Brookings: Experts - David Gartner

More Effective Aid: the G8’s Approach to Food Security

David Gartner and Homi Kharas — Fri, 18 May 2012 15:11:00 -0400

As G-8 leaders meet to review their progress around the 2009 L’Aquila commitments on food security, they should borrow lessons from previous G-8 initiatives and foster more participatory and performance-based institutions. In the 21st century, the state-centric paradigm of development must increasingly embrace a greater role for non-state actors in order to successfully leverage resources, catalyze effective implementation and achieve results. The focus on private sector investment in food security at this year’s G-8 summit reflects this reality, however key governance structures have not yet adopted the best practices from earlier G-8 initiatives in fields such as global health. The Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP) should move toward more participatory governance, especially at the country-level, and more performance-driven approaches to allocating resources to those countries facing the greatest risk of malnutrition.

As we found in a recent paper examining vertical funds across global health, education and agriculture, the structural characteristics of development institutions are critical to shaping their ultimate impact. More independent, more participatory and more performance-based vertical funds are outperforming less independent, less participatory, and less performance-based vertical funds when it comes to resource mobilization, learning and development impact. In the agriculture sector, GAFSP reflects some of these insights in that it allows civil society organizations to be non-voting members of its board and requires that 30 percent of its public sector window investments be assessed through rigorous impact evaluations. However, GAFSP does not engage adequately with non-state actors to scale up programs, has limited mechanisms for country-level participation, and does not yet explicitly tie future funding flows to performance.

In the wake of the 2009 L’Aquila commitments, there was initially a significant increase in agricultural funding in 2010. However, only seven of the 40 donors in L’Aquila have actually pledged resources to the GAFSP and less than one-quarter of the $22 billion commitment was disbursed as of last July. In addition, just 17 percent of all agricultural aid is currently directed towards the 25 countries with the highest levels of hunger. The latest round of proposals to GAFSP is slated to total less than one percent of the L’Aquila commitment and multilateral vertical funds still represent less than one-quarter of funding for the sector. In order to come close to meeting the original G-8 commitment, more effective global financing mechanisms and more diverse implementers will be required along with more robust commitments of resources from G-8 countries and private actors.

The G-8 should support a greater role for non-state actors in the governance and implementation of GAFSP resources as it seeks higher levels of investment from private actors. Specifically, it should require all national plans that it funds to be truly country-driven with civil society actors actively involved in creating and implementing the underlying strategy. In addition, GAFSP should encourage non-state actors, as well as national governments, to scale up initiatives using its resources in order to expand the capacity to rapidly scale-up impact. Finally, GAFSP should more explicitly embrace a performance-driven model of financing by requiring that funding flows for all recipients be tied to their contribution to achieving key targets, including reducing malnutrition and improving small-holder productivity. With stronger financial backing from the G8 and reforms along these lines, the GAFSP could make an important contribution to furthering food security.

Authors

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Congress and Foreign Aid

David Gartner — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 13:45:00 -0400

As reported in a story by the New York Times, unprecedented cuts to America’s global investments are currently being considered by the United States Congress. The House is proposing cuts of $12 billion, or 20 percent of the president’s request for 2012, while the Senate is proposing cuts that are smaller but still potentially devastating. Without these vital investments, substantial progress made in the fight against disease and poverty over the last decade will be jeopardized. Sustaining significant investments in building a better world is critical to supporting America’s ideals and protecting America’s interests in a turbulent 21st century.

Over sixty years ago, President Harry Truman successfully made the case to the country that foreign assistance is a vital investment in America’s long-term security: “Our armed forces, can afford us a measure of defense. But real security can come only from building the kind of world where men can live together in peace.” More recently, President George W. Bush launched a bold initiative against AIDS that has since contributed to saving over a million lives. Recent polling demonstrates that nearly three-quarters of Americans think that providing aid is important, particularly because of these kinds of successful life-saving interventions. Yet current levels of foreign assistance, even before the proposed cuts by Congress, represent just half of the share of the U.S. budget that was devoted to foreign assistance in 1985 when Ronald Reagan was president.

Despite facing serious economic challenges, other nations around the world continue to view foreign assistance as an investment that is too essential to cut in the way that Congress is now contemplating. Despite facing a severe economic crisis and an unprecedented natural disaster, Japan is proposing to increase its levels of foreign assistance. So are other major countries which are currently facing fiscal crises, such as the Conservative-led government in the United Kingdom. China is also making a concerted effort to ramp up its foreign assistance across the globe. Many countries around the world, which have traditionally looked to America for leadership and vital assistance, will increasingly turn to other nations for leadership if the cuts currently being contemplated by the Congress become law.

Although these cuts to America’s investments around the world should be resisted, smarter aid is an essential tool for increasing its ultimate value. Multilateral contributions are often better leveraged investments because they can catalyze contributions from other nations and can have lower overhead than comparable bilateral programs. Expanded transparency in aid allocation could also enhance the impact of U.S. assistance dollars. The United Kingdom recently committed to more closely link its assistance to the level of transparency in recipient nations, a principle which the Millennium Challenge Account now utilizes and which could be more widely adopted.

America’s international investments support the broader goals of security that President Truman highlighted in an earlier age. While there should be vigorous debate about how best to spend the limited resources that the United States allocates for foreign assistance, it does not make sense to try to balance the budget through devastating cuts in an area that represents less than one percent of overall expenditures. Congress should reconsider its current approach and look instead to build on the bi-partisan commitment demonstrated over the last decade to invest in a better global future.

Authors

David Gartner

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Transparency and the IMF

David Gartner — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 15:38:00 -0400

As the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank hold their annual meetings, issues of transparency will be lurking in the background. This week President Obama and Brazilian President Dilma Rouseff formally launched the Open Government Partnership involving 46 nations in an effort designed to foster unprecedented transparency in governance by governments around the world. The IMF has for many years also called for national governments to expand their level of transparency, but recent controversy over its leadership selection process highlighted the lack of transparency in its own decision-making. The dynamic new leader of the IMF, Christine Lagarde, should endorse the emerging global commitment to transparency by opening up the Fund’s decision-making to public scrutiny.

The International Monetary Fund has, for many years, been a leader in arguing that national governments should expand their fiscal transparency. The IMF has called for “open budget processes” and established a code of good practices on fiscal transparency. Yet, the IMF has been slow to apply its insights about the benefits of transparency to its own governance. Early last year, the IMF modestly improved its own transparency policy, by merely reducing the delay in the release of its board minutes from five years to three years. The concern that financial institutions such as the IMF are somehow different from other institutions because of the sensitive nature of their deliberations is undercut by the growing transparency within institutions such as the Federal Reserve and the World Bank.

In contrast to the IMF’s reluctance to substantially overhaul its transparency policy, the World Bank in recent years has adopted a much more sweeping policy around access to information. The Bank’s new plan, which took effect in 2010, declassified more than 17,000 documents and created a searchable database of more than 100,000 documents. While the Bank already disclosed the minutes of its board meetings after approval by the board, it also agreed to release more extensive summaries of these meetings. The Bank’s new rule also provided for the simultaneous release of board documents to the public. While there could certainly be more effective implementation of these policies by the Bank, these reforms still offer potential lessons for its sister institution, the IMF.

In order for the IMF to approach the transparency level of many of its peer institutions and approximate the standards of transparency that it has been championing, it must substantially reform its own access to information policies. The Independent Evaluation Office within the IMF has previously called for greater transparency, including shortening the time for the release of board meetings minutes. Even traditionally secretive financial institutions, such as the Federal Reserve in the United States, have successfully adopted this practice. It is unclear why the IMF would require three years to make public its deliberations when the Federal Reserve now releases the minutes of its board meetings within just three weeks.

Before becoming Managing Director, Lagarde was a strong champion of the United Nations Convention Against Corruption, which calls for greater transparency in decision-making. As an important step in demonstrating its new direction, the IMF should make its deliberations public within a reasonable time, so that board minutes are available to the public in a matter of weeks rather than years. The IMF should also provide for the simultaneous release of key documents sent to its board, consistent with the policies that the World Bank has recently adopted. While international institutions in the past jealously guarded their secrecy, 21st century institutions will need to keep up with evolving norms of transparency in governance if they are going to be successful.

