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Contributor Guidelines
Submitting guest blogs is open to Global Washington’s members of the Atlas level and above. We value a diversity of opinions on a broad range of subjects of interest to the global health and development community.
Blog article submissions should be 500-1500 words. Photos, graphs, videos, and other art that supports the main themes are strongly encouraged.
You may not be the best writer, and that’s okay. We can help you shape and edit your contribution. The most important thing is that it furthers an important conversation in your field, and that it is relatively jargon-free. Anyone without a background in global development should still be able to engage with your ideas.
If you include statistics or reference current research, please hyperlink your sources in the text, wherever possible.
Have an idea of what you’d like to write about? Let’s continue the conversation! Email comms@globalWA.org and put “Blog Idea” in the subject line.
Posted on February 7, 2011
“Today, it is not surprising and is rather, somewhat expected, that CEOs devote a portion of their time in Davos to articulating what their companies are doing to advance the global development agenda. And that increasingly there is an inextricable link between that agenda and the prosperity of their own enterprises” writes Joe Cerrell, director of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s European Office.
In a recent Reuters blog post called “Global Development crashes the Davos party,” Cerrell discusses the increasing presence of a global development agenda at the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland.
Cerrell briefly traces the history of this trend in Davos over the last 10 years starting when Bill Gates launched the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) in 2000. While the forum has perhaps moved away from the years when celebrities like Bono, Sharon Stone, and Angelina Jolie could steal the Davos spotlight to push forward development issues, Cerrell thinks that these years have brought about a lasting shift; global development is now accepted as a normal part of the WEF’s conversation on business and economics.
Cerrell hopes to see global development “crashing” more and more gatherings to which it was previously uninvited. At Global Washington, we share his desire to explore these issues in diverse sectors. Our membership consists of nonprofits, foundations, businesses, and academic institutions in the state of Washington, all united in common goal of making the world a more equitable and prosperous place. As this kind of dialogue continues in prominent venues, we hope to also see innovative and mutually beneficial partnerships formed to address important needs in health, education, environmental sustainability, poverty alleviation and other global issues
Posted on February 1, 2011
On January 24th, Michelle Bachelet announced a 100-day action plan for U.N. Women, a newly-formed agency for promoting gender equality and the empowerment of women around the globe. “Women’s strength, women’s industry, women’s wisdom are humankind’s greatest untapped resource,” said Bachelet, a former president of Chile and executive director of the fledgling agency.
Bachelet laid out five priorities for U.N. Women: enhancing women’s leadership and participation; ending violence against women; supporting women’s role in peace and conflict resolution; bolstering economic opportunities for women; and placing gender equality high on the agenda of national, local and sectoral planning and budgeting. She also discussed five core principles for the agency: enhancing implementation of international accords by national partners; backing intergovernmental processes to strengthen the global framework on gender equality; advocating gender equality and women’s empowerment; promoting coherence with the UN on the issue; and acting as a global broker of knowledge and experience.
U.N. Women—which is officially called the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women—was established by the general assembly last year, merging four former U.N. entities into one. The main functions of the agency are to support inter-governmental bodies in their formulation of policies and standards as they relate to women; to assist U.N. members in the implementation of those standards through technical and financial support as needed and by creating effective partnerships; and to provide accountability to the U.N. for its own commitments relating to gender equality.
Bachelet’s remarks came during the inaugural session for the agency’s executive board. U.N. Women’s formal launch will be February 24th, 2011.
For more information on U.N. Women and the 100-day action plan, please visit:
Posted on January 24, 2011
The Center for Global Development recently released a new online interactive map tool to gauge progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) at the country level. Through this tool, the CGD ranks countries on their overall progress on the 7 indicators with a score of 1-8. When you click on a country, you will see seven graphs showing observed progress on each of the indicators against the required progress to meet the goals by 2015. The seven indicators are: halve extreme poverty (people earning under $1.25/day); halve the proportion of the undernourished population; achieve universal primary education; achieve gender parity in schooling; reduce child mortality by 2/3; reduce maternal mortality by 3/4; halt and begin to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS; and halve the proportion of people living without access to safe drinking water.
Four countries are tied for best progress to date, with a score of 7: China, Ecuador, Honduras, and Tunisia. The next few countries in the top 10 performers include Brazil, Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Kyrgyz Republic, Laos, Lebanon, and Vietnam, with scores of 6 to 6.5. The worst performers, ranked in the 130s, include Burundi, Bulgaria, Congo-DRC, Marshall Islands, Afghanistan, and Guinea Bissau.
The map also shows which countries are the best and worst performers in each of the seven indicators. A quick glance at the map shows the most progress globally in access to safe drinking water, and the least progress in halting and reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS.
