In a keynote speech delivered at a major civil society conference in London Tuesday, former Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for Afghanistan Lakhdar Brahimi reflected on the past eight years of international engagement in Afghanistan and called for a new peace process to bring an end to the long-running conflict.
Though many, including me, have said that Obama didn't say much in terms of foreign policy (and related policies) last night in his State of the Union, there has been a lot said about the little he did say. Find a sample of those reactions below.
A very refreshing hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Haiti just concluded. Paul Farmer who is Bill Clinton’s Deputy UN Special Representative on Haiti, RAND’s Jim Dobbins (a UN Dispatch favorite), and Rony Francois, the incoming director of public health for the state of Georgia testified on what is needed for Haiti's long term recovery.
“We must ensure that development does not falter in Afghanistan,” Mercy Corps UK director Mervlyn Lee said in his opening remarks to more than one hundred leading development experts, community leaders, civil society activists and government officials at a civil society conference in London Tuesday. Organized by the British and Irish Agencies Afghanistan Group (BAAG), the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief (ACBAR) and the High Commission of Canada in London, the conference kicked off four days of events around a UK Government hosted summit on the way forward in Afghanistan.
By Myriam Annette, read part 1 of Myriam's
“Thanks to TSF’s calling operation, I could call my uncle in Venezuela. It was essential to reassure him about my family, to tell him that we all are alive. For me, the most important thing for survival is to keep the family connections, whatever the situation.”
Those of you who aren't plugged into the matrix might have missed the fact that President Obama delivered his first State of the Union address to Congress last night, as U.S. presidents are, sort of, required to do (also, Apple released its tablet computer).
In a bizarre post at the New Republic, Editor in Chief Marty Peretz denigrates the contribution of Arabs and Arab states to the Haiti relief efforts.
The Arabs don't care a fig, not for their impoverished and backward own, and certainly not for strangers. That's why their presence in Haiti amounted to a couple of bucks from Saudi Arabia and maybe from some other sheikhs.
One year in, what has President Obama accomplished in US foreign assistance? So far, we’ve seen a lot of delays and a handful of promises. They’re good promises, but it’s going to take at least another year before we see how well those promises are kept.
The Delays
As President Obama heads to Capitol Hill tonight to deliver the State of the Union address, one thing is clear: in both rhetoric and deed, President Obama has fundamentally shifted the direction of American foreign policy. He has summoned bedrock progressive principals to re-calibrate America’s role in the world. Through a policy of engagement with international institutions and cooperation abroad, the administration has racked up an impressive set of foreign policy achievements after just one year.