Authors

David Gartner

Image Source: Â© Yuri Gripas / Reuters

Governing the Green Climate Fund

Kenneth W. Abbott and David Gartner — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 14:02:00 -0400

As world leaders gather in New York this week for the United Nations General Assembly, climate change will be at the forefront of the agenda. The UN hosts a high-level meeting on desertification and the Clinton Global Initiative highlights climate change with the Presidents of South Africa and Mexico, the countries that are co-chairing the development of the new Green Climate Fund (GCF). The process of designing the GCF is moving forward rapidly in preparation for the next round of climate change talks, to be held in Durban, South Africa this November. Just last week, the transitional committee responsible for designing the GCF highlighted the importance of private sector engagement as key to its success in mobilizing billions of dollars in resources. Yet the governance structure of the GCF is slated to be the Green Climate Board, on which only national governments will be represented. The enormous promise of the GCF is imperiled by its embrace of 20th century approaches to governance, which fail to fully engage the resources and energies of non-state actors. As we argue in a recent paper, the Green Climate Fund should instead borrow from the successful models of a new generation of global health institutions, which involve stakeholders through direct participation in governance.

International environmental institutions were once at the forefront of expanding participation for non-state actors, although most engage civil society only through limited consultation mechanisms that are segregated from actual decision-making. Yet many recently created environmental institutions, such as the Adaptation Fund, are not keeping pace with their predecessors, and none are on a par with participatory health institutions. In global health, international institutions are increasingly integrating the capacities of civil society and other stakeholders by opening space for their direct participation in institutional decision-making. For example, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations (GAVI) and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria have moved beyond the consultative procedures adopted by the United Nations Environment Program, the Commission on Sustainable Development, and the Global Environment Facility (GEF). They embrace a multi-stakeholder model in which civil society, the private sector, foundations, and other constituencies – including populations directly affected by health threats – participate directly in governing bodies, deliberation and decision-making.

Rather than retreating to older models of governance, the designers of the GCF should learn from this new generation of participatory health institutions, which are successfully mobilizing public and private resources, connecting finance with results, and empowering country-level actors for policy-making and implementation. Leveraging significant private sector investment is likely to be a critical dimension if the GCF is to be successful, as Katherine Sierra has argued and the transitional committee now appears to accept. The global health institutions that embrace multi-stakeholder governance have realized significant successes in mobilizing both private and public resources, and have performed better than comparable environmental institutions on many important measures. A review of 43 multilateral organizations by the United Kingdom Department for International Development (DFID) found that GAVI and the Global Fund were among the few institutions offering “very good value for money,” while GEF and the Climate Investment Funds ranked lower, providing only “good value for money.” A recent review by the Brookings Institution and the Center for Global Development gave the Global Fund and GAVI top ratings for efficiency and for transparency and learning, while GEF was found to be below average on these dimensions.

The Green Climate Fund should build on the lessons of the leading 21st century international institutions by adopting a multi-stakeholder governance structure, including civil society and other private stakeholders as full partners in achieving the Fund’s objectives. Our recommendation faces procedural hurdles, because the Conference of Parties (COP) to the Framework Convention on Climate Change has determined that the Green Climate Board will be made up of 24 state representatives. However, the transitional committee designing the Fund could at least recommend to the COP that it modify the GCF’s governance structure. Concerned governments and other stakeholders could also present such a recommendation for adoption in Durban later this year. A more participatory Green Climate Fund is a key step toward financing a robust response to the many challenges posed by climate change.

Authors

Kenneth W. Abbott
David Gartner

Image Source: Â© Lucas Jackson / Reuters

Beyond Consultation: Civil Society and the Governance of International Institutions

David Gartner — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 12:45:00 -0500

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

In the face of unprecedented global challenges, effective global cooperation increasingly requires a partnership between state and non-state actors. Many international institutions now involve non-state actors in arenas that were once the exclusive province of states. The paper analyzes the evolution of civil society participation in the governance of international institutions and highlights the shift from a model based on consultation toward a model of multistakeholder governance. The paper argues that consultation is a less effective approach to involving civil society in achieving the mission of these institutions and suggests that more robust forms of multi-stakeholder participation by civil society can foster greater accountability and better deliberation. It analyzes competing claims about the desirability of including civil society in the governance of international institutions and suggests that an emerging constituency model can promote more effective multi-stakeholder governance. Constituency structures are already central features of several global health institutions and are now being contemplated by institutions in other sectors, including by the Education for All—Fast Track Initiative.

Multi-stakeholder approaches to governance are likely to become more widespread in the years to come in order to harness the contributions of a plethora of private actors engaged in responding to a wide range of global challenges. Even with enhanced cooperation between states, it is increasingly clear that non-state actors are essential to responding to key challenges across a wide range of sectors. Although it is possible to imagine expanded cooperation between state and non-state actors without opening up the governance structures of international institutions, it is less likely that these institutions will be successful in the longrun without a shift toward greater multi-stakeholder involvement in the institutions themselves.

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Authors

David Gartner

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Web Chat: Achieving Universal Education

David Gartner — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0400

On August 18, David Gartner answered your questions about the difficulty in attaining universal education in a live web chat moderated by Seung Min Kim, assistant editor at POLITICO.

12:30 Seung Min Kim: Good afternoon on this rainy Wednesday in Washington. Today, we'll be chatting with David Gartner on achieving universal education. Welcome, everyone.

12:30 [Comment From Michael: ] What are the biggest stumbling blocks to achieving universal education? How can UN countries solve these problems?

12:31 David Gartner: Among the biggest challenges to achieving universal basic education is the fact that so many girls, children living in rural areas and conflict affected countries are still not able to go to school. Around the world nearly half of these out of school children live in Africa but these challenges are also faced by girls in other parts of the world, such as South Asia.

12:31 [Comment From Frida Smith: ] How important is it to educate girls in developing countries?

12:32 David Gartner: Educating girls is one of the single most leveraged investments we have in the world today. When mothers are educated, their children are much more likely to survive past age 5 and to be well nourished. Educating girls is critical to empowering the role of women in democratic societies and promoting economic growth as well.

12:33 [Comment From Mark Allen: ] Why does universal education have so much weight in regards to the other Millennium Development Goals?

12:34 David Gartner: As we approach the Millennium Development Goal summit next month, when world leaders will gather to focus on key goals for ending global poverty, education will play an especially important role. While education represents just two of the goals: achieving universal primary education and gender equity in education, it can catalyze many of the other goals with respect to health and hunger as mentioned in the last answer.

12:34 [Comment From Paul Kruchoski: ] David, thanks for sitting down with us virtually. We hear so much about the importance of girls' education. Yet one of the biggest problems we face is *how* to get education to girls in remote areas. What tools can we use to reach out to areas that central governments have had trouble reaching?

12:35 David Gartner: In terms of reaching girls in rural areas, there are a range of strategies that have proven successful. In Burkina Faso, for example, building "girl-friendly" schools in rural areas closer to where students live, and providing separate bathroom facilities and school meals was enormously successful in expanding enrollments of girls.

12:36 [Comment From Steve: ] What's your prediction for the outcome of the summit next month and will it make a difference in reaching the goals?

12:37 David Gartner: It is hard to predict what will come of next month's summit but my concern based on recent drafts of the outcome document is that there is the risk of restatements of commitments without new resources or concrete strategies to achieve universal education and the other key goals. It will require new resources from donors and a redoubling of efforts by all countries to achieve them.

12:37 [Comment From Elliott Hughes: ] While I am completely in favor of increasing investment in education as a means to help those in poverty help themselves, would you not agree that investments in education are rendered meaningless when a majority of the children in developing countries are suffering from malnutrition and therefore physically are unable to learn? Should we not, when looking at what can be done to meet the MDG targets, focus our efforts on such cross-cutting issues as nutrition?

12:38 David Gartner: Just as educating mothers can help to reduce the risk of child hunger, you are absolutely right that hungry children are much less likely to learn or even to go to school in the first place. Investments in nutrition for the youngest children, through early childhood development programs is critical as is providing school meals to encourage students to come to school and be able to learn when they get there.

12:38 [Comment From Lillian: ] What's the status on the Global Fund for Education? Is it in progress? And is it something that will have a big impact on achieving universal education?

12:40 David Gartner: One of the keys to achieving universal education is greater investments in more effective multilateral mechanisms. President Obama pledged to erase the global primary education gap by 2015 by investing $2 billion in a Global Fund for Education. Although the President has not yet announced his plan to accomplish this, the commitment has helped to catalyze important reforms in the Education for All Fast Track Initiative which has played an important role in expanding enrollments in Africa and elsewhere and could play an even bigger role going forward.

12:40 [Comment From Julie: ] Are you familiar with the Family Grant (Bolsa Familia) program in Brazil, which pays parents a stipend in return for sending their kids to school? Would that be a viable option to increase school attendance elsewhere in the world? What other methods can be used to convince parents of the importance of enrolling their children in school?

