At the time that USAID/Cambodia re-opened, the Royal Government of Cambodia re-established the Ministry of Health. In over 20 years, USAID/Cambodia and the Ministry of Health have worked closely together to rebuild and revitalize the national health system.
USAID’s implementing partners has taken on much of the work collaborating with the government to build capacity in Cambodian hospitals, health centers, and communities. Together they have trained and supported the health care workers who improve the lives of Cambodian mothers and children every day.
USAID has been partnering with the Philippines for more than 50 years and is committed to supporting the country’s efforts to emerge from Typhoon Haiyan stronger than ever and remain a vital economic and political partner for the United States. We are at a critical place in our response efforts where we have pivoted from providing immediate relief to building long-term recovery. We are forging partnerships with the people and Government of the Philippines, the private sector, NGOs, faith-based communities and the diaspora to together help rebuild lives and livelihoods throughout the Philippines.
Es un gran placer para mí estar aquí con todos Ustedes esta noche.
El gobierno de los Estados Unidos ha apoyado este premio por varios años. Estoy muy contento de que Semillas para la Democracia continúe con esta loable iniciativa, con el apoyo del sector privado y de organizaciones de la sociedad civil. Este es un gran ejemplo de cómo los paraguayos pueden trabajar juntos para mejorar el sistema de justicia.
It is my pleasure to be with you this morning to recognize the commitment of the Government of Tanzania to formalize Joint Border Committees. This commitment highlights years of cooperation between the Tanzanian and United States Governments, enabled by assistance provided by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), to reduce the time and cost of transporting goods across borders.
We are here today to help address the fact that almost 1 billion people across the globe go to bed hungry every night. To meet the needs of a world population expected to reach 9 billion by 2050, agricultural production will need to increase by at least 60 percent.
There is a strong consensus that agriculture plays a crucial role in any effort to reduce global poverty and hunger. Studies suggest that every one percent increase in agricultural income per capita reduces the number of people living in extreme poverty by between 0.6 and 1.8 percent.
Thirty years ago, the official development community was almost exclusively composed of international organizations like the World Bank and government agencies like USAID. But today, we live in a very different world.
Private investment in emerging economies has grown to dwarf official development assistance. And new technologies—perhaps most notably the mobile phone—have transformed the lives of billions of people in the farthest corners of the globe. In the last 15 years, the development community has dramatically expanded. It now includes innovators at universities—who have designed microscopes that attach to iPhones to diagnose malaria and solar-powered micro-grids to give children a light to read by at night. It includes philanthropists like Bill Gates and Mo Ibrahim, who have studied these issues deeply and can bring their private sector expertise to bear on solving challenges. And it includes banks and companies like Citi, Dupont, and Cargill who are increasingly seeking high risk, high return investments in some of the toughest parts of our world.
Taken together, these extraordinary new trends—the emergence of new technologies and the growth of our community—have transformed what’s possible to achieve in development.
It is an honor for me to represent USAID/Vietnam to be here today at the Ceremony of International Day of Persons with Disabilities with the theme of: “Break Barriers, Open Doors: for an inclusive society and development for all”.
Since the dawn of humanity, extreme poverty has crowded at the heels of progress—stifling hopes and undermining growth across the centuries. Today, we stand within reach of a world that was simply once unimaginable: a world without extreme poverty.
In the United States, with a dollar-and-a-quarter in your pocket, you can buy a bottle of water or a pack of gum. But for 1.2 billion people around the world, this is all they live on every day. No matter how much you adjust for the relative price of local commodities, a dollar-and-a-quarter is a desperately meager sum—and with it families must make daily choices among food, medicine, housing, and education. Every decision is a trade-off with potentially catastrophic consequences. Do you buy medicines for a sick parent, provide an evening meal for your children, or put a few pennies away towards a new roof or next year’s school fees?
This is what we call extreme poverty.
The race to the skies helped build a constellation of satellites that provided the data we used last week to help move hundreds of thousands of people out of harm’s way in the Philippines, and the invention of the computer chip and ARPANET, fundamentally a public/private enterprise, helped create a flourishing valley of entrepreneurs throughout our country but in particular in Silicon Valley, that have demonstrated to the world that it’s possible to envision an entirely different future, profit from it, and also make sure that it reaches the farthest corners of the globe quickly. But today, our innovation economy must expand and change even more rapidly to an important, emerging new trend, and that trend is that the middle class around us is changing dramatically.
For centuries, less than 1 percent of the world’s population enjoyed the privilege of a little bit of extra money in their pocket. By 1990, the global middle class numbered 1.8 billion people, but still mostly living in North America, Europe, and Japan. Over the last two decades, growth in emerging economies has turned billions of people into producers and consumers—creating both opportunity and challenges for the United States.
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