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Gordon Brown named recipient of 2005 Commitment to Development Award

Washington, April 21: Gordon Brown, UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, has been named the recipient of the 2005 Commitment to Development Award, the Center for Global Development (CGD) announced today.

The award, sponsored jointly by CGD and Foreign Policy magazine, honors an individual or organization from the rich world that has made a significant contribution to changing attitudes and policies towards the developing world.

“Gordon Brown has provided global leadership on a range of critical development issues, including health, trade, aid and debt relief,” said CGD president Nancy Birdsall. “His initiatives have contributed greatly to ensuring that poverty reduction and sustainable development are at the top of the international agenda.”

“The award panel has extended this award to Gordon Brown on the basis of his unique and unflinching commitment to improving the lives of people in the poorest countries of the world,” she said. “As Chancellor of the Exchequer, he has been a key part of a notable effort by the U.K. to apply solid economic analysis to the formation of specific proposals to improve rich country policies towards the developing world, especially towards Africa.”

Now in its third year, the Commitment to Development Award is judged by a distinguished international panel headed by Birdsall and Foreign Policy editor Moises Naim.

Other members of the panel who decided the 2005 award were Stanley Fischer, a former vice chairman of Citigroup who has since become governor of the central bank of Israel; Eveline Herfkens, the Secretary-General's executive coordinator for the Millennium Development Goals Campaign, United Nations; and Kevin Watkins, director of the Human Development Report office in the United Nations Development Programme.

In 2003, the award was presented to the four ministers of development cooperation who created the Utstein Group; the 2004 winner was Oxfam’s Make Trade Fair Campaign.

The Center for Global Development (CGD) is a Washington-based, non-partisan, not-for-profit think dedicated to reducing global poverty and inequality through policy-oriented research and active engagement on development issues with the policy community and the public.

A principal focus of the Center's work is the policies of the United States and other rich countries that affect development prospects in poor countries. A formal announcement of the award will appear in the May issue of Foreign Policy.