12:42 David Gartner: In Brazil, the Bolsa Familia has been incredibly successful not just in getting children to go to school but also in expanding basic health immunizations. Similar strategies have worked elsewhere too- in Bangladesh a girls' scholarship program nearly quadrupled girls enrollment in secondary school.

12:42 [Comment From Paul Kruchoski: ] You mentioned the EFA Fast Track Initiative. How do you evaluate the recommended reforms? Will they substantially improve the effectiveness of the FTI? Do you think they are enough to generate new investment?

12:44 David Gartner: Over the past year, the EFA Fast Track Initiative has transformed its governance structure so that today it includes an equal number of donors and developing countries and an expanded role for civil society and the private sector that is building new energy and momentum. It is strengthening its internal capacity and moving toward a more robust results framework. As a result, the Congress for the first time has included funding for it in the budget for next year.

12:44 [Comment From Joel: ] How can technology be used to develop universal education?

12:46 David Gartner: Technology is an incredibly underutilized resource in expanding education around the world. Many learning materials can be accessed on-line through efforts such as the One Laptop per Child. Nevertheless, one of the biggest challenges in Africa and elsewhere is the shortage of teachers. Millions more teachers will need to be trained, as well as new technology introduced, to achieve universal primary education.

12:46 [Comment From David Barth: ] It is currently estimated that the global financing gap required to achieve the MDGs in education could be as high as 20 billion. Obviously, this is a sum that will not be made up by donors. What is the best way to encourage governments to increase the share of their scarce budgetary resources going to education?

12:48 David Gartner: Achieving the MDGs will absolutely require higher levels of commitments by developing countries around the world. Some, like Nigeria spend far too little of their federal budget currently on education. Yet, many countries are close to the 20% budget benchmark and still have inadequate resources. In order to help with national investments, it is also crucial that the donors do their part. The G8's commitment to doubling aid to Africa could be a crucial boost to the MDGs but the latest figures estimate a substantial shortfall.

12:48 [Comment From Carrie: ] Why are these children not able to go to school? Lack of facilities, financial ability at home to send them, no teachers? In other words, in your opinion, what are the biggest factors that are keeping these children out of school?

12:51 David Gartner: The cost barriers to going to school were one of the biggest barriers and remain a serious one. Eliminating primary school fees in countries such as Uganda, Tanzania, and Kenya catalyzed major gains in enrollment. Building rural schools across Ethiopia, contributed to bringing 3 million new students into school. However, training more teachers will be key to future gains with some countries requiring as much as 10% growth each year in their teaching force to manage student growth.

12:51 [Comment From Sam: ] Can MicroFinance investments be utilized to expand educational capabilities in developing nations?

12:53 David Gartner: Microfinance is one of the best tools we have in the fight against global poverty will a phenomenal track record of success. Even in countries where school fees have been eliminated at the primary level, there is still often out of pocket costs for transportation to school, uniforms, or tutoring. Secondary school costs can be a major share of a poor family's income. Microcredit, by helping to generate family income, can make a big difference for education.

12:53 [Comment From Francis: ] Achieving universal education is certainly important for reducing poverty, but what about the transition after education to work. If countries are educating people, but there are no jobs to go to how will people be incentivized to complete their education?

12:55 David Gartner: The transition from education to work is a major challenge in many parts of the world. Part of this challenge is simply one of creating enough jobs for new graduates. Yet, another part of the challenge is that too often students do not graduate with the skills they need for success. In one cross-country survey in Africa, the chance that a student would still be illiterate after several years of schooling was as high as 40%. More has to be done to improve learning outcomes as we expand enrollment.

12:56 [Comment From Jerry: ] Can you explain what the Education for All (and Fast Track Initiative) are?

12:57 David Gartner: Sorry I did not fully explain but the Educational for All-Fast Track Initiative is a multilateral education partnership that invests in countries with strong national education plans. In Africa, countries that have been endorsed and supported by FTI have demonstrated enrollment gains of 22%. It uses funds from donor countries to support national education strategies to achieve universal education.

12:58 [Comment From Pete: ] We talk about having children gain access to school, but what about quality once they are there? How do we accurately measure "quality" education?

12:59 David Gartner: One of the biggest challenges to improving learning outcomes is getting a better handle on what is the current situation of quality in schools. In India, a dynamic NGO named Pratham went across the country and surveyed children to find out if they could read. Its surveys then became a way to track and compare state governments in India and the results helped to catalyze many of these states to enter into partnerships with Pratham to improve reading and learning.

1:00 [Comment From Allison: ] With regard to developing countries increasing their investment in education, we've heard in the past that IMF policies have worked against increasing investment. Where do we stand in getting exemptions for spending limits in the education (and health) sectors in countries dependent on IMF stamps-of-approval?

1:02 David Gartner: One of the challenges to expanding domestic resources for education in the past has been constraints on overall budget expenditures by governments under programs with international institutions, including the International Monetary Fund. With the financial crisis this may emerge as a bigger challenge once again. Recently the United States passed a law that required the US representative to the IMF to oppose programs that would limit spending on education and this may contribute to greater flexibility in this area.

1:03 [Comment From Sally: ] How effective is US aid to developing countries when it comes to education? Are we incentivizing the right things?

1:05 David Gartner: With strong leadership from the Congress, and especially from Representative Nita Lowey, US investments in education have grown substantially over the last decade. In my view, one of the biggest current challenges facing US education assistance is that not enough is directed to the regions of the world where the most children are out of school. For example, Africa has just under half of all out of school children at the primary school level but receives less than one-quarter of current US assistance for basic education.

1:06 [Comment From Guest: ] You noted the importance of investing in child nutrition ... Have you seen proven strategies for schools and communities to achieve such funding?

1:08 David Gartner: There are a range of strategies that can help when it comes to nutrition in the context of schools. Simply providing a school lunch or breakfast, something we also do here in the United States, can make a big difference in terms of the ability of students to focus and learn. Some schools also provide students with food to take home given that many of these children will not eat much after school otherwise. Beyond school interventions, investing in early childhood development to ensure that children have the food they need as their brains grow is critical to future success.

1:08 [Comment From Rachel W.: ] What do you see as the main obstacles for achieving universal education in the future, and what can we do to overcome them?

1:10 David Gartner: It is worth remembering that there has been enormous progress in many parts of the world over the last decade at expanding primary enrollment and promoting greater gender equity. What is needed now is a greater focus on the regions and populations who have still not been reached, greater attention and focus on learning outcomes, and increasing attention to the ceiling that many girls especially face in going beyond primary to secondary education.

1:10 [Comment From Erica: ] Can you give examples of effective policies developing countries have created to strengthen the educational framework

1:12 [Comment From Sally: ] Can you provide some information on the philanthropies working in this area and how effective they have been?

1:14 David Gartner: Private funders, including foundations and individuals, have played an important role in this arena and could play an even bigger role going forward. Beyond government investments, individual families still pay a great deal for there children to go to school. Remittances, or money sent back home from family members working abroad is a big source. Private foundations, such as Hewlett, have helped bring greater focus to issues of quality and learning outcomes in the developing world.

1:17 David Gartner: In terms of Erica's question, I would highlight different countries for different dimensions of progress. In terms of pure numerical gains in enrollment, Ethiopia stands out because of its focus on building rural schools. In terms of moving toward universal primary, Tanzania stands out in part because of its movement away from fees for primary school. In terms of improving gender equity, Bangladesh stands out because of its investment in opportunities for girls especially at the secondary level through targeted scholarships.

1:17 [Comment From Bill in Virginia: ] Why should average Americans care, or have their tax dollars spent, on educating children in countries that don't set that as a priority? Shouldn't we be investing in our own crumbling schools?

1:21 David Gartner: The idea of universal public education has deep roots in American history. It was a pipedream in the 19th century when Horace Mann and others said that it was key to democracy and prosperity. It is no less key to the democracy and prosperity of the increasingly small world in which we live. The level of investment in all foreign assistance is much less than 1% of the US budget and the investments in education around the world is a tiny fraction of that. So while I absolutely agree that we need to do more to invest in education in the United States, I don't agree that we can't do so and support those countries that are too poor to achieve universal education on their own. That said, there are some countries that aren't doing enough on their own and we absolutely need to push them to do so.

1:21 [Comment From Roger: ] Also will there be discussion of education at the UN General Assembly in September?

1:23 David Gartner: In September, there will be a gathering of world leaders at the United Nations that will focus on all of the Millennium Development Goals. There will be several side events, led by the Global Campaign for Education, UNESCO/UNICEF, and other groups that will particularly highlight education.

The opportunity for leading countries is to give a major spotlight to education by making clear how they will scale up investments, strengthen national strategies and achieve universal education.

1:24 [Comment From Eileen: ] How can Congress and the Obama administration ensure access to quality education for all children, including early childhood development and education, teacher quality, and inclusive education (language, minorities, indigenous, disabilities)?

1:26 David Gartner: At the MDG Summit next month, or at the meeting of G20 leaders in November, the President could join with other world leaders to chart a path to achieve universal quality education. The Congress, after hearing from a wide range of voices, is now investing in multilateral mechanisms. Yet, in order to catalyze the level of global effort that is needed, it will take Presidential leadership in the context of these upcoming world forums.

1:27 [Comment From Roger: ] You've noted a couple of times the regional disparities. Is the UN looking at this issue? And/or are other countries adjusting their giving to focus more on Africa?

1:30 David Gartner: The past decade has witnessed progress around the world, but as your questions suggests, some regions had much farther to go at the beginning.

The regions facing the greatest challenges at this point are Africa (especially West and Central Africa) and South Asia in terms of out of school students.

The UK for example gives about twice as much to Africa as a share of its investments and those countries that are investing multilaterally similarly give more to Africa because that is where the biggest out of school populations are.

1:30 Seung Min Kim: And that's it for us -- thanks for joining us this week and for the great questions, and a special thank you to David for his responses.

Authors

David Gartner

Image Source: © Mukesh Gupta / Reuters

Achieving the Millennium Development Goals: Education is the Key Missing Link

David Gartner — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 11:20:00 -0400

President Obama is releasing a plan for achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015 in advance of the largest gathering of world leaders in at least a decade at the United Nations. While the Administration’s outline includes useful ideas on tracking development outcomes and increasing transparency and accountability, it also represents a missed opportunity to deliver on Obama’s commitment to invest $2 billion in a Global Fund for Education to achieve universal primary education. For most of the MDGs, particularly those that are most off-track, success will be nearly impossible without the achievement of universal primary education, MDG 2. With 72 million children still not in primary school, achieving universal education would offer extraordinary leverage in the broader fight against global poverty.

While there is some progress in poverty reduction for MDG 1: “Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger,” there is much less progress on the commitment to halve the number of people suffering from hunger by 2015. Child malnutrition is a key dimension of world hunger and 137 million children under the age of 5 are still underweight globally. Educating women is an important tool for reducing child hunger, according to a cross-country analysis of 63 countries. The study found that educational gains in women’s education accounted for 43 percent of all progress in reducing child malnutrition.

MDG 3: “Eliminate gender disparity,” commits to closing the gender gap in all education levels and increasing female representation in the wage employment and national parliaments. The latest data indicate that 28 countries still have fewer than 9 girls in school for every 10 boys. Nearly two-thirds of these countries are located in sub-Saharan Africa, where there are fewer than 8 girls for every 10 boys enrolled in secondary school. A focus on educating girls, especially in Africa, is not only essential to achieving universal education, but it is also vital to achieving the nutrition and health MDGs.

The goal that is most off-track is MDG 4: “Reduce child mortality,” the commitment to cutting child mortality by two-thirds between 1990 and 2010. A recent study published in the Lancet finds that despite progress in the last 20 years in all regions, child mortality will still need to be reduced by another 3.7 million over the next five years in order to meet that goal. Half of all child deaths now occur in Sub-Saharan Africa with rates as high as 180 deaths per 1,000 children in Equatorial Guinea; compare that to just 2.5 deaths per 1,000 children in Singapore.

An analysis some years ago by President Obama’s top economic adviser, Larry Summers, found that children in Africa born to mothers with just five years of education were 40 percent more likely to live to age 5. The children of educated mothers are much more likely to be immunized against killer diseases, their mothers are much more likely to have received antenatal care, and they provide better nutrition to their children. Achieving universal primary education and reaching gender parity in education could save millions of children’s lives and put MDG 4 within reach.

The next health commitment, MDG 5: “Improve maternal health”, calls for reducing maternal mortality by three quarters between 1990 and 2015. Despite some progress globally in reducing maternal deaths related to childbirth, there has been much less progress in Africa in recent decades. While medical interventions are critical to responding to this challenge, education is again one of the most leveraged investments according to recent studies. One recent study found that female education alone, both female literacy and the ratio of female enrollment, could explain 50 percent of the variance between countries in rates of maternal mortality. In Bangladesh, the significant fall in maternal mortality over recent decades can in part be explained by the dramatic expansion of education for girls.

Education is also a crucial strategy for a leveraged response to AIDS. MDG 6: “Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases.” MDG 6 commits to halting and reversing the spread of these diseases by 2015. Yet, despite impressive progress in recent years in expanding access to AIDS treatment, the results on the prevention sides show that much work remains to be done to reverse the spread of the disease. Research on the last decade of the AIDS epidemic indicate that increased schooling is lowering the rate of AIDS infections and that expanded access to secondary education is especially significant in reducing female vulnerability to infection. Alongside other comprehensive prevention strategies, expanding educational opportunities in the most affected countries is critical to reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS.

MDG 7: “Ensure environmental sustainability” focuses on promoting a sustainable environment by protecting environmental resources, halving the number of people without water and sanitation, and achieving significant improvements in the lives of 100 million slum dwellers. Once again, education is critical when it comes to improving the lives of those living in slums. The overwhelming response to expanding free primary education to children living in Africa’s largest slum, in the Kibera division of Nairobi, Kenya demonstrates how universal education is an incredibly tangible improvement for millions of slum dwellers.

With just five years left before the 2015 deadline for achieving the Millennium Development Goals, the world is running out of time. While many interventions will be needed, one of the best single levers we have to achieve these goals is to accelerate progress toward universal education. President Obama should join other world leaders at the upcoming MDG summit in announcing how together they will invest in multilateral mechanisms to deliver on their promise to give every child the chance to go to school. There is no other investment that will have as significant an impact when it comes to promoting health, gender equity, and nutrition in the fight against global poverty.

Authors

David Gartner

A World Cup Education Legacy for Africa?

David Gartner — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 13:47:00 -0400

With the successful conclusion of Africa’s first World Cup, it remains to be seen what the broader legacy of the event will be for sub-Saharan Africa. While there is justifiably much pride in South Africa’s tremendous work in hosting a major world event, it is not yet clear what will be left behind for Africa’s children. South African President Jacob Zuma rightly argued at an education summit before the final game that there could be no greater legacy than universal primary education across the continent. Yet, the latest figures demonstrate that 32 million children still do not go to primary school in sub-Saharan Africa. Overall levels of international aid to basic education for the region declined after 2007 and have not grown significantly since 2003. Without a much greater and more targeted investment in education in Africa, there is no chance that world leaders will achieve their commitment to universal primary education by 2015.

Despite important progress in a number of key countries, less than 70 percent of children are enrolled in primary school in ten of the poorest Africa countries. In the countries with the largest share of Africa’s out-of-school children, such as Mali, Ghana, Mozambique, Burkina Faso, Niger, Ethiopia and Nigeria, the challenge is often one of reaching poor girls in rural areas who are among the least likely to be in school. A number of countries have shown that it is possible to reach these children by developing strategies that specifically target the barriers to schooling that these children face. For example, in Ethiopia, a strategy of building thousands of schools in rural areas contributed to cutting the number of out of school children by over 3 million. In Burkina Faso, rural schools that offered meals and provided separate bathrooms for boys and girls increased enrollment rates from just 35 to 55 percent.

While the strategies for success in expanding access are fairly clear, the resources to complete the job remain starkly inadequate. Unfortunately, the world’s wealthiest countries are not yet delivering on their past promises of aid to Africa. UNESCO estimates that it will require as much as $11 billion each year to deliver on the commitment to universal primary education for low-income countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, which is more than five times the level spent in 2008. Countries like Ghana already spend over one-quarter of their total national budget on education and the poorest countries in Africa will require additional donor resources to complement national investments if they are to achieve universal primary education.

The challenge is not just that too little donor money is going toward education, but also that a small fraction of it is currently directed to low-income countries in Africa. According to a recent UNESCO analysis, the United States gives just over one-fifth of its basic education funding to sub-Saharan Africa and only Zambia, among Sub-Saharan African nations, makes the list of top ten U.S. recipients, with most of the top recipients in the Middle East and South Asia. The United Kingdom, by contrast, invests twice as much of its education resources in sub-Saharan Africa and in low-income countries.

The 2010 World Cup could still be remembered as a turning point in the world’s efforts to expand educational opportunity in Africa. Going the last mile to achieve universal primary completion by 2015 will require the G8 to fully deliver on its past promise to double aid to Africa and the G-20 to focus on the challenge of education for development at its upcoming Summit. It will depend on President Obama fulfilling his promise to invest $2 billion in a Global Fund for Education. Finally, it will require that a far higher percentage of donor resources for education be directed to the low-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa that need it most.

Authors

David Gartner

Image Source: © Ina Fassbender / Reuters

Transformed Governance and the Education for All-Fast Track Initiative

David Gartner — Tue, 04 May 2010 12:53:00 -0400

Executive Summary

The Education for All-Fast Track Initiative (FTI) grew out of the “New Focus on Education for All” communiqué of the G-8 when Canada hosted the summit in 2002 at Kananaskis. As Canada prepares again to host the G-8, and Korea assumes leadership of the newly-empowered G-20, it is a valuable moment to revisit and re-think the current global education architecture. By adopting some of the recommendations from the recent independent evaluation of the FTI and borrowing some lessons from global partnerships in other sectors, the FTI could set a new course toward the achievement of universal basic education. The FTI should broaden and strengthen the role of diverse stakeholders from developing countries and civil society in its governance structure in order to fully harness the energies of these stakeholders in resource mobilization and effective implementation.

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David Gartner

The Path Toward Universal Education in 2010

David Gartner — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 15:52:00 -0400

This month, political leaders worldwide are emphasizing the stark divide between the world’s commitment to achieving universal primary education by 2015 and the reality that 72 million primary-age children remain out of school. Underlying the education gap is a significant financial resource deficit, underscored by recently released data by the OECD on donor financing and the G8’s development commitments for 2010.

Despite increasing high-level attention to universal education, the OECD found that there is an $18 billion shortfall in the commitments made by the G8 at Gleneagles and that Africa is likely to receive only $11 billion of the promised $25 billion increase in assistance from the G8 donors. While this financing gap will impact many sectors, it particularly diminishes the chances of achieving universal primary education by 2015.

Over the last decade, the share of overall development assistance going to education has remained relatively flat at 11 percent, and many of the gains in external education support have reflected the expansion of the overall aid envelope. The overall financing gap for education has been estimated by UNESCO’s Education for All Global Monitoring Report to be as high as $16 billion.

Despite these challenges, new momentum is building toward expanded investment in global education. In South Africa, President Zuma announced last week that because “education is the key to genuine freedom,” he will host a major universal education summit in June in connection with the FIFA-World Cup. In the United States, Congresswoman Nita Lowey introduced the Education for All Act that seeks to make U.S. investment in global education a top priority. Last week, First Lady Michelle Obama launched her new international focus on education by saying that “We have to confront the wrong and outdated ideas and assumptions that only certain young people deserve to be educated. . . .”

Upcoming global summits in June may be the last chance to set the world on the right path to achieving the Millennium Development Goal of universal primary education by 2015. When Canada hosted the G8 in 2002, the country played a central role in catalyzing a new financing instrument, the Education for All-Fast Track Initiative (FTI). As part of its agenda of promoting accountability for past G8 commitments, the Canadians would be well placed to encourage the G8 to support important governance reforms to strengthen the Fast Track Initiative.

With the G-20 emerging as the leading forum for economic policymaking, it should take on a larger role in shaping and delivering these global commitments, such as universal education. The current G-20 chair, South Korea, has indicated that development issues will be included in its agenda. Emerging donors within the G-20 can become a leading force with their global education investments as well as lead by example and share lessons from their own experience moving toward universal education.

Closing the global education gap will require President Obama and the G8 to deliver on their specific commitments on development assistance and financing universal education, and the G-20 to assert its leadership in catalyzing universal education as a fundamental building block of economic growth. While recent events offer new signs of hope for global action around universal education, the coming months will demonstrate whether that hope is justified.

Authors

David Gartner

Scaling up for Success: Redesigning the Global Education Aid Architecture

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 09:00:00 -0500

Event Information

January 6, 2010
9:00 AM - 1:00 PM EST

The Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Washington, DC

On January 6, the Center for Universal Education hosted a half-day consultation to develop recommendations for reforming the global education architecture and evolve current financing mechanisms for achieving universal education. The event included representatives from multilateral organizations, including the Education for All-Fast Track Initiative, World Bank and UNICEF, as well as from major foundations working in global education, leading non-governmental organizations, and researchers from Brookings and elsewhere.

David Gartner of the Center for Universal Education moderated the discussion, highlighting the importance of 2010 for achieving the Millennium Development Goal of universal primary education and the unique opportunity to put forward proposals to reshape the current global education architecture. Participants divided into three core discussions groups focused on 1) inclusive governance; 2) accountability for results; and 3) a stronger secretariat to support country-driven processes.

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The Right to Education in Africa

David Gartner — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 12:10:00 -0500

Sixty-one years ago, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaimed that, "Everyone has the right to education." However, that ambition has yet to be realized. Of the 72 million children currently out of primary school, nearly half of them live in sub-Saharan Africa and 11 million live in a single country: Nigeria. In a historic ruling earlier this month, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Community Court of Justice ruled that all Nigerians are entitled to education as a basic right.

In Nigeria, the federal government argued that education was not a legal entitlement. But in a decision that could have implications across Africa, the court found Nigeria in breach of Article 17 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights, which states that, "every individual shall have the right to education." The African Charter has been ratified by 53 countries, nearly every nation on the continent. In reaction to the court's ruling, counsel for the plaintiff Summar declared that, "this is the first time an international court has recognized citizens' legal right to education and it sends a clear message to ECOWAS member-states including Nigeria, and indeed all African governments, that the denial of this human right to millions of African citizens will not be tolerated." Although the ruling directly applies to Nigeria, it could be the precursor to cases in other West African nations that are part of ECOWAS.

The right to education is already enshrined in the national laws and constitutions of many countries around the world. Just this year, India passed a "Right to Education Act" establishing a state obligation to provide eight years of education. In South Africa and Brazil, courts have held that constitutional provisions on the right to education require access to education for migrant children and the provision of transportation for children who could not otherwise attend school. In the United States, a right to education is part of many state constitutions and has been the basis for expanding funding for education in underserved areas.

Hopefully, this recent decision in Nigeria will prove to be an important catalyst for expanded investment in education in that country. Despite having one of the largest economies in Africa, public expenditures on education have been declining in Nigeria over the last 40 years down to five percent of the total federal budget in 2005. This investment by Nigeria falls far short of the international benchmark that countries spend 20 percent of their total government expenditure on education. However, many other sub-Saharan African countries are not as well placed to realize the right to education.

Even in many African countries that do spend more than 20 percent of their national budgets on education, there are frequently insufficient resources to achieve universal education. For example, Burkina Faso, which spent nearly one quarter of its budget on education, still confronts one of the biggest out of school populations in Africa because of its extremely low gross domestic product. In recent years, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya and Tanzania have made important progress toward achieving universal primary education because of the combination of expanded domestic and increased donor financing.

If the right to education is to be realized in the rest of Africa, it will require leading international donors, such as the United States, to join with governments in Africa to substantially expand their investments in education. With the world facing a deadline next year for getting every child in school in time to achieve the Millennium Development Goal of universal primary completion by 2015, there is no time to waste.

Authors

David Gartner

Image Source: © Staff Photographer / Reuters

United States, India and Universal Education: Obama and Singh’s Shared Values Should Guide Them

David Gartner — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 10:32:00 -0500

When President Obama welcomes Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to the White House today, the leaders of the world’s two largest democracies have a unique opportunity to put forward a shared vision of opportunity for future generations. At a recent speech in Washington, Prime Minister Singh highlighted the core values shared by India and the United States and the profound way in which our two nations have been shaped by two great moral leaders of the 20th century: Mohatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King. “In my interactions with President Obama, I have found shared thinking on the moral imperative of putting the poor at the forefront of the global agenda in Africa, Asia, and elsewhere. They must have access to education, and give them bankable skills, to nutrition and to healthcare,” Singh said.

Because of their shared values, Obama and Singh should work together in the coming year to realize their shared vision of achieving universal education for all. Much of India’s tremendous economic growth in recent years has been driven by its investments in education. This year, India passed the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, which promises access to education for all children ages 6 to 14 years old. Although there is still work to be done, with special regards to the issues of educational quality and vulnerable children, India has demonstrated major progress in the area of primary school enrollment. Between 2005 and 2009, the percentage of out of school children in India was nearly cut in half, according to national surveys.

Since India is a vibrant democracy, civil society groups like Pratham have successfully launched grassroots efforts to improve the quality of education in the country and help millions of children learn how to read.

