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| >> Index >> Foreword |
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The world has changes dramatically over the past two decades. Of the world’s 200 countries in 2001, 124 were democracies—the highest number ever. Nearly 6.0 billion people live in market economies, up from 1.5 billion in 1980. Globalization has integrated the world’s markets for goods, services, finance, and ideas. Population growth rates are down, and in most parts of the world health and education have surpassed where the U.S. stood 50 years ago. And remarkable advances in biotechnology are bringing the promise of new cures for the sick and new seeds for the hungry. But these bright prospects also have dark sides. Many new democracies are fragile, others fake. Many market advances are reversing in stupendous losses of confidence—as with Enron and Argentina. Several billion people remain mired in poverty— and stranded across a gaping digital divide, blind to what could be free for all. Weapons of mass destruction using modern technology could unleash irreversible disasters on people and the planet. And for many people, especially Americans, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, breached the sense of security offered by geography. In September 2002 President Bush introduced his National Security Strategy. For the first time development has been elevated as the third pillar of U.S. national security, along with defense and diplomacy. Under the leadership of Secretary of State Powell, the U.S. development community is redefining its own strategic priorities to meet this challenge.These changes have altered the landscape for global development. Within this new landscape U.S. foreign assistance must move in new directions. To inform the debate on future assistance, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) commissioned this analysis of the main trends—and the related challenges—now unfolding. This follows in the tradition established more than a decade ago by then USAID Administrator Alan Woods, whose similar report on development trends changed USAID and the debate on foreign assistance. The main message of this report: foreign assistance will be a key instrument of foreign policy in the coming decades. The report does not address all the issues of development assistance. Instead, it focuses on six:
Of these six issues, four articulate key development concepts driving the President's proposed Millennium Challenge Account, a major new initiative announced by President Bush in March 2002, just the third major foreign aid policy statement since the second world war. The Millennium Challenge Account is based on the proposition that countries ruling justly, investing in their people, and encouraging economic freedom will receive more U.S. aid. |
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