In the past few years, aid effectiveness discussions have reached a new level of intensity. Top scholars in the development field have offered viewpoints across the spectrum, some heralding the potential of aid to help the world’s poorest and others disparaging aid as an inefficient waste. A crucial limitation in this debate has been the dearth of information on the effectiveness of aid-financed programs, caused by inherent measurement difficulties and poor evaluation practices. However, change could be on the horizon. In conjunction with key donors, the Center for Global Development (CGD) has developed the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3IE), a major effort to revolutionize practice in evaluation of the impact of programs intended to improve social outcomes. Can 3IE show how to make aid work? To address this question, we are delighted to welcome Ruth Levine, Center for Global Development Vice President and a key players behind 3IE.

Who: the United Nations Association of the National Capitol Area (UNA-NCA) Young Professionals for International Cooperation-Asia Pacific Committee.

What: UNA-NCA Global Public Health Career Night Panel event (FREE!)

When: Thursday, March 27th from 7:00-8:30pm.

Where: JHU-SAIS,
             The Global Health and Foreign Policy Initiative (GHFPI)
             Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (Main auditorium, 1st floor)
             1740 Massachusetts Ave., NW
             Washington, D.C. 20036-2213
             Metro: Dupont Circle

Ambassador Richard N. Gardner
Professor of Law and International Organization, Columbia University School of Law

Thursday, March 27, 7:00 PM
Morgan Stanley
1585 Broadway at 48th Street, 41st Floor
RSVP to New.York@ypfp.org

Ambassador Richard N. Gardner has enjoyed a long and impressive career as a diplomat, scholar, adviser, and business man. In serving four different administrations, he has been on the frontlines and in the trenches for the historical events that have shaped the last half century of American and global history. Please join YPFP New York to explore Amb. Gardner's most challenging trials, exciting moments, and current reflections on his past experiences.

The discussion will be held from 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm at Morgan Stanley Thursday, March 27.  To attend, please register by emailing New.York.@ypfp.org

Making policy within government is a challenging, complex process – competing interests must be weighed and important decisions must be made with sparse information. The process of calculating these tradeoffs can literally mean the difference between life and death. How are these decisions made? How can we design our system to ensure that the choices it makes are accurate and timely? To learn about these questions and more, please join General (Ret.) Ronald Keys for a discussion of policy and politics.

The discussion will be held from 6:30-8:00 pm on Monday, March 31st. To attend, please register by responding to events@ypfp.org with your name and affiliation.

Event Description:

The language of democratization has dominated the discussion of foreign policy during the Bush Administration. The idea of democratization as a foundation for U.S. foreign policy has gained new life in recent years, yet it is certainly not a new idea. What are the roots of this idea? How has it been implemented in the past and did these efforts succeed? How have current efforts changed ideas about the implementation of democratization programs? To discuss these issues and more, please join Gretchen Birkle, Director of the Women's Democracy Network at the International Republican Institute.

The Forum for the Study of Democracy and Autocracy at Georgetown invites you to a free symposium of academics, American political reformers, and democracy promotion practitioners for

Assessing the State of Democracy in America: Is This the Best We Can Be?

Thursday, April 3, 2008
9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. (Continental breakfast at 8:30)
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Root Room
1779 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington, DC

rsvp@democraticpiece.com

------------------------------------------
Keynote: Thomas O. Melia, "Assessing American Democracy"

You asked for more opportunities to network and socialize? You got it.

YPFP invites you to "One Night in Russia"

Russia House Restaurant and Lounge
1800 Connecticut Avenue, NW
Washington, DC

Thursday, April 3rd, from 6-9 pm

Enjoy shots of Russia House's 90+ vodkas with fellow YPFP members and guests.
Everyone is welcome to bring friends and colleagues.

Cash bar, free appetizers.

This event is $10 for members and $15 for non-members.

Cash and checks are welcome at the door.
Contributions are 100% tax-deductible.

The 11th National People’s Congress in March 2008 completed the transition to the second term of the Hu Jintao-Wen Jiabao administration, making important changes in China’s party, government and military hierarchies. On April 7, the John L. Thornton China Center at Brookings and the Hoover Institution at Stanford University will host a conference to examine what these changes mean for politics and policy in Beijing. When

Monday, April 07, 2008
9:30 AM to 4:30 PM

Where

Falk Auditorium
The Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Washington, DC
Directions

You are cordially invited to a public event:

Fixing the Interior Ministry and Police in Iraq

Date: Monday, April 7, 2008

Time: 10:00 AM- 12:00 PM

Special Location: Renaissance Mayflower Hotel
Georgia Conference Room, 2nd floor
1127 Connecticut Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20036-3011

Overview

In its September 6, 2007 report to Congress, the Independent Commission on the Security Forces of Iraq stated that Iraq's Interior Ministry was "dysfunctional and sectarian" and the National Police should be "disbanded and reorganized." The report was consistent with press reports that sectarian militias were in control of the Ministry and the National Police were engaged in sectarian violence.

The Wilson Center is hosting a conference that examines Al Jazeera English (AJE), with specific reference to its operations, prospects, and impacts in Southeast Asia.

