August 2020
To the G20, IMF, World Bank, Regional Development Banks and National Governments,
A GLOBAL EDUCATIONAL EMERGENCY
We write to call for urgent action to address the global education emergency triggered by Covid-19. With over 1 billion children still out of school because of the lockdown, there is now a real and present danger that the public health crisis will create a COVID generation who lose out on schooling and whose opportunities are permanently damaged. While the more fortunate have had access to alternatives, the world’s poorest children have been locked out of learning, denied internet access, and with the loss of free school meals – once a lifeline for 300 million boys and girls – hunger was grown.
An immediate concern, as we bring the lockdown to an end, is the fate of an estimated 10 million children who may never return to school. For these, the world’s least advantaged children, education is often the only escape route from poverty – a route that is in danger of closing. Many of these children are adolescent girls for whom being in school is the best defence against forced marriage. Many more are young children who risk being forced into exploitative and dangerous labour. And because education is linked to progress in virtually every area of human development – from child survival to maternal health, gender equity, job creation and inclusive economic growth – the education emergency will undermine the prospects for achieving all of our 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. According to the World Bank the long-term economic cost of lost schooling could be as much as $10 trillion in lost productive output.
We cannot stand by and allow these young people to be robbed of their education and a fair chance in life. Instead we should be redoubling our efforts to get all children into school – including the 260 million already out of school and the 13 million child refugees and 40 million forcibly displaced – with the comprehensive help they need, and to make it possible for young people to resume their studies in further and higher education.
There is a longer-term challenge we must also meet. Even before Covid-19 the world faced a learning crisis. Over half of the children in developing countries were suffering from 'learning poverty’ and even at age 11 had little or no basic literacy and numeracy skills. As a result, 800m of today's young people leave education with no qualifications whatsoever. If we are to avoid this, millions of children who are now preparing to return to school, who have lost over half a year of education, need their governments to invest in catch-up programmes and proper learning assessment. When schools reopened after Pakistan’s 2005 earthquake attendance recovered, but four years later children had lost the equivalent of 1.5 years of schooling.
Resources are now urgently needed to get young people back into education and enable them to catch-up. What is more, we should build back better: more online learning, more personalised learning, more support for teachers, more help like conditional cash transfers for poor families and safer schools, building on the enormous community effort that has been displayed during the pandemic. And to spur global momentum in support of progress in education, a coalition of global organisations has now joined forces in the ‘Save out Future’ initiative launched on August 4.
Yet at the very time we need extra resources, education is in danger of being cut three times over.
First, as slower or negative growth undermines tax revenues, less money may be available in almost every country for public services, including education.
Second, when allocating limited funds, governments are prioritising expenditure on health and economic recovery leaving education crowded out and underfunded.
Third, intensifying fiscal pressure in developed countries will result in reductions in international development aid, including aid for education, which has already been losing out to other priorities in the allocation of bilateral and multilateral aid. There is also a danger that multilateral donors, who already under-invest in education, will reallocate funds.
The World Bank now estimates that, over the next year, overall education spending in low and middle-income countries could be $100-150 billion lower than previously planned.
This funding crisis will not resolve itself.
We call on the G20, the IMF, World Bank and regional development banks and all countries to recognise the scale of the crisis and support three initiatives to enable catch-up to happen, and progress towards SDG4 to be resumed:
First, every country should pledge to protect education spending, prioritising the needs of the most disadvantaged children through, where possible, conditional and unconditional cash transfers to promote school participation;
Second, the international community must increase aid for education, focusing on the most vulnerable, including the poor, girls, children in conflict situations and the disabled. The quickest way to free up resources for education is through debt relief. The 76 poorest countries have to pay $86 billion in debt-service costs over the next two years. We call for debt suspension with a requirement that the money for debt servicing be reallocated to education and other priority investments for children.
Third, the IMF should issue $1.2 trillion in Special Drawing Rights (its global reserve asset) and its membership should agree to channel these resources toward the countries that need them most, creating a platform for recovery.
And the World Bank should unlock more support for low income countries through a supplementary International Development Association budget, and, following the lead of the UK and Netherlands which have now pledged $650m to the new International Finance Facility for Education (IFFED) to help unlock billions in extra finance for education in lower middle income countries, invite guarantees and grants from donors. This is in addition to -and compliments- the replenishment over the next 2 years of GPE (Global partnership for Education) and ECW (Education Cannot Wait) and continued support for the UN agencies focused on education and children led by UNESCO and UNICEF.
While the challenges are momentous, the impact of the crisis on children has made us even more determined to realise our ambition, contained in Sustainable Development Goal 4, that ours can be the first generation in history in which every child is at school and has the chance to develop their potential to the full Now is the time for national governments and the international community to come together to give children and young people the opportunities they deserve.
What the G20 should now do
HEALTH AND ECONOMICS: A COORDINATED RESPONSE
June 2020
We believe the time is right for the G20 leaders to hold a second meeting this spring to discuss ways to make progress in the implementation of the G20 Action Plan and to agree a more strongly co-ordinated global response to the current crisis.
May 30 saw the highest daily figure recorded worldwide for new cases of COVID-19 and we are now at a critical moment as, on every continent, countries are attempting to stop the transmission of COVID-19. The G20 has the power to bring people together around a common set of actions, and what it decides next will have a direct bearing on the future of the world economy.
We write to emphasise the urgency and the need to act now because we believe that there are just weeks left, not months, in which to deliver immediate relief to countries. For the first time this century, global poverty is on the rise. The problems faced by the poorest countries in Africa and Asia demand immediate action. The United Nations (UN) predicts that a world-wide recession would reverse three decades of improving living standards and plunge upwards of 420 million more people into extreme poverty.
The World Food Programme has estimated that 265 million of our fellow citizens are likely to suffer from crisis levels of hunger – an increase of 130 million over pre-pandemic levels. We are now hearing reports of the devastating impact of poverty and of the pressure on health and other services, in particular on all the services upon which girls and women depend.
COVID-19 is a public health crisis that has brought in its wake the greatest education emergency of our lifetime: 1.5 billion – 80 per cent of all children – have been out of school. Many may never return. The majority are denied distance learning. Millions who no longer receive school meals are going hungry, while at the same time education aid is being reduced.
Compared to pre-crisis levels (the International Labour Organisation estimates a 10.5 per cent deterioration in the number of hours worked, equivalent to the loss of more than 300 million full-time jobs.
HEALTH
The global economic and social emergency cannot end until we can bring the global health emergency to an end. And we cannot bring the health emergency to an end in any of our countries until we end it in all countries.
We welcome the $8 billion pledged on 4 May for vaccines, diagnostics and therapeutic development as recommended by the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board, and urge that these contributions be paid immediately. But more now needs to be done to fund and co-ordinate diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines.
We need global coordination of the development, mass manufacturing, and equitable distribution of a vaccine or vaccines, so that they are universally and freely available as quickly as possible and we urge every G20 member support the 4 June replenishment of GaVi – the Vaccine Alliance.
Instead of what sometimes seems like a cut throat competition for a share of a limited supply of medical equipment, we urge closer cross-border collaboration to increase the global supply of vital medical equipment
To withstand COVID-19, developing countries need support to build their health systems as well as to improve their social safety nets and G20 countries should support the UN’s appeal for refugees, displaced persons and those who rely on humanitarian aid.
THE ECONOMY
We note not only the obstacles faced by developed countries in returning to growth, but also the deteriorating economic and fiscal conditions faced by many emerging and developing economies. More than one hundred countries have now approached the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for help, and more are expected to do so.
The IMF has said emerging markets and developing countries need $2.5 trillion to overcome the crisis, but only a fraction of that $2.5 trillion has so far been allocated. While we welcome the good intentions at the heart of the G20 Action Plan, we now urge that concrete measures be agreed to implement it in full:
Debt relief for the 76 International Development Association countries needs to be scaled up radically to include relief by bilateral, multilateral, and private creditors, and it should be extended to the end of 2021.Arrangements need to be such that multilateral creditors can demonstrate that they are providing net new lending in individual countries. Time is running out for the voluntary process for private creditors coordinated by the Institute of International Finance, and a new binding approach now needs to be considered.
A dozen or more emerging markets may well run into debt servicing problems in the coming year. Each will need to be dealt with as a specific case, but the process will be much easier within a framework and forum which bring together the main creditors. The IMF should be mandated to convene the relevant players and through its debt sustainability and policy analysis set broad parameters for resolution.
The G20 should agree that the level of support – $2.5 trillion – which the IMF has said is needed will now be provided. This requires the IMF, the World Bank and regional development banks to raise their lending and grant ceilings. Based on their announced plans, the multilateral development banks (MDBs) will likely increase their outstanding loan portfolio from about $500 million now to between $650-700 billion over the next eighteen months. Without further increasing their resources and allowing them to be more ambitious in deploying their capital, their ability to respond to the crisis will be severely constrained.
The consequences of not acting now would be felt for the rest of the decade, for, while the financing needs of developing countries are now bound to be higher, private capital markets may continue to be more risk averse.
Support for existing programmes for social safety nets, regular health services, education, and climate change initiatives must not suffer because of the urgent need for funds to fight COVID-19 transmission. Thus:
We need to ensure that the MDBs have sufficient resources to sustain the elevated level at least for the next five years, which would require an additional $1 trillion in their combined portfolios. The individual institutions should be asked to provide plans for how they are to achieve these objectives for the resources they need. This will involve new sources of finance for the ,MDBs including using their powers to borrow with consideration needed of a further set of capital increases, and the creation of new guarantee-based facilities like the International Finance Facility for Education (IFFEd).
We reassert our commitment to the issue of special drawing rights (SDRs), and their transfer of existing unused allocations and new ones to countries most in need of support. Without requiring a reference to national parliaments, a decision on SDRs would release $600 billion immediately, and more than $1 trillion by 2022. We ask the G20 simultaneously to build political support for an SDR allocation while engaging in the necessary technical work, so that the measure can be put in place without additional delay as soon as agreement has been achieved.
A COORDINATED RESPONSE
In the first stage of the crisis the emphasis was on the provision of liquidity, support for employment protection, and new investment in health. Now, as we seek to return the world economy to pre-crisis levels of growth, enhanced fiscal, monetary and central bank coordination is vital. Consideration should be given to setting a global growth target which can sit side by side with national inflation targets. ‘Green’ investment must be part of the stimulus. In 2009, less than 10 per cent of the fiscal stimulus went to environmental projects. Now, infrastructure spending should be prioritised around projects beneficial to sustainable development. In this way, the recovery from this crisis could be transformative, contributing to progress in delivering on climate change agreements. To raise vitally needed revenues for national governments, a coordinated strategy to recover money lost to tax havens should be agreed. Countries should automatically exchange tax information and remove secrecy surrounding beneficial owners and trusts, as well as agreeing to sanction non -complaint countries which refuse to implement the agreed rules.
Without action from the G20, the recession caused by the pandemic will only deepen, hurting all economies, and the world’s most marginalised and poorest peoples and nations the most. Representing, as it does, 85 per cent of the world’s nominal GDP, the G20 has the capacity to lead the mobilisation of resources on the scale required and we urge leaders to do so urgently.
COVID-19 is also a wake-up call to the global community. The global health and financial architecture must be reinforced, and in parts redesigned, to enhance our preparedness and capacity to act with speed and at scale to fight future crises. The UN, the governments of the G20 nations, and all interested partners should turn this crisis into an opportunity to build a new and more effective multilateralism, which more appropriately reflects current economic and political realities and is better equipped to address the challenges of the 21st century.
The COVID-19 pandemic: The G20 must act now
EMERGENCY MEASURES FOR DEVELOPING COUNTRIES AND EMERGING ECONOMIES TO PREVENT UNIMAGINABLE HEALTH AND SOCIETAL REPERCUSSIONS
May 2020
To G20 leaders,
Advanced countries have started now to see the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, and there is worse to come for most countries. But delaying emergency measures in emerging and developing economies will lead to unimaginable health and social impacts which will come back to haunt us for decades. The G20 must act now.
As advanced economies struggle to cope with the spread of COVID-19, emerging and developing countries are facing an unprecedented collective threat to human life, social cohesion and economic devastation. The virus is now reaching countries with fragile health systems and weak institutions, with the potential of creating huge numbers of deaths, particularly among the 70 million globally displaced people. Massive economic losses will be incurred as countries desperately try to cope, people will migrate out of fear as the epidemic takes hold leading to social disruption, violence and security issues. Moreover, in the likely case that they fail, the virus could become endemic, producing new waves of destructive outbreaks regionally and around the world.
We have a rapidly closing window to ensure that we give these countries at least a fighting chance to manage the crisis and provide some light at the end of a what could be a long tunnel. Africa, South Asia and Central and South America are still at the very beginning of what could be a long epidemic cycle. As of this writing, 43 out of 54 countries in Africa have registered cases of the virus and there has been a six-fold increase in case numbers over the last 8 days. Yemen and Syria have just joined the list.
Just as governments in richer countries are trying to protect their most vulnerable citizens, they have both an obligation and a self-interest in shielding vulnerable countries. The fight must be waged globally on two fronts: public health and economic policy. On the health front, we must immediately support the World Health Organisation and shore up domestic institutions managing the healthcare response, guarantee logistics and supply chains for health and other essential goods. In parallel we must immediately accelerate the global effort to find vaccines and therapeutics, manufacture and distribute them fairly across the world.
We must also provide emergency resources to countries facing devastating fiscal outlays and massive capital outflows. The economic impact on these countries will be much greater than anything experienced during the global financial crisis. With little fiscal space, high debt levels and little external capital left, their capacity to protect their populations is very limited.
First and foremost, we should ensure that the WHO has sufficient resources to continue leading the global response. The entire UN system and the associated international financial institutions, the World Bank and the IMF, will be tested in a way that they have not been since they were created in the wake of two man-made catastrophes and the Great Depression.
There is an immediate funding gap to be filled for fighting the epidemic. The Global Preparedness Monitoring Board has requested at least $8 billion in emergency funding, including $1 billion to strengthen the WHO’s emergency and preparedness response, $250 million for surveillance and control measures, $2 billion for vaccine development, $1.5 billion for distributed manufacturing and delivery of vaccines, and $1.5 billion for therapeutic drugs to prevent and treat COVID-19.
The efforts to address the economic impact will, of course, require efforts of a completely different magnitude. It has taken 2trn dollars so far to try to fix the US economy – we can only imagine what it will take to fix the countries that are falling apart because of the collapse in commodity prices, tourism and remittances, and to protect those most vulnerable. The World Bank and the IMF have produced welcome quick responses, but what will be needed will be of a different order of magnitude. We need to find new and innovative ways to use the global financial muscle to back up these institutions and the countries affected.
We, as 20 engaged healthcare professionals and 20 economists representing our professions, are now urging you, the leaders of the G20, to urgently provide the necessary resources to reduce the losses in human life and back up those most vulnerable. The required investment is minute compared to the social and economic costs of inaction. History will judge us harshly if we do not get this right.
Signatories:
PRESIDENTS
Europe
Sali Berisha
President of Albania 1992-1997; Prime Minister 2005-2013
Emil Constantinescu
President of Romania 1996-2000
Ruth Dreifuss
President of the Swiss Confederation 1999; Member of the Swiss Federal Council 1993-2002
Tarja Halonen
President of Finland 2000-2012
Toomas Hendrik Ilves
President of Estonia 2006-2016
Dalia Itzik
Interim President of Israel 2007; President of the Knesset 2006-2009
Mladen Ivanić
Member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina 2014-2018
Gjorge Ivanov
President of North Macedonia 2009-2019
Ivo Josipović
President of Croatia 2010-2015
Horst Köhler
President of Germany 2004-2010
Petru Lucinschi
President of Moldova 1997-2001
Giorgi Margvelashvili
President of Georgia 2013-2018
Rexhep Meidani
President of Albania 1997-2002
Bujar Nishani
President of Albania 2012-2017
Mary Robinson
President of Ireland 1990-1997; UN High Commissioner for Human Rights; Chair of the Elders
Boris Tadić
President of Serbia 2004-2012
Danilo Türk
President of Slovenia 2007-2012; President of WLA Club de Madrid
Jorge Sampaio
President of Portugal 1996-2006
Petar Stoyanov
President of Bulgaria 1997-2002
Valdis Zatlers
President of Latvia 2007-2011
Latin America
Óscar Aria
President of Costa Rica 2006-2010
Nicolás Ardito Barletta
President of Panama 1984-1985
Felipe Calderón
President of Mexico 2006-2012
Rafael Ángel Calderón
President of Costa Rica 1990-1994
Fernando Henrique Cardoso
President of Brazil 1995-2002
Laura Chinchilla
President of Costa Rica 2010-2014
Alfredo Cristiani
President of El Salvador 1989-1994
César Gaviria
President of Colombia (1990-1994); Secretary-General of the Organization of American States (1994- 2004)¹
Lucio Gutiérrez
President of Ecuador (2003-2005)
Osvaldo Hurtado
President of Ecuador 1981-1984
Luis Alberto Lacalle Herrera
President of Uruguay 1990-1995
Ricardo Lagos
President of Chile 2000-2006; Member of the Elders
Mauricio Macri
President of Argentina 2015-2019
Jamil Mahuad
President of Ecuador 1998-2000
Ricardo Martinelli
President of Panama 2009-2014
Gustavo Noboa
President of Ecuador 2000-2003
Andrés Pastrana
President of Colombia 1998-2002
Miguel Ángel Rodríguez
President of Costa Rica 1998-2002
Julio Maria Sanguinetti
President of Uruguay 1985-1990; 1995-2000
Juan Manuel Santos
President of Colombia 2010-2018; Nobel Peace Prize Laureate 2016; Member of The Elders
Ernesto Zedillo
President of Mexico 1994-2000; Member of The Elders
Africa
Joyce Banda
President of Malawi 2012-2014
Joaquim Chissano
President of Mozambique 1986-2005
Ameenah Gurib-Fakim
President of Mauritius 2015-2018
Jakaya Kikwete
President of Tanzania 2005-2015
Frederik Willem de Klerk
State President of South Africa 1989-1994
John Kufuor
President of Ghana 2001-2009
Thabo Mbeki
President of South Africa 1999-2008
Benjamin Mkapa
President of Tanzania 1995-2005
Chief Olusegun Obasanjo
President of Nigeria 1999-2007
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf
President of Liberia 2006-2018; Member of The Elders
Cassam Uteem
President of Mauritius 1992-2002
Asia
Jose Ramos Horta
President of East Timor 2007-2012
Chandrika Kumaratunga
President of Sri Lanka 1994-2005
Roza Otunbayeva
President of Kyrgyzstan 2010-2011
PRIME MINISTERS
Europe
Bertie Ahern
Taoiseach of the Republic of Ireland 1997-2008
Giuliano Amato
Prime Minister of Italy 1992-1993; 2000-2001
Gordon Bajnai
Prime Minister of Hungary 2009-2010
Jan Peter Balkenende
Prime Minister of the Netherlands 2002-2010
Ehud Barak
Prime Minister of Israel 1999-2001
José Manuel Barroso
Prime Minister of Portugal 2002-2004; President of the European Commission 2004-2014; Non-Executive Chairman of Goldman Sachs International
Marek Belka, MEP
Prime Minister of Poland 2004-2005; Deputy Prime Minister & Minister of Finance 2001-2002; Director of European Department, IMF 2008-2010
Carl Bildt
Prime Minister of Sweden 1991-1994; Minister for Foreign Affairs 2006-2014
Valdis Birkavs
Prime Minister of Latvia 1993-1994
Tony Blair
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom 1997-2007
John Bruton
Taoiseach of the Republic of Ireland 1994-1997
Mirko Cvetković
Prime Minister of Serbia 2008-2012
Jan Fischer
Prime Minister of the Czech Republic 2009-2010; Finance Minister 2013-2014
Chiril Gaburici
Prime Minister of Moldova 2015; Minister of Economy and Infrastructure 2018-2019
Felipe Gonzalez
Prime Minister of Spain 1982-1996
Alfred Gusenbauer
Chancellor of Austria 2000-2008
Jadranka Kosor
Prime Minister of Croatia 2009-2011
Yves Leterme
Prime Minister of Belgium 2009-2011
Enrico Letta
Prime Minister of Italy 2013-2014
Kjell Magne Bondevik
Prime Minister of Norway 1997-2000; 2001-2005
Sir John Major
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom 1990-1997
Péter Medgyessy
Prime Minister of Hungary 2002-2004
Mario Monti
Prime Minister of Italy 2011-2013
Joseph Muscat
Prime Minister of Malta 2013-2020
George Papandreou
Prime Minister of Greece 2009-2011
Romano Prodi
Prime Minister of Italy 2006-2008; President of the European Commission 1999-2004
Iveta Radičová
Prime Minister of Slovakia 2010-2012
Òscar Ribas Reig
Prime Minister of Andorra 1990-1994
Petre Roman
Prime Minister of Romania 1989-1991
Wolfgang Schüssel
Chancellor of Austria 2000-2007
Laimdota Straujuma
Prime Minister of Latvia 2014-2016
Hanna Suchocka
Prime Minister of Poland 1992-1993
Helle Thorning-Schmidt
Prime Minister of Denmark 2011-2015
Guy Verhofstadt
Prime Minister of Belgium 1999–2008
José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero
Prime Minister of Spain 2004-2011
North America
Paul Martin
Prime Minister of Canada 2003-2006
Latin America
P.J. Patterson
Prime Minister of Jamaica 1992-2005
Africa
Mehdi Jomaa
Prime Minister of Tunisia 2014-2015
Moussa Mara
Prime Minister of Mali 2014-2015
Asia
Shaukat Aziz
Prime Minister of Pakistan 2004-2007
Hong-Koo Lee
Prime Minister of South Korea 1994-1995
Djoomart Otorbayev
Prime Minister of Kyrgyzstan 2014-2015
Jigme Y. Thinley
Prime Minister of Bhutan 2008-2013
Australia
Kevin Rudd
Prime Minister of Australia 2007-2010; 2013
New Zealand
James Brendan Bolger
Prime Minister of New Zealand 1990-1997
Helen Clark
Prime Minister of New Zealand 1999-2008; UNDP Administrator 2009-2017
Sir Geoffrey Palmer
Prime Minister of New Zealand 1989-90; Chair of the New Zealand Law Commission 2005-2010
John Key
Prime Minister of New Zealand 2008-2016
Dame Jenny Shipley
Prime Minister of New Zealand 1997-1999
GOVERNMENT MINISTERS
Europe
Edmond Alphandéry
Minister of the Economy, Finances and Industry of France 1993-1995; Founder & Chairman of the Euro 50 Group
Hikmet Çetin
Minister of Foreign Affairs of Turkey 1991-1994
Kemal Derviş
Minister of Economic Affairs of Turkey 2001-2002; Administrator of UNDP 2005-2009; Senior Fellow Global Economy and Development, Brookings Institute
Božidar Đelić
Deputy Prime Minister of Serbia 2007-2011
Joschka Fischer
Minister of Foreign Affairs and Vice Chancellor of Germany 1998-2005
Franco Frattini
Minister of Foreign Affairs of Italy 2002-2004; 2008-2011; European Commissioner 2004-2008
Zlatko Lagumdzija
Foreign Affairs Minister of Bosnia and Herzegovina 2012-2015
Tzipi Livni
Minister of Foreign Affairs of Israel 2006-2009; Minister of Justice 2013-2014
Jan Pronk
Minister for Development Cooperation, The Netherlands 1989-1998; Professor Emeritus at the International Institute of Social Studies, The Hague
Ana Palacio
Minister of Foreign Affairs of Spain 2002-2004
Leif Pagrotsky
Minister of Industry and Trade & Minister of Culture and Education of Sweden 1996-2006
Eka Tkeshelashvili
Deputy Prime Minister of Georgia 2010-2012
North America
Lawrence Summers
United States Secretary of the Treasury 1999-2001; Deputy Secretary of the Treasury 1995-1999; Chief Economist of the World Bank 1991-1993; Director of the National Economic Council 2009- 2010
Latin America
Mauricio Cárdenas
Minister of Finance of Colombia 2012-2018; Visiting Professor, Columbia University
Ricardo Hausmann
Minister of Planning of Venezuela 1992-1993; Professor at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard
Andrés Velasco
Finance Minister of Chile 2006-2010; Dean of the School of Public Policy, LSE
Africa
Lakhdar Brahimi
Minister of Foreign Affairs of Algeria 1991-1993; UN & Arab League Envoy to Syria 2012-2014; Member of The Elders
Ahmed Galal
Finance Minister of Egypt 2013-2014
Graça Machel
Education & Culture Minister of Mozambique 1975-1986; Deputy Chair of The Elders
Amre Moussa
Secretary General of the Arab League 2001-2011; Minister of Foreign Affairs of Egypt 1991-2001
Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala
Board Chair of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation; Finance Minister of Nigeria 2011- 2015
Asia
George Yeo
Minister for Foreign Affairs of Singapore 2004-2011
Australia
Gareth Evans
Foreign Minister of Australia 1988-1996; President and CEO of International Crisis Group 2000- 2009
HIGH PARLIAMENTARY OFFICIALS
Montek Singh Ahluwalia
Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission of India 2004-2014
Dr Abdulaziz Altwaijri
Director General of the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization 1991-2019
Herman De Croo
President of the Chamber of Representatives of Belgium 1999-2007
Dr Mark Dybul
Executive Director of the The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria 2012-2017; Co-Director of the Center for Global Health Practice and Impact & Professor of Medicine, Georgetown University Medical Center
Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu
Secretary General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation 2004-2014
Hina Jilani
Advocate of the Supreme Court of Pakistan; Member of The Elders
Pascal Lamy
Director-General of the World Trade Organization 2005-2013
Javier Solana
Secretary General of the Council of the EU 1999-2009; Secretary General of NATO 1995-1999
EXPERTS AT THE WORLD BANK, REGIONAL BANKS AND INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND
Kaushik Basu
President of the International Economic Association; Chief Economist of the World Bank 2012-2016
Gavyn Davies
Co-Founder & Chairman, Fulcrum Asset Management; Chief Economist & Chairman of Global Investment Dept, Goldman Sachs 1988-2001; Chairman, BBC 2001-2004
Sergei Guriev
Chief Economist of the EBRD 2016-2019; Professor of Economics, Sciences Po
Mats Karlsson
Vice President, External Affairs at the World Bank 1999-2011
Professor Justin Yifu Lin
Chief Economist & Senior Vice-President of the World Bank 2008-2012; Dean of Institute of New Structural Economics, Peking University
Ismail Serageldin
Vice President of the World Bank 1992-2000; Co-Chair of NGIC
Lord Nicholas Stern
Chief Economist & Senior Vice-President of the World Bank 2000-2003; Chief Economist of the EBRD 1994-1999 & Professor of Economics and Government, LSE
Federico Sturzenegger
President of the Central Bank of Argentina 2015-2018; Professor, Universidad de San Andrés
Jean-Claude Trichet
President of the European Central Bank 2003-2011; Governor of the Bank of France 1993-2003
James Wolfensohn
President of the World Bank 1995-2005
Min Zhu
Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund 2011-2016
HIGH COMMISSIONERS OF THE UNITED NATIONS
Louise Arbour
UN Special Representative for International Migration; UN High Commissioner for Human Rights 2004-2008
Zeid Raad al Hussein
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights 2014-2018; Member of the Elders
Ban Ki-Moon
UN Secretary General 2007-2016; Deputy Chair of The Elders
NOBEL PRIZE LAUREATES
Bengt Holmström
Nobel Laureate for Economic Sciences 2016; Professor of Economics, MIT
Sir Christopher Pissarides
Nobel Laureate for Economic Sciences 2010; Professor of Economics & Political Science, LSE
Kailash Satyarthi
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate 2014; Founder of Bachpan Bachao Andolan, Global March Against Child Labour & Global Campaign for Education
Michael Spence
Nobel Laureate for Economic Sciences 2001; William R. Berkley Professor in Economics & Business, NYU
Joseph Stiglitz
Chief Economist of the World Bank 1997-2000; Nobel Laureate for Economic Sciences 2001; Professor, Columbia University
Malala Yousafzai
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate 2014
REPRESENTATIVES OF THE ACADEMIC ENVIRONMENT
Erik Berglöf
Director of the Institute of Global Affairs, London School of Economics; Chief Economist of the EBRD 2006-2014
Sir Tim Besley
President of the International Economic Association 2014-2017; Professor of Economics and Political Science, LSE
Patrick Bolton
Professor of Finance and Economics, Imperial College London; Professor, Columbia University
Dr Victor J. Dzau
President of the National Academy of Medicine of the United States; President and CEO of the Medical Centre at Duke University
Dr Hamish Graham
Consultant Paediatrician & Research Fellow at the Royal Children’s Hospital and Centre for International Child Health, University of Melbourne
Bryan Grenfell OBE FRS
Kathryn Briger and Sarah Fenton Professor of Ecology and Public Affairs, Princeton University
Edward C. Holmes
ARC Australian Laureate Fellow; Professor, University of Sydney
Nora Lustig
President Emeritus of the Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association; Professor of Latin American Economics, Tulane University
Andrew Natsios
Executive Professor, Bush School of Government & Public Service; Administrator of USAID 2001- 2006
Dani Rodrik
President-Elect of the International Economic Association; Professor of International Political Economy, Harvard University
John Sexton
President Emeritus, New York University; President 2002-2015; Dean, NYU School of Law 1988- 2002
Devi Sridhar
Professor of Global Public Health, University of Edinburgh
Ernst-Ludwig von Thadden
President, Mannheim University 2012-2019; Professor, Economics Department
Leonard Wantchekon
Founder & President of the African School of Economics; Professor of Politics and International Affairs, Princeton University
Beatrice Weder di Mauro
President, Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR); Professor of International Economics, Graduate Institute in Geneva
Shang-Jin Wei
Chief Economist of the Asian Development Bank 2014-2016; Professor of Chinese Business and Economy & Finance and Economics, Columbia Business School
PRESIDENTS AND DIRECTORS OF NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS AND FOUNDATIONS
Masood Ahmed
President of the Center for Global Development
Christine Allen
Director of the Catholic Agency for Oversees Development (CAFOD)
Dr K.Y. Amoako
President and Founder of the African Center for Economic Transformation (ACET)
Inger Ashing
CEO of Save the Children International
Nicolas Berggruen
Chairman of the Berggruen Institute
Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar
Director of the Wellcome Trust
Dr Justin van Fleet
President of Theirworld
Nathalie de Gaulle
Chairwoman & Co-founder of NB-INOV; Founder of Under 40
Mo Ibrahim
Founder of Celtel; Chairman of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation
Kateryna Yushchenko
First Lady of Ukraine 2005-2010
Dr Agnes Kalibata
President of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA)
Caroline Kende-Robb
Executive Director of the Africa Progress Panel 2011-2017; Secretary General of CARE International 2018-2020
Laurie Lee
CEO of CARE International UK
Mark Leonard
Co-founder & Director of the European Council on Foreign Relations
Girish Menon
CEO of ActionAid UK
Amanda Mukwashi
CEO of Christian Aid
Dawn Nakagawa
Executive Vice President, Berggruen Institute
Lord Jim O'Neill
Chair of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House
Dr Danny Sriskandarajah
CEO of Oxfam
Tim Wainwright
CEO of WaterAid UK
Kevin Watkins
CEO of Save the Children UK
Dr Rowan Williams
Archbishop of Canterbury 2002-2012; Chair of Christian Aid
