a number of critical challenges ranging from climate change to crossborder health risks to natural-resource scarcities. Many of these so-called global commons problems carry grave risks to economic growth in the developing world and to the livelihoods and welfare of their people. Climate change is the classic example. Despite the risks involved, donor governments have funded programs addressing global challenges such as climate change at far lower levels than traditional programs of country-based development assistance. The prospects for dealing with such global challenges will depend at least in part on new collective financing mechanisms.
- Topic:
- Climate Change, Development, Health, Humanitarian Aid, and Foreign Aid
40. Constraints to Domestic Enterprise Financing in Post-Conflict Liberia
- Author:
- John Gorlorwulu
- Publication Date:
- 07-2011
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- Countries emerging from protracted and devastating conflicts are often seen as needing significant external intervention in their financial markets to rebuild their private sector and promote quick and effective economic recovery. Despite enormous challenges, the provision of credit or the implementation of various lending schemes often dominate efforts to promote domestic private-sector recovery in the immediate aftermath of conflict. This approach raises a number of questions: First, how effective are loan programs in the development of domestic enterprises in the immediate aftermath of conflicts? Second, can loan programs work without significant improvements in the business climate? How sensitive is the design of lending programs to the success of domestic enterprise development projects following devastating conflicts? This paper explores the experience of the Liberian Enterprise Development Finance Company, which was established in 2007 to provide medium-and long-term credit to small and medium domestic enterprises. In addition to shedding light on the challenges such an enterprise faces in a post conflict environment, the paper explores whether the strategies employed are effective and if there are opportunities for effecting remedial changes that could improve the outcomes of such a program in post-conflict environments generally.
- Topic:
- Conflict Resolution, Civil War, Development, Foreign Aid, and Foreign Direct Investment
- Political Geography:
- Africa and Liberia