Senator Richard Lugar, long-time champion of US engagement with global development issues, is the 2012 winner of the Commitment to Development “Ideas in Action” Award, sponsored by the Center for Global Development and The FP Group, the publishers of Foreign Policy. The Commitment to Development “Ideas in Action” Award honors an individual or organization that has made a significant contribution to changing the attitudes, policies, and/or practices of the rich world toward the developing world. Members of the selection committee will present this year’s award to Senator Lugar during a public event January 29th, 2013.
“For four decades Senator Lugar has deployed his remarkable statesmanship to overcome partisan divides and enact smart US policies that support widely shared global prosperity,” said CGD president Nancy Birdsall.
Most recently, through his work on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Lugar helped create the foundation for a strong US development strategy, introducing legislation that promotes accountability and transparency in US foreign assistance programs.
Senator Lugar championed US efforts against global hunger, sponsoring legislation that would re-orient US foreign assistance programs to focus on promoting food security and rural development in countries with large, chronically hungry populations. He has also dedicated his time and energy to understanding how the international financial institutions could reform to better meet the needs and evolving standards of the post-financial crisis world.
Senator Lugar is the senior senator from Indiana and currently the most senior Republican in the Senate, having served for six terms. Prior to serving in the senate, Senator Lugar served in the US Navy, on the Indianapolis Board of School Commissioners, and as mayor of Indianapolis. He was defeated in the GOP primary this year and will step down from the US Senate in January 2013.
Previous winners of the Commitment to Development Award include: the European ministers of international development who constitute the Utstein Group (2003); Oxfam’s Make Trade Fair Campaign (2004); then-Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown (2005), then-U.S. Congressman Jim Kolbe (R-AZ) (2006), Global Witness (2007), the ONE Campaign (2008), Diego Hidalgo Schnur (2009), Publish What You Pay (2010), and former president of the International Center for Research on Women Geeta Rao Gupta (2011).