Congressional
Briefing on Congressional Briefing
on The Millennium Development Goals
July 22, 2003
On Tuesday,
July 22, members of the diplomatic community, House and Senate staff,
and representatives from the NGO community gathered to discuss the Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs) at an InterAction luncheon featuring UNDP Administrator
Mark Malloch Brown and CARE CEO Peter Bell. Established at the U.N.
Millennium Summit in January of 2000, the MDGs are a set of eight goals
agreed upon by rich and poor countries to advance development and reduce
poverty by 2015. Both speakers and IA President Mary McClymont emphasized
the importance of the MDGs in providing an internationally agreed upon
framework of development targets and results that can be use to measure
development impact. Ambassadors from Bolivia and Mauritius shared some
developing country perspectives and detailed the progress of their respective
governments in meeting the MDGs. The panelists agreed that while the
MDGs have helped to create a unified framework for development, the
goals will not be met without partnerships between developed and developing
countries, increased resources, and more progressive policies on trade
and debt relief.
Monday Developments
article:The Millennium Development
Goals, A Framework For Results, August 11, 2003
SPEAKERS'
BIOS
Peter
D. Bell, President and CEO, CARE
As president of CARE USA, one of the world’s largest private relief
and development organizations, Peter D. Bell is responsible for the
organization’s policy, administration and fundraising and for
its programs in some 68 developing countries. Mr. Bell, 62, is a well-known
leader in global philanthropic and humanitarian endeavors. Before becoming
president of CARE in October 1995, he had been a member of CARE’s
Board of Directors for seven years, the last five as its chair.
Mr. Bell has
a long-standing commitment to the world community. As president of The
Edna McConnell Clark Foundation for nine and a half years before coming
to CARE, he sought to improve conditions for people who are poor and
disadvantaged, primarily in the United States.
Mr. Bell was a senior associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace from 1984 to 1986, and president of the Inter-American Foundation,
which supports grassroots development in Latin America and the Caribbean,
from 1980 to 1983. Mr. Bell served as Deputy Under Secretary of the
U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare during the Carter
Administration and oversaw the program for the resettlement of Indochinese
refugees in the U.S. Earlier, he worked for the Ford Foundation for
12 years, including ten with its Latin American program.
Mr. Bell’s
volunteer positions include being co-chairman of the Inter-American
Dialogue, a trustee of the Bernard Van Leer Group Foundation, and a
trustee of the World Peace Foundation. He was formerly a director of
Human Rights Watch and chairman of both the board of trustees of the
Refugee Policy Group and the advisory council of the Woodrow Wilson
School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton.
Mr. Bell has
published articles on international affairs in major newspapers including
The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and
The Christian Science Monitor, and in various journals and books. He
is also author of Fulfilling the Public Trust: Ten Ways to Help Nonprofit
Boards Maintain Accountability.
A native of
Gloucester, Massachusetts, Mr. Bell is a graduate of Yale College, and
obtained a master’s degree in public affairs from the Woodrow
Wilson School at Princeton. He speaks Spanish and Portuguese, and has
lived in Chile, Brazil, Mexico, Ivory Coast and Japan.
Mark
Malloch Brown, Administrator, UNDP
Since 1 July 1999, Mark Malloch Brown has been the Administrator of
the United Nations Development Programme, the UN’s global development
network. He is also the Chair of the United Nations Development Group,
a committee consisting of the heads of all UN funds, programmes and
departments working on development issues. During his tenure at UNDP,
Mr. Malloch Brown has overseen a comprehensive reform that has been
widely recognized as making UNDP more focused, efficient and effective
across the 166 countries where it works. His efforts have included a
major push to expand UN support to developing countries in areas such
as democratic governance and using information and communications technology
to support development
At the request
of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Mr. Malloch Brown is also leading
the UN system in developing a strategy to help support the achievement
of the Millennium Development Goals – eight, time-bound development
targets with the overarching goal of halving extreme poverty by 2015
– which were agreed to by world leaders at the UN Millennium Summit
of September 2000.
From 1994 to
1999 Mr. Malloch Brown served at the World Bank as Vice President for
External Affairs and United Nations Affairs. From 1986 to 1994, he was
a lead partner in an international consulting firm, where he advised
governments, political leaders and corporations.
Mr. Malloch
Brown’s first exposure to the United Nations was from 1979 to
1983 when he worked for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner
for Refugees.
As founder of the Economist Development Report, he served as its Editor
from 1983 to 1986 after working as a political correspondent with the
Economist magazine from 1977 to 1979.
A British citizen,
Mr. Malloch Brown received an Honours Degree in History from Magdalene
College, Cambridge University, and a Master’s Degree in Political
Science from the University of Michigan. He is married and has four
children.
Mary
E. McClymont, President and CEO, Interaction
Mary McClymont is the President and Chief Executive Officer of InterAction,
the largest alliance of U.S.-based international development and humanitarian
nongovernmental organizations. Previously, she served at the Ford Foundation,
as Senior Director of the Peace and Social Justice Program, and as Acting
Director, Deputy Director, and Program Officer in the Rights and Social
Justice Program.
She also was
the National Director for Legalization of the Migration and Refugee
Services, U.S. Catholic Conference; Senior Staff Counsel, the National
Prison Project of the American Civil Liberties Union; Trial Attorney,
Civil Rights Division, U.S. Department of Justice; and Assistant Director
for Corrections, National Street Law Institute, Georgetown University
Law Center.
She has an LL.M.
in International Legal Studies from the American University Washington
College of Law; and a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center.
