Ben Leo

This piece is part of a series of blogs by leading NGOs to call attention to a range of issues that should be raised at the G8 summit at Camp David in rural Maryland from May 18-19.

If you took the current population of the United States...

Fast forward to the year 2025. IDA will begin negotiating its 21st Replenishment Agreement. As with every other replenishment since 1960, donor countries will sit around a table and haggle over what sectors to promote, how to measure IDA's impact, and how to allocate its resources. And, they will...

Last month, President Obama laid out a bold pledge to consolidate and reorganize the federal government in support of a more competitive America.  If you missed that line, it was right before his joke about salmon being regulated by different agencies depending on whether they're in fresh or salt water. ...

This is a joint post with Ross Thuotte.

The United Nations recently published the 2011 World Economic Situation and Prospects report, which asserts that Sub-Saharan Africa, and possibly parts of South Asia, are off-track for halving extreme poverty levels by 2015.  This must sound alarmingly dire and discouraging...

This is a joint post with Ross Thuotte.

Sudan's crippling debt burden can be compared to an enormous onion -- the story gets more and more complex as you begin peeling back the various layers.  Yesterday, we wrote about Sudan's two largest creditors -- Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. ...

This is a joint post with Ross Thuotte.

Two countries alone hold over 25 percent of Sudan's crippling $35 billion debt burden.  I'll give you three guesses at who they might be.  China?  United States?  France?  All would be reasonable choices.  But, they also would be wrong.  In fact,...

Yesterday, the two Fiscal Commission co-chairs, Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, put forward their long-awaited draft proposal.  I was looking forward to seeing bold, creative ideas for getting America's fiscal house in order.  I wasn't disappointed.  They leave no sacred public cow untouched.  However, one thing nearly made me...

This afternoon, the World Bank's shareholders will wrap up their latest discussions about replenishing IDA's financial coffers -- which provides cheap loans and grants to the world's poorest countries.  The largest donors seem more or less content with the new package of policy reforms.  They have agreed that IDA should...

This week, world leaders are assembling in New York to review progress toward the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). If past gatherings are any indication, we can expect to hear countless speeches and media stories about how Sub-Saharan Africa remains woefully off-track and that billions of dollars in new aid packages...

Next week, President Obama, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, and other global leaders will meet with Sudanese leadership to discuss the upcoming referendum. The stakes are huge. In January, southern Sudanese will vote on whether to secede and launch a new, independent country. It's hard to imagine them...

This week, Liberians celebrated in the streets -- faces painted, drums blaring, and dancing with abandon. They're not rejoicing over some recent triumph by the Liberian soccer team or a local festival. The streets of Monrovia were overflowing because of debt relief. That's right, debt relief. On Tuesday, Liberia secured...

No surprises on the G-20 front. Deficits and financial sector reform dominated the headlines coming out of last weekend's Toronto Summit. Development appeared largely as an afterthought. Even though my heart and head are hopelessly hitched to development policy, I think the focus was about right. Ensuring robust recoveries in...

This post also appeared on the Center for Global Development's blog Views from the Center.

For four days, forty-nine Kimberley Process members were holed up in Tel Aviv contemplating Zimbabwe's future. Countries like South Africa, Israel, the European Community, and the United States were deadlocked over whether to...

2010 will be a very challenging and important year for global development. Nearly every multilateral development bank simultaneously has requested billions of dollars of new donor money at a time when donor countries are grappling with staggering economic challenges. It's a perfect storm for aid budgets.

Donor governments and multilateral...

As the global economic crisis spread throughout the developing world in 2008, some of us waited for the next unfortunate phase for poor, debt vulnerable countries -- the resumption of massive IMF lending. This is a movie that we've seen many times before. And we know the ending. Sadly, it's...