Ai’s team has invaluable experience of engaging the public in complex issues – engagement which results in positive policy change at the highest levels.
Below is an outline of how the public were engaged in the complex issue of sovereign debt between 1994 and 2000 – and the impact of this public mobilisation on the policies of governments and international institutions. And in the next blog, we will explain how Ai has advised the British government on engaging the public in five of Africa’s poorest countries in the complex issue of maternal and newborn survival.
Advocacy International is proud to have helped produce a new website for the African Union’s Campaign for the Accelerated Reduction of Maternal Mortality in Africa (CARMMA).
The website promotes maternal and newborn survival, and provides evidence on progress in achieving the targets African leaders have set. Continue Reading
Ai’s Creative Adviser Maz Kessler has just launched Catapult, a crowdfunding website for girls. Maz designed and developed Catapult as a way to help address the huge global problem of gender inequality. As part of the launch, she penned this article introducing the project and its potential impact:
Originally published on The Huffington Post and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
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Our director, Ann Pettifor and project manager, Georgia Lee have just returned from extended visits to Sierra Leone and Ethiopia, as part of a DFID-funded project to reduce maternal and newborn mortality. Ai is part of a consortium that includes the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, University College London, IMMPACT in Aberdeen and the White Ribbon Alliance.
I have just returned from three stretching days’ work in a workshop and conference in Cologne (28th November to 1st December) with 15 Palestinian and 15 Israeli Mayors, where I moderated the discussions (using every technique known to me from the meeting-management handbook!) to negotiate agreement on practical steps for cooperation between them. Okay, it was not exactly negotiating the Oslo Peace Accords, but at times we felt pretty close to how the diplomats must have felt at the time! Continue Reading
All of the team at Ai are deeply saddened to hear of the death of friend, colleague and great leader Wangari Maathai.
Ann Pettifor especially remembered the privilege of working closely with Wangari on the Jubilee 2000 campaign. Earlier today she said:
“Wangaari stands shoulder to shoulder with Nelson Mandela and Julius Nyerere as one of Africa’s – and the world’s – wisest and most effective leaders.
“I was privileged to know her as a friend; and as a colleague. But above all I was privileged to work closely with her during the Jubilee 2000 campaign. Not only was she Jubilee 2000′s representative in Kenya, but she helped lead the Jubilee 2000 Africa campaign. Continue Reading
Last Sunday Ann Pettifor went on the Sunday Morning show with Ricky Ross to talk about Jubilee 2000, the fight to cancel the debt of the world’s poorest countries, and how the campaign on issues of international finance, sovereign debt and social justice continue. Continue Reading
On 28th June, Lords from all political sides joined together to criticize the government’s proposals in Part 2 of the Localism Bill, quoting Ai Director Jeremy Smith’s criticism and critique first made in February 2011, in an article in Municipal Journal, “Fog over Parliament” .
Under the government’s proposals, ministers would decide whether and how much to require local authorities to pay to central government, in the event of a fine from the European Court of Justice, which the minister decides they are responsible for. In his article, Jeremy had explained (a) how the government had misunderstood the relevant EU Treaty provisions, and (b) in particular, how the proposed clawback proposals were in breach of the principles of natural justice, with ministers being at once prosecutor, judge and co-defendant! Continue Reading
The African Foundation for Development UK (AFFORD) invited Ann Pettifor to give the keynote speech at its Africa-UK Diplomatic Engagement Evening Monday evening, in the presence of the High Commissioners of Sierra Leone and Cote d’Ivoire.
Speaking on the theme of “Enterprise, Workforce and Institution Building in Post-Conflict States” Ann emphasized the vital importance of post-conflict African states building sound monetary systems. She argued that such systems should be designed to give African politicians the policy autonomy needed to formulate and execute their own monetary policy – and with it the domestic economic policies that will protect the interests of their people, and support their country’s advance. Continue Reading
The BBC Radio 4′s ‘World Tonight’ yesterday devoted the whole of their news programme to the question of global food security, and invited Ann Pettifor to comment throughout. She focussed on Goldman Sachs’s Global Commodity Index – (about which you can read more here in Foreign Policy) not very different from the ‘Collateralised Debt Obligations’ (CDOs) that had been used during the property bubble to ‘slice and dice’ assets, and make them available for speculative purposes.
The programming was in response to a recent statement by President Sarkozy to the World Farmers Union. He was speaking in his role as convenor of the upcoming G20 Summit in Cannes on 3-4 November, 2011, and called for greater regulation of financial markets: Continue Reading