Speakers include Veronica Pedrosa (anchor for AJE based in Kuala Lumpur), Trish Carter (former Asia-Pacific bureau chief for AJE), and Marwan Kraidy (Annenberg School, University of Pennsylvania).

Event is 1:30pm-5:30pm on Monday, April 7, 2008, at the Wilson Center, One Woodrow Wilson Plaza, 1300 Pennsylvania Ave., NW (Ronald Reagan Building), Washington, DC

RSVPs to asia@wilsoncenter.org by COB April 3. More information (including speaker bios) at www.wilsoncenter.org/asia under "upcoming events."

The International Criminal Court (ICC), created by the Rome Statute in 2002, prosecutes crimes including genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Currently, the Court has four situations on its docket: in Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Darfur (Sudan), and the Central African Republic (CAR). While 106 countries have ratified the Rome Statute and joined the Court, the United States has not yet done so. To discuss these investigations and prosecutions, please join Dr. Luis Moreno-Ocampo, Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court.

This discussion will take place from 6:30-8:00 pm on Monday, April 7th. To attend, please register by responding to events@ypfp.org with your name and affiliation.

The Future of Human Rights
Tuesday, April 08, 2008, 8:30am to 4:30pm
Georgetown Law Center, Washington, DC

Keynote addresses:
Honorable Madeleine Albright, former U.S. Secretary of State
Luis Moreno-Ocampo, Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court

Featured Panels:
"How Should the United States Deal with Human Rights Abuses of Key Partners and Allies?"
and "Introducing Social and Economic Rights into U.S. Policy"

Book Launch:
The Future of Human Rights: U.S. Policy for a New Era
University of Pennsylvania Press

NATIONAL IRANIAN AMERICAN COUNCIL

CORDIALLY INVITES YOU TO A POLICY CONFERENCE ON

BREAKING THE US-IRAN STALEMATE
REASSESSING THE NUCLEAR STRATEGY IN THE
WAKE OF THE MAJLES ELECTIONS

TUESDAY, 8 APRIL 2008
1:45 PM – 6:00 PM
325 RUSSELL SENATE OFFICE BUILDING

Refreshments will be served

1:45-2:00 pm
REGISTRATION

2:00-2:15 pm
WELCOMING REMARKS
Dr. Trita Parsi
President, National Iranian American Council

2:15 pm – 3:30 pm
PANEL I: NEW MAJLES, NEW CHALLENGES?
Scott Peterson
Christian Science Monitor

The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo

Today, in the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo, rape is taking place on a scale that is almost unimaginable. In the last ten years, hundreds of thousands of women and girls have been raped - but their suffering goes unacknowledged. Instead, they are invisible, shamed and mute.

This is the story of one filmmaker's crusade to break the silence surrounding this shocking reality, armed with a firsthand connection with the women and men she meets. Winner of a Special Jury Prize (Documentary) at this year's Sundance Film Festival, The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo premieres Tuesday, April 8 at 10pm ET/PT.

The Liberia Working Group and the Center for Economies and Conflict cordially invite you to a public event:

GEMAP in Liberia: A Model for Economic Management in Conflict-Affected Countries

Date: Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Time: 2:00 PM - 3:30 PM

Reception: 1:30 PM - 2:00 PM

Location: U.S. Institute of Peace
2nd Floor Conference Room
1200 17th St, NW
Washington, DC 20036
Get Directions

You Are Cordially Invited to an evening with the New York Branch of Young Professionals in Foreign Policy for our first-ever Fundraiser in New York.

The Manhattan Penthouse

80 Fifth Avenue at 14th Street, New York, NY

Wednesday, April 9, 8-11 PM

Tickets are $100.

All proceeds will go to benefit YPFP, a 501c3 non-profit organization. A portion of the ticket is tax-deductible.

Hors d'oeuvres and open bar will be served. Cocktail Attire.

Co-chairs:

Michael Sellman * Alexander Budney * David Mehlman * Jody Shechtman

Benefit Committee:

Adrianna Archer * Austin Bryan * Lara Glaister * Nigel Glenday * Oliver Hammond * Meghan Horstmann * Kloe Korby * Matthew A. Krysinski * Julie Laumont * Batsheva Lazarus * Thomas Lefebvre * Kelly Marshall * Nicholas McClelland * Charles Merrill * Justin Patterson * Emily Rover * Shelley Ryan * Jonathan Segal * Dan Vallejo

Until recently, American diplomats viewed Kenya as a success story, a strong American ally and a beacon of stability in the tough East African neighborhood. After the national elections on December 27, many observers began to question their previously optimistic outlooks. To discuss the election, the ensuing violence, and its consequences for the country, the region and the globe, please join Akwe Amosu, a Senior Policy Analyst for Africa at the Open Society Institute.

The conversation will be held from 6:30 - 8:00 p.m. on Monday, April 14. To attend, please register by responding to events@ypfp.org with your name and affiliation.

This event is currently completely full - we regret that we will be unable to further RSVPs at this time.

Egypt's extensive political influence in the Middle East, Africa, and within the Islamic world has made Cairo a crucial strategic partner to the United States. With a positive relationship going back decades, Egypt will continue to be important to U.S. policy in the region for years to come. What is the state of this relationship? Where is it going? To discuss the state of U.S.-Egyptian relations, please join Nabil Fahmy, Egyptian Ambