InterAction Responds to the Obama Administration’s Action Plan to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals

InterAction’s Millennium Development Goals (MDG) Task Force recently finalized its response *live link to response under first part of sentence* to Celebrate, Innovate and Sustain: Toward 2015 and Beyond, the Obama administration’s action plan for addressing the MDGs. The response from the group, comprised of InterAction member and partner organizations, recognizes the action plan’s emphasis on transparency and predictability for country partnership and tackling infant mortality, among other items. However, it also expresses concern about dearth of details on strategic partnerships and U.S. institutional reforms in the area of development policy and practice. 

InterAction recommends that the Obama administration consider the following items in the weeks leading up to the UN Review Summit in New York, September 20-22, 2010, and going forward: 

1. Integrate its individual programs related to achieving the MDGs into one cohesive strategy.
2. Issue a Global Development Strategy prior to the MDG Summit.
3. Engage the NGO sector more actively in the development and implementation of a Global  Development Strategy.
4. Explicitly recognize the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) as the U.S. government’s lead agency in the interagency process to reform international development.
5. Work with Congress to reform key laws, including those pertaining to development aid, USAID, trade and subsidies.

 Since Celebrate, Innovate, and Sustain has been designated a “working draft” by various government officials, InterAction hopes that the Obama administration and other key stakeholders will consider this response’s content and recommendations as world leaders gather together at the September UN Review Summit to make a final push toward the 2015 deadline for meeting the MDGs.