Food Aid Hindered Progress Of Democracy In Africa “The best way to help the millions of hungry people in countries that receive food aid get rid of their corrupt and incompetent rulers – and to ensure that their children will never go hungry in future — is to starve them now.…

Donors made 291 commitments worth more than $6 billion at this year’s Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) annual meeting, which wrapped up on Thursday, Reuters reports. “The value of [CGI] pledges for economic empowerment, education, environment, energy and health was $3 billion less than 2009, but the organization said that in previous years one or two big commitments represented a disproportionate share of the whole,” the news service writes. “Since 2005, nearly 2,000 commitments have been made valued at $63 billion” (Nichols, 9/23).

The three-day U.N. Summit on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) ended Wednesday with world leaders “adopting a declaration agreed [to] earlier this month, which promised intensified efforts by the 192 U.N. member states to achieve the world body’s so-called Millennium Development Goals by 2015,” Reuters reports (Worsnip/Wroughton, 9/22).

A growing number of companies are putting more emphasis on philanthropic investments, former President Bill Clinton and business leaders said on Wednesday during the second day of the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) meeting in New York, Reuters reports.

The Clinton Global Initiative’s (CGI) three-day annual summit began on Tuesday with a focus on economic growth, natural disaster preparation and the empowerment of women and girls, Reuters reports.

“African leaders said on Tuesday they could do more to meet U.N. goals to slash extreme poverty and urged stronger leadership among developing countries to tackle hunger and disease and attract investment,” Reuters reports in an article that examines the leaders call for African nations to take greater ownership of their development.

TIME Examines Status Of Child Health In India; Rights Group Criticizes Delhi’s Figures On Maternal Mortality  TIME examines India’s progress on improving child health, which has been “particularly slow – and lopsided.” The article states: “Despite its drastic economic advances in the last two decades, India still accounts for 20% of the world’s…

“Ten years after world leaders set the most ambitious goals ever to tackle global poverty, they are meeting again to try to spur action to meet the targets by the 2015 deadline – which the U.N. says will be difficult, if not impossible, in some cases,” the Associated Press reports. More than 140 world leaders are scheduled to participate in the three-day U.N. Summit on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which kicks off Monday.

Developing Countries Vaccine Manufacturers Network (DCVMN), a voluntary public health driven alliance of state-owned and private vaccine manufacturers from developing countries, now intends to strengthen its collaboration with Global Alliance for Vaccine Immunization (GAVI) to increase its bandwidth in immunization for the developing countries.

The U.N. General Assembly opened its 65th session on Tuesday in New York with the new Assembly President Joseph Deiss, former Swiss foreign minister, calling for the focus of the upcoming year to be prioritizing efforts to achieve the U.N. Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), reaffirming the role of the U.N. in global governance and promoting sustainable development, Xinhua reports (9/15).