The Clinton Global Initiative, whose annual meeting kicks off in New York on Monday, has been the target of scrutiny over the past month.
First the New York Times and then the Washington Post questioned the links between CGI, the newly renamed Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation and the potential political ambitions of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
While those stories generated intense discussion around the Clintons’ business style and the 2016 presidential race, neither story looked at what CGI has meant for global development.
In fact, CGI, through its high-profile “commitments,” has served as a platform for many new actors entering the global development space — most notably, multinational corporations.
Devex Impact correspondent Floyd Whaley and Pete Troilo, Devex director of global advisory and analysis, took their own in-depth look at CGI this week, focusing at exactly how CGI is impacting the field of global development.
Whaley and Troilo discuss CGI’s extraordinary contributions to global development. According to their story, the initiative is responsible for at least 2,300 commitments that represent $74 billion and have the potential to affect 400 million people worldwide.
While CGI’s platform for catalyzing “commitments” has brought a welcome focus on action over words, according to Accenture Development Partnership’s Gib Bulloch, others questioned how these commitments are tracked — or not tracked — by CGI.
As the Center for Strategic and International Studies’s Dan Runde commented in the article, public accountability for individual commitments “has a bit of an optional feel.”
Does CGI’s focus on commitments move global development forward? Should the initiative track results more closely? Read the article and add your comments to the discussion.
And what about new committments and other major announcements at next week’s CGI annual gathering? The Devex editorial team, including Troilo and reporter Adva Saldinger, will be reporting live from New York, providing a real-time look at how CGI works.
And of course CGI is just part of the week’s happenings in New York, which are anchored by the yearly meeting of the United Nations General Assembly, where country ambassadors will try to make progress on negotiating a new global development agenda to succeed the Millennium Development Goals, which will expire in 2015. Devex Editor Rolf Rosenkranz will be reporting from the United Nations and various side events across Manhattan.
Across town at the Social Good Summit, hosted by Mashable and the U.N. Foundation, Devex global development reporter Michael Igoe will interview movers and shakers on the latest development trends and innovations. Igoe will also be reporting on the U.N. Global Compact Leaders Summit, which takes place in Manhattan this week.
So for the most comprehensive coverage of what we call New York #globaldev Week, look no further than Devex. Check out our ”New York #globaldev Week” microsite, where we’ll be posting articles, videos and social content starting today.
Most importantly, tell us what you want to know. Will you be in New York? Tell us what’s on your mind and what you’re hearing from others. If you can’t be in New York, what do you hope will emerge from these four events that bring together so many important players in development?
Join the conversation here — we look forward to seeing you online or in New York!
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About the author
Andrea Useem
As former associate editor and content director for Devex Impact, Andrea created and managed cutting-edge content on the intersection of business and international development. An experienced multimedia journalist, Andrea also served as leadership editor at the Washington Post and spent three years as a foreign correspondent in Eastern Africa reporting for publications including the Boston Globe, Dallas Morning News, and San Francisco Chronicle.
