Seattle Town Hall Meeting Opens Dialogue
on Millennium Challenge Account

October 14, 2004 

 

Resources

 

Speaker Bios

 

InterAction hosted a town hall meeting in Seattle on the Bush administration's efforts to reduce global poverty through the Millennium Challenge Account, the third such event held in conjunction with its Global Partnership for Effective Assistance campaign. InterAction president Mary McClymont, Millennium Challenge Corporation CEO Paul Applegarth, Senegalese Ambassador Amidou Lamine Ba, and World Vision President Richard Stearns participated in the Oct. 14 meeting. 

 

Applegarth lauded the MCA as a program that has the potential to become the "granddaddy" of all American foreign assistance programs. But leaders of nongovernmental organizations said the strategy may be in question if the MCA is not fully funded, or if those funds come at the expense of other relief and development accounts, many of which help countries that do not qualify for MCA funding. 

 

World Vision's Stearns cautioned that the MCA must benefit poor people, not just poor nations. "We have to take great pains in our programming to ensure that MCA programs reduce poverty in effect and benefit those with the greatest needs, and not just those who are the best connected to the government and in the best position to benefit from the account," Stearns said. 

 

The MCA provides aid to countries that rule justly, invest in their people and encourage economic freedom, with the twin missions of reducing poverty and stimulating economic growth in the world's poorest places.  "Our way to do that is ultimately to help countries grow out of the dependency status they are in," Applegarth said. He told the crowd that if the MCA is properly funded, it stands to have the biggest impact of any assistance program since the Marshall Plan.  

 

When President Bush created the MCA, he pledged $5 billion annually in aid to eligible countries by 2006. But in the two years since it was launched, the program has not been fully funded. Some sixteen countries have been deemed eligible so far for participation in the MCA program.

 

Senegal is among the first recipient countries, and Senegalese Ambassador Ba said the MCA may work for countries in Africa where other programs have failed. He explained that rather than imposing external programs which "have never worked in Africa ... because local support is lacking," the MCA offers a fresh perspective on foreign assistance by requiring countries to engage not only their local governments, but also civil society and the private sector. In doing so, differing viewpoints must be taken into account, and everyone has a stake in the outcome. "It's a very difficult exercise to do," Ba admitted. "It really gives us a challenge, a challenge for eligible countries to do business in a new way." 

 

The event was co-sponsored by Global Partnerships (www.globalpartnerships.org) and the University of Washington's Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs.