As U.S. President Barack Obama marks the 100th day of his presidency, we take stock of progress so far on key humanitarian issues competing for attention with the financial crisis, swine flu and a slew of other priorities.
href="http://www.alertnet.org/thefacts/reliefresources/sections/POLAID.htm"
target=new>AID
Obama has pledged to double annual U.S. overseas aid to $50 billion within four years. During his campaign he promised to make the
href="http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/" target=new>U.N. Millennium Development Goals on poverty, hunger, education, equality, disease and infant mortality Â?AmericaÂ?s goalsÂ?. His budget also suggests he intends to follow through on his campaign pledge to achieve a better balance between the civilian and military institutions used to pursue U.S. foreign policy goals by increasing spending on diplomacy and aid, while curbing the exploding growth in military spending under his predecessor, George W. Bush.
It remains to be seen though to which extent the additional aid will be concentrated on the three countries that top the Pentagon's current agenda - Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan - as opposed to other poor countries, particularly those that have qualified for help from the Millennium Challenge Corporation, the agency that provides enhanced aid and debt relief to countries that implement far-reaching economic and political reform.
At the G20 summit in London this month, Obama announced that he intends to double U.S. assistance for global agricultural productivity and rural development. He also called for a comprehensive food security strategy to alleviate chronic hunger that affects one-sixth of the world's population. The administration has also said it intended to increase spending on population programmes Â? which were disdained under Bush - and on other global health problems and to clear up Washington's arrears to the United Nations and other multilateral agencies.
target=new>AFRICA
Issues affecting the world's poorest continent have hardly featured at all on the new president's agenda in the first 100 days as a tidal wave of domestic priorities, the worst financial crisis for decades and a series of foreign policy challenges have left little time for Africa.
With early forecasts that Africa would escape the worst of the financial meltdown now looking hopeful at best, many on the continent have been watching the response in Washington keenly. Experts say the poorest African countries will need more assistance now to meet the U.N. Millennium Development Goals by 2015.
Former U.S. President George W. Bush oversaw significant aid increases to
Africa during his administration, winning fans on the continent as his popularity plunged almost everywhere else. During last year's election campaign,
Obama went further: He said he would prioritise ending the war in Sudan's western
target=new>Darfur region that he has called genocide, would cut poverty and help the neediest Africans get access to doctors, nurses and teachers.
Obama has proposed doubling annual U.S. overseas aid to $50 billion within four years, rooting out graft and strengthening the African Growth and Opportunity Act trade agreement. His appointment of Susan Rice, a former assistant secretary of state for African affairs during Clinton's second term, as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations was seen by many as a sign that he wanted more attention on the continent's woes.
Fair trade campaigners argue though that an elimination of U.S. farm subsidies is key for Africa, saying they cost the continent more in lost revenue due to depressed markets than it gets in foreign aid. It is estimated that African countries lose two dollars through unequal trade for every dollar they get in foreign aid.
In a sign that tense relations between Khartoum and Washington might be thawing ever so slightly, John Kerry, chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, visited
target=new>Sudan earlier this month. Kerry suggested that diplomacy could eventually result in a lifting of sanctions and the removal of Sudan from a U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism.
Piracy off the shores of
href="http://www.alertnet.org/db/crisisprofiles/SO_PEA.htm"
target=new>Somalia has made the country an early challenge for Obama, with Somali pirates hijacking a U.S. container ship and taking the captain hostage.
Obama's administration is grappling to devise a new strategy that will not replicate past failed U.S. policies in the Horn of Africa. The immediate goal, say U.S. officials, is to bolster Somalia's new government and its moderate Islamist president. As a starting point, the U.S. plans to help fund the country's nascent security force. It is also looking for cooperation from the new government in tracking down al Qaeda operatives in Somalia, including those suspected of the 1998 attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
target=new>AFGHANISTAN
This has now been dubbed "Obama's war" after he put his stamp on the seven-year-old conflict by sending 21,000 more troops and unveiling a strategy aimed at rooting out al Qaeda and reversing the gains of the Taliban. But success there will depend on how he deals with the rise of the Taliban in neighbouring, nuclear-armed Pakistan, where the Islamist militia poses a serious threat to the government. Obama has pledged billions of dollars in aid to try to shore up President Asif Ali Zardari.
Obama's strategy also hinges on the ability of Afghanistan's security forces to take the lead in the fighting so U.S. forces can begin to withdraw. To that end, he has dispatched 4,000 military trainers. But the training will take time and that is something in short supply. Analysts also say it will be important for Obama to persuade India to withdraw some of its troops from its border with Pakistan. That would free up Islamabad to send more troops to combat the Taliban in the west of the country.
target=new>HIV/AIDS
Former President George W. Bush's $45 billion
href="http://www.pepfar.gov/" target=new>PEPFAR programme has supported care for more than 10.1 million people affected by HIV/AIDS worldwide, including more than 4 million orphans and vulnerable children, more than under any other president. But critics say Bush undermined PEPFAR by tying faith-based initiatives to it while being beholden to pharmaceutical companies. This meant promoting programmes that preached abstinence rather than the use of condoms as the first defence, while at the same time maximising profit for the drug companies.
Obama has been criticised for his silence on AIDS/HIV issues since becoming president but he has signalled that he will end the faith-based Bush approach to funding projects. He announced this month that he will nominate Dr. Eric Goosby as the U.S. global AIDS coordinator, a move welcomed by campaigners, including the Global AIDS Alliance.
target=new>CLIMATE CHANGE
Obama wants the United States to lead in the climate change fight to help broker a replacement to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the international climate treaty that expires in 2012, which former President George W Bush refused to sign, and to build support for the development of pollution-reducing technologies. Obama's goal is to cut U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases by roughly 15 percent by 2020, back to 1990 levels. The European Union has pledged to cut emissions 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 and says it would pursue a 30 percent cut if other industrialised nations follow suit.
target=new>ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN CONFLICT
If Obama is serious about reaching out to the Muslim world, then movement on resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is critical. He has reiterated his desire for a two-state solution and dispatched Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and new envoy George Mitchell to the region, but has yet to come up with a strategy to push the stalled peace process forward.
Obama has already invited Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Palestinian Prime
Minister Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the
White House for separate talks ahead of a planned visit to the region possibly in June.
Obama has ordered an end to combat operations in Iraq by the end of August 2010 and the eventual withdrawal of all U.S. troops by the end of 2011. Violence has dropped dramatically in Iraq over the past year, but a spike in suicide bombings underscores the unpredictability of Iraq and could jeopardize that timetable.
Obama, through his new envoy Chris Hill, is likely to put more pressure on the leaders of Iraq's Shi'ite, Sunni and Kurdish political blocs to reach political compromises on a host of issues that threaten potential violence.
Media reports earlier this month said the Obama administration will ask Congress for $700 million to fund diplomatic programmes and development aid in Iraq, as part of a request for another $83.4 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Reporting by Daniel Wallis, Sue Pleming, Andrew Gray, Deborah Zabarenko and
Astrid Zweynert
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