The Indian experience shows that tangible progress is possible on the commitment that President Obama made to help ensure that all children around the world are able to complete primary school by 2015. When Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited India earlier this year, she expressed her commitment to, “equality of opportunity for all children,” and expressed her desire to work with India on, “the common cause of educational opportunity.” As key members of the G-20, India and the United States are well placed to lead the world in the coming year to refocus energy on the last opportunity to get all children in school in time to meet that 2015 deadline for universal primary school completion.

Just as India will face a major challenge in the coming year to increase its own education spending to the promised 6 percent of GDP, the Obama administration will make a critical decision in the coming month about delivering on its own commitment to provide $2 billion for a Global Fund for Education. While each nation contends with its own competing priorities, making this shared vision of educational opportunity a reality is an important test of global leadership in the 21st century. Just as Gandhi and Dr. King were connected and ultimately successful because they called upon core values of human dignity, the potential partnership between India and the United States illustrates the way in which shared values can help define a new era and create opportunity for a new generation.

Authors

David Gartner

Obama's Commitment to the World's Children

David Gartner — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 12:00:00 -0400

One year ago, in the face of a major financial crisis, Presidential Candidate Barack Obama made a powerful commitment to the world’s children. During the annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative, Obama pledged to establish a $2 billion Global Fund for Education so that every child around the world can go to school. In the coming week, President Obama will return to the Clinton Global Initiative before he addresses the United Nations and the world’s leading economies in Pittsburgh at the G-20 Summit. The president has a unique opportunity to lead the international community in making universal education a reality.

President Obama’s commitment reflects the fact that education is one of the best investments for promoting economic development and empowering women around the world. Obama’s top economic adviser, Lawrence Summers, found that “educating girls yields a higher rate of return than any other investment available in the developing world.” Educating mothers can save millions of lives because a mother’s level of education is one of the best predictors of the health of her child. In Africa, five million children die each year before reaching their fifth birthday, but the children whose mothers received just five years of education are 40 percent more likely to survive.

The president’s pledge builds on the Millennium Development Goal established by the international community to ensure that every child worldwide completes at least a basic education by 2015. Time is running out and 72 million primary-age children are still not in school. Nearly half of these children live in Sub-Saharan Africa and girls make up a clear majority of these children. Achieving universal primary education by 2015 requires that every school-age child enters school by next year. This vision of universal education builds on a long and powerful tradition of universal public education in the United States as well as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Universal education is also a smart way to promote a better, safer, more prosperous world. Obama explained in his speech last year to the Clinton Global Initiative that: “We live in a time when our destinies are shared. The world is more intertwined than any time in human history . . . Our security is shared as well.” Universal education promotes global security because the lack of education fuels conflicts around the world. Nearly half of out of school children now live in countries that are affected by conflict. Just as universal education in the United States promote democracy and economic development, it will build stronger global partners and promote global security.

President Obama’s call for a new Global Fund for Education is extremely important because achieving universal quality education will require significant innovation and an evolution of the mechanisms that now exist for financing education. A new Global Fund for Education should be an independent and inclusive institution that supports country-driven solutions and is capable of mobilizing the resources needed to achieve education for all, while holding all stakeholders accountable for achieving results with these resources. Obama’s idea of a Global Fund for Education already has strong support among global leaders in the fight against poverty, including Nobel Laureates such as Desmond Tutu and Muhammad Yunus.

The world’s children are counting on President Obama and his fellow world leaders who are gathering together to deliver on their promise of universal education. By elaborating on his plan to give every child the chance to go to school and providing the promised $2 billion for the Global Fund for Education, President Obama can catalyze other wealthy nations to also do their part to meet the 2015 deadline for universal primary completion. Universal quality education could well be a defining legacy of Obama’s presidency and a signature achievement of our times.

Authors

David Gartner

A Global Fund for Education: Achieving Education for All

David Gartner — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 12:00:00 -0400

Executive Summary
In order to realize the world’s commitment to ensuring education for all by 2015, important innovations and reforms will be needed in the governance and financing of global education. In 2008, Presidential Candidate Barack Obama committed to making sure that every child has the chance to learn by creating a Global Fund for Education. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has recently called for a new architecture of global cooperation that requires institutions to “combine the efficiency and capacity for action with inclusiveness.” A new Global Fund for Education should be an independent and inclusive multi-stakeholder institution that builds upon existing institutions and supports country-driven solutions. It must be capable of mobilizing the approximately $7 billion annually still needed to achieve education for all, while holding all stakeholders accountable for achieving results with these resources.

None of these objectives will be achieved without a major rethinking of the global education architecture and an evolution of current mechanisms for financing education. More than 75 million children remain out of primary school, and only 53 of the 171 countries with available data have achieved gender parity in primary and secondary education. Achieving these two Millennium Development Goals, and the broader Education for All Goals set out by 164 countries, will require more capable international institutions. A Global Fund for Education that links funding to performance, that ensures a greater share of resources reach schools and that coordinates the efforts of diverse stakeholders is essential to putting these goals within reach.

In order to realize President Obama’s vision for creating a Global Fund for Education, significant leadership by the United States on global education will be needed in the coming year. A clear commitment by the United States to leverage the contributions of other nations and work together to support country-driven strategies through a Global Fund for Education could catalyze unprecedented international energy around achieving education for all.

Policy Brief #169

Learning from Existing and Innovative Mechanisms

The Global Fund for Education should reflect an evolution of the successful elements of existing multilateral mechanisms. Seven years ago, the Fast Track Initiative (FTI) was launched as the primary financing vehicle for achieving education for all. Working with key donors and international institutions, the FTI was supposed to mobilize the resources needed to close the massive education-financing gap. Housed within the World Bank, the FTI has not yet been able to build a strong public brand, engage the support of a number of leading donors or mobilize adequate resources from major donor countries.

The FTI has not been capable of generating resources on a scale consistent with its founding vision of achieving universal education for all. Although the FTI initially focused on expanding bilateral investments in education, in 2003 it created a multilateral Catalytic Fund to mobilize additional resources with an early focus on countries without major bilateral donors. In 2006, the FTI’s multilateral Catalytic Fund represented approximately 2% of aid commitments to basic education. Although the number of countries contributing to the Catalytic Fund has increased in recent years, many of the biggest donors are still not participating, and just three countries accounted for over 70% of total pledges in 2008. As a result, the FTI faces a shortfall of $1.2 billion for the coming year, which is more than all the money it has received from donors in the last six years. Although many countries endorsed by the FTI have experienced increases in bilateral basic education funding, their share of overall assistance focused on basic education has not increased, a fact that makes it hard to rule out the possibility that overall aid trends were largely responsible for that growth.

The FTI has recently undertaken a set of internal governance reforms designed to improve its performance, but these changes alone are unlikely to overcome some of the structural challenges it still faces. Without independent capacity for action, more inclusive governance, greater attention to conflict-affected countries and stronger accountability for results the FTI will not be able to mobilize sufficient resources or deliver the results that it was set up to achieve. At the same time, the FTI’s model of requiring and supporting the development of comprehensive national education strategies and seeking to align donor funding around these strategies should be incorporated in any evolution to a Global Fund for Education. Similarly, the FTI’s ambition of aligning bilateral flows along with multilateral funding remains an important objective to ensure that all types of donor funding are being fully leveraged.

A Global Fund for Education should also draw on the successful experience of other innovative global development financing mechanisms. Among the most successful of these new institutions is the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria (GFATM). Since its inception, the GFATM has generated commitments of over $20 billion and is now the leading source of external financing for tuberculosis and malaria. One of the keys to the GFATM’s success in resource mobilization has been the strong engagement of both civil society and developing countries as full partners with donors in its governance. Civil society representatives and developing countries have equal standing in decision-making at the global level within the GFATM. As a result, civil society stakeholders have been at the center of the largely successful drive for resource mobilization for the Fund and partner countries are more invested in its success.

Toward a Global Fund for Education

The core mission of the Global Fund for Education should be to mobilize the financing needed to achieve universal quality education. Linking successful early learning with meaningful opportunities for secondary education, the Global Fund for Education should maintain a focus on achieving universal quality basic education for all while also supporting early childhood learning and secondary schooling as part of a comprehensive approach to education. The GFE should be guided by a set of core principles, focused on key objectives, and reflect an evolution of existing mechanisms:

1. Independent Capacity for Action

Independence from any other international institution will be essential to establish the public profile necessary to succeed in this resource mobilization challenge. The independence of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has been a key to its success, while the lack of independence of the FTI has been a primary obstacle to its ability to mobilize sufficient resources. An independent Global Fund for Education should still leverage the expertise and commitment of other international institutions, such as UNESCO, UNICEF and the World Bank. Technical experts from these institutions can play an important role in supporting countries both in the development of national strategies and in the effective implementation of these strategies.

2. Inclusive Governance

Inclusive governance will be critical to building a multi-stakeholder constituency that is committed to mobilizing resources. Developing countries, civil society and donor countries should be equal partners in a system in which there is equal representation and the support of each constituency is necessary for major decisions. Such a requirement in the governance structure of the GFE will not only strengthen the internal decision-making process by subjecting it to the scrutiny of diverse perspectives but will also provide external legitimacy and increase the effectiveness of its implementation efforts. Without such inclusiveness, the Global Fund for Education will not be able to succeed in either mobilizing donors to make education a top priority nor in ensuring that these resources are being well-spent in partner countries.

3. Country-Driven Solutions

Developing countries should set the agenda for the best approach for themselves through the development of comprehensive national education strategies. The Global Fund for Education should build on the FTI’s ambition of aligning donor investments around comprehensive national education plans that reflect country-driven solutions. In order to ensure that strategies are truly national—not simply government plans—the Global Fund for Education should mandate that civil society and other non-governmental stakeholders are full partners in the development of these strategies at the national level. Just as inclusive participation at the global level supports effective resource mobilization, ensuring full participation at the national-level supports effective implementation by diverse stakeholders.

4. Accountability for Results

Accountability must be central to the design of the Global Fund for Education. Systems to ensure financial accountability and that money actually reaches the school level and helps students learn are essential to the effectiveness of the Fund. Performance-based disbursement, which connects continued funding with demonstrated results, is the best way to create incentives for recipient countries to deliver on promised results. In addition, key indicators including gains in enrollment, gender equity and student learning outcomes should be included among performance measures. Utilizing improved measures for assessing student learning will be critical to improving completion rates and maximizing the development gains from education. In order to ensure some reasonable predictability of financing, countries that show strong performance should be eligible for extensions of funding over significant periods.

5. Focus on Low-Income and Conflict-Affected States

Given the inevitable limits on the resources of the Global Fund for Education, it is important to establish an allocation principle for distributing funding. First, the eligibility for funding should be limited to low-income countries, or those countries that are eligible for funding under the World Bank’s IDA window. Second, there should be special attention to the challenges of states currently experiencing or emerging from conflict and mechanisms to ensure support for education in these states. Third, the GFE should prioritize those countries categorized as least-developed and that have the most limited national resources. Finally, funding should generally be linked to the level of effort by national governments in supporting education.

6. Leverage and Align Donor Resources

The Global Fund for Education holds enormous promise for mobilizing funding from a diverse array of donors. Just as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria has leveraged a two-to-one match of U.S. resources from the rest of the world, the Global Fund for Education could similarly leverage global resources for education. In order to ensure adequate incentives for countries to contribute their fair share, donor board seats should be allocated and adjusted with reference to donor contributions. In addition, there should be a regularized replenishment process built into the initial design that is linked to the overall resource needs for universal education and that encourages long-term commitments by donors. The GFE should also be committed to providing multiple channels for donor assistance, both bilateral and multilateral, as long as these funds are truly aligned with national strategies. While there is a clear need to expand multilateral financing for education far beyond what has been possible to date, it is also important that ongoing bilateral commitments are much better integrated with the objectives of national education strategies.

A Global Fund for Education holds the key to delivering on the world’s commitment to education for all by 2015. Evolving current mechanisms into a more independent, inclusive, and accountable institution can catalyze the resources and performance needed to achieve universal education. Since education is one of the most leveraged of all development investments, establishing a Global Fund for Education would make a major contribution to reducing global poverty, empowering women, and promoting economic growth in low-income countries around the world.

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David Gartner

Making Africa a Priority in U.S. Foreign Assistance

David Gartner — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 12:00:00 -0400

As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visits seven African countries, she will meet unbelievably determined people who are hoping that the United States will be a key partner for their prosperity. When Secretary Clinton returns to the United States, she will need to make critical decisions about how best to invest America’s development funding in the coming years. While Africa is now a much smaller priority for U.S. foreign assistance than it ought to be, Secretary Clinton can correct this imbalance as she finalizes her budget request for the coming year.

Although United States support for the least developed countries—most of which are in Africa—has increased in recent years, it still represents just over one-quarter of overall U.S. development assistance. The United States currently gives a smaller percentage of its development assistance to Africa than any of the world’s wealthiest nations. Greater targeting of U.S. resources toward the least developed countries could make an enormous difference in global progress toward the Millennium Development Goals by the target date of 2015.

One of the key areas where expanded U.S. investments in Africa could leverage overall development in the region is through increased investments in basic education. Currently, just over one-quarter of all U.S. funding for basic education is directed toward Sub-Saharan Africa, which holds nearly half of all children who do not get to go to school. Over half of U.S. basic education resources are currently sent to just four countries in the Middle East and South Asia, but only one quarter of these vital resources flow to the least developed countries that need the most support. Yet, relatively small investments in education in Africa can yield huge health and development returns.

In Africa, the children of mothers who receive five years of primary education are forty percent more likely to live beyond the age of five. Given that five million children in Africa die each year before reaching their fifth birthday, ensuring that their mothers get a basic education could literally save millions of children’s lives. These health effects are also multi-generational since the children of parents with such an education are much more likely to attend school themselves. Despite these impressive gains from education, currently just 4% of U.S. development assistance to Africa is directed to basic education.

When the United States has invested in a major way in Africa, it has yielded tremendous accomplishments. Recent research found that the United States helped to prevent 1.2 million deaths in Africa in just a few years through its efforts to provide AIDS treatment on the continent. A similarly ambitious initiative that leverages the support of other countries to ensure that every child gets the chance to go to school in the least developed countries could have no less dramatic effects. In Africa alone, if the 17 million girls currently out of school completed a full basic education, each one of their children would be twice as likely to live to go to school themselves.

In the coming weeks, Secretary Clinton will make key decisions about where Africa stands among America’s development priorities. Last year, the United States directed almost three-quarters of its resources to countries that are not among the poorest in the world. A greater focus on the least developed countries, especially those in Africa, would yield enormous progress toward reducing global poverty. Building on the secretary’s longstanding leadership on educating women and girls in Africa just might be the most leveraged development investment that America could make.

Authors

David Gartner

Brookings Launches Center for Universal Education

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0400

The Brookings Institution today launched the Center for Universal Education, an initiative that will develop and disseminate effective solutions to the challenge of achieving universal quality education. The center becomes part of the Global Economy and Development program and will conduct research and analysis, convene meetings and host policy forums to enhance policy development and understanding on a range of issues relevant to the achievement of universal quality education for the world’s poorest children. Jacques van der Gaag, senior fellow, and Rebecca Winthrop and David Gartner, fellows, will serve as co-directors of the center.

Van der Gaag has been a distinguished visiting fellow in Global Economy and Development at Brookings since 2006 and researched the economics of poverty, the economic consequences of HIV/AIDS and international health care financing. He was most recently a professor of development economics at the Faculty of Economics and Business at the University of Amsterdam. Winthrop, an expert in the field of education in contexts of armed conflict, most recently has been the head of education for the International Rescue Committee and teaching at Columbia University. She will focus on education in contexts of mass displacement, state fragility, and armed conflict and the role of education in long-term solutions for peace and development. Gartner is an expert on global education, global health and international development who recently has been a visiting scholar at Harvard University. His research will focus on global education and the role of international institutions and foreign assistance in global development.

“We are very pleased to welcome these new scholars and the Center for Universal Education to Brookings,” Brookings President Strobe Talbott said. “The center will strengthen and complement our current efforts to contribute to global education and development.”

Established in 2002, the Center for Universal Education (CUE) was previously part of the Council on Foreign Relations and was directed by Gene Sperling. Sperling left the Council on Foreign Relations earlier this year to become senior counselor to U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

“Jacques, Rebecca and David’s expertise will help CUE develop and disseminate effective solutions to the challenge of achieving universal quality education,” said Kemal Derviş, vice president and director of Global Economy and Development at Brookings. “The center will continue to be a leading forum for shared learning in the global education policy community and will seek to project its own ideas into broader public debates in ways that will strategically support its core mission.”

The new center will focus on the provision of universal quality education among the world's poorest countries. Its affiliated scholars will conduct research and produce policy proposals around the core objective that every child should receive a quality basic education. It will also analyze the challenges and opportunities for the sufficient and effective funding of and programming for universal quality education.

Will the G8 Deliver on Education for All?

David Gartner — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 10:00:36 -0400

When the leaders of the world’s eight wealthiest nations meet in Italy this coming week, the world’s poorest children will have a lot at stake. When G8 leaders last met in Italy in 2000, they promised to secure financing to achieve basic education for all children by 2015. As time runs out on making good on that promise, many donors are actually cutting their investments in education in the developing world. President Barack Obama and other G8 leaders should use the upcoming Summit to put forward the vision and resources needed to make education for all a reality.

The leaders of the 2000 G8 Summit in Genoa, Italy, committed to achieving the Education for All Goals, which were established by 164 countries that year in Senegal. The G8 statement that year pledged that “every child deserves a good education… We reaffirm our commitment that no government seriously committed to achieving education for all will be thwarted in this achievement by lack of resources.” The G8 leaders even established a special education task force to ensure effective follow-up action.

In subsequent years, the G8 was even more specific about their commitment to ensuring “that by 2015 all children have access to and complete free and compulsory primary education of good quality.” In 2005, each G8 leader promised to dramatically scale-up development assistance focused on Sub-Saharan Africa. They also pledged to secure additional financing for the Education For All Fast Track Initiative, which was set up to mobilize the donor financing needed to support comprehensive national plans for universal education.

Despite these promises, donor assistance to basic education has fallen far short of what is required to meet these commitments. Conservative estimates by UNESCO show that at least $11 billion is needed each year from donors to achieve education for all. Yet, official development assistance commitments didn’t reach even half that much and actual disbursements to basic education were less than one third of that amount. After 2006, basic education funding by donors actually fell by over 20 percent.

Most of the early gains in support for education actually came from countries outside the G8. The Netherlands, with a Gross Domestic Product one-fifteenth the size of the United States, actually provides more support for basic education than the U.S. The Netherlands is still the largest contributor to the multilateral catalytic fund of the Education For All Fast Track Initiative. As a result, the FTI now faces a financing gap that is as large as all the money it has raised in the last six years.

One of the major ongoing challenges is that basic education in the poorest countries lacks priority within donor development budgets. Since 2000, the actual share of official development assistance devoted to basic education has remained flat at just 4 percent. The percentage of basic education funding that went to the least developed countries actually declined since 2000.

Within the G8, both the United Kingdom and Canada stand out for devoting over 10 percent of their development assistance to basic education. These countries also direct more of this education assistance to low-income countries, with the UK focusing 90 percent of its funding on these countries. In contrast, low-income countries received less than one third of the education assistance from Germany and Japan and less than half of the education support provided by the United States and France.

The upcoming G8 Summit provides one of the last opportunities for the leaders of the world’s wealthiest nations to make good on their commitment to achieve education for all by 2015. President Obama will be attending his first G8 summit and he has promised to create a Global Fund for Education and contribute $2 billion so that every child has the chance to learn. His vision for a Global Fund for Education has recently been endorsed by a number of Nobel Laureates, such as Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu of South Africa and Professor Muhammad Yunus who created the Grameen Bank. If President Obama seizes this moment of opportunity to move forward with a bold investment in education, it could leverage the rest of the G8 to follow through on their commitments and make an enormous difference in the lives of the world’s children.

Authors

David Gartner

An Education Stimulus for the Developing World

David Gartner — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 12:00:00 -0400

Lost in the recent debate in Congress over expanded funding for the International Monetary Fund (IMF), was the key question of how that money should best be spent in order to promote a global economic recovery. Here in the United States, our own economic stimulus included unprecedented levels of funding, over $100 billion, in new education spending. The rest of the world now needs its own education stimulus package to promote economic recovery and quality education for all children. In a major development, the United States Congress just decided that the International Monetary Fund should “promote government spending” on education.

In the face of sharply declining growth rates, many low-income countries are being forced to cut back on vital investments in education at exactly the wrong time. In tough economic times, demand for schooling increases and the employment of teachers can be an economic stimulus in the context of high unemployment. However, declining donor funding for education is making it harder for low-income countries to pay their teachers and keep the school doors open. According to the most recent OECD data, donor funding for basic education actually went down by more than 20 percent in recent years.

Past economic crises have dramatically reversed progress toward achieving universal quality education in the developing world. In Indonesia, for example, the crisis of the 1990’s resulted in 35 percent more 10-year-old boys dropping out of school. Once these students leave school for a year or more, it is extremely hard to get them to go back. The current economic crisis is seriously jeopardizing recent progress toward achieving the world’s commitment to reach universal basic education by 2015.

Expanding the number of teachers represents both an important economic stimulus and an essential dimension of achieving education for all. UNESCO projects that 18 million new teachers must be trained and employed by 2015 if all the 75 million children who are not currently in primary school are to gain access to quality education. A number of countries in West Africa, such as Mali, will need to increase their ranks of teachers by more than 10 percent every year in order to achieve that goal.

The IMF has traditionally been somewhat reluctant to support significantly expanded investments in education and other areas because of concerns about avoiding public deficits. As a result, countries like Mali that face serious teacher shortages, are still agreeing to keep their own spending in check even as the United States and other countries are massively increasing public spending to promote economic recovery.

The new guidance by Congress to the IMF could make a real difference in giving low-income countries the ability to invest in their own children. The law now requires that the United States oppose any IMF program that does not allow national governments to increase spending on education. For the many low-income countries that receive IMF loans, this change could make it possible to increase investments in their children.

Just as education spending is a key part of America’s response to the economic crisis, so too should it be central to the response to the crisis in the developing world. Hopefully, the new guidance by the Congress to the IMF to support investments in education will give more countries the chance to scale up their own efforts. If so, it would be good news for the global economic recovery and great news for the millions of children now left out of school.

Authors

David Gartner

Obama's Call for Educating Women

David Gartner — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 12:00:00 -0400

As part of his historic Cairo address, President Barack Obama raised the hopes of millions of women around the world by highlighting how educating women can change the economic future of nations and promote equality. "I do believe that a woman who is denied an education is denied equality . . . countries where women are well-educated are far more likely to be prosperous" proclaimed President Obama. The president has a unique opportunity to fulfill these hopes by delivering on earlier promises to create a new Global Fund for Education and contribute $2 billion so that all girls can go to school.

Education, especially for girls and women, is the most highly leveraged investment now available for developing countries. Obama's top economic adviser, Lawrence Summers, has found that "educating girls yields a higher rate of return than any other investment available in the developing world." Women's education is a key driver for the economic growth of countries around the world. A 100 country study by the World Bank found that every 1 percent increase in the level of women's education generates .3 percent in additional economic growth. Educating women increases their wages by as much as 20 percent for every additional year of schooling. Women's education is a key driver for the economic growth of countries around the world.

Educating women is also essential for ensuring food security and protecting recent gains in global health during the current economic crisis. Educated women use their expanded knowledge and improved financial situation to provide for their children. One study of 63 countries found that women's education accounted for 43 percent of all progress in reducing child malnutrition. In Africa, the children of mothers who received five years of primary education are 40 percent more likely to live beyond the age of five. Education is a "social vaccine" against AIDS, dramatically reducing the risks of infection, especially for girls.

Despite all the incredible returns that come from educating girls and the world's commitment to the U.N. Millennium Development Goal that all girls should have equal access to education as boys, more than half the countries in the Arab world, in South and West Asia and in Sub-Saharan Africa have yet to achieve gender parity in education. In Afghanistan, for example, fewer than 70 girls enter school for every 100 boys. Overall, 75 million primary school age children are still out of school and most of them are girls.

Reducing the cost of education, employing an adequate number of teachers and creating safe environments for girls to learn are essential strategies for expanding access to education for girls. A number of countries have eliminated school fees in recent years, catalyzing dramatic expansions in enrollment and achieving gender parity in primary education. Bangladesh closed the education gap for girls by providing stipends for attending secondary school to cover the costs of supplies, textbooks and uniforms and more than tripled the number of girls enrolled.

Creating safe environments in which girls can effectively learn is also vital to promoting educated women. Training more female teachers is especially important in countries, like Pakistan, where many parents are reluctant to send their girls to schools with male teachers. Burkina Faso recently made substantial gains in the enrollment and performance for girls by building schools in rural areas that included separate bathroom facilities for girls and provided lunch for students.

In an earlier speech, President Obama promised to create a Global Fund for Education and pledged to invest $2 billion in order to "erase the global primary education gap by 2015" and ensure that every child can go to school. By fulfilling these commitments, Obama could leverage investments from the rest of the world and actually achieve the Millennium Development Goal of education for all by 2015. Obama's words in Cairo have raised the sights of millions of girls around the world, and creating a Global Fund for Education holds the promise that they will finally get the chance to learn.

Originally submitted to the The Huffington Post by David Gartner on June 5, 2009.

Authors

David Gartner

Publication: The Huffington Post