New Bipartisan Coalition Offers Key Recommendations to Obama Transition Team on International Development Policies  

WESTPORT, Conn. (Nov. 24, 2008) — Save the Children is urging President-elect Barack Obama to take a critical step now to reform U.S. foreign assistance by announcing his intention that international human development programs will play a critical role in the new administration's foreign aid policy.

"We are joining the nation's leading humanitarian organizations and think tanks in calling on the president-elect to modernize our foreign assistance apparatus so that the needs of the world's poorest children and their families is a top development priority," said Save the Children President and CEO Charles MacCormack.

MacCormack is one of more than two dozen human development aid leaders, foreign policy practitioners and policy experts who have formed a new bipartisan coalition, the Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network (MFAN), which has sent a letter to Obama's transition team outlining three key recommendations to reform foreign aid. The group urges the next president to:

• Empower a single individual with broadened responsibility for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the Millennium Challenge Corp. and the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief; 
• Appoint a Deputy National Security Adviser for Development for coordination and coherence of international development policy inside the White House; and
• Appoint a Secretary of State who agrees that elevating development is a top foreign policy priority. 

"We are participating in this new coalition as part of Save the Children's ongoing efforts to make U.S. foreign assistance more effective for children worldwide," said MacCormack. "While we recognize that our current economic crisis is the nation's number-one priority, we also strongly encourage the president-elect and other world leaders not to forget the impact the crisis is having on the poorest communities of the world.

"Judging from earlier commitments by President-elect Obama, statements in both the Democratic and Republican Party platforms, announcements by House Foreign Affairs Chairman Howard Berman and more than 20 Capitol Hill events over the past year, there is growing recognition of the importance of elevating and empowering development alongside diplomacy and defense," MacCormack said.

Save the Children (www.savethechildren.org) is the leading independent organization that creates lasting change for children in need in the United States and around the world. Save the Children USA is a member of the International Save the Children Alliance, a global network of 27 independent Save the Children organizations working to ensure the well-being and protection of children in more than 100 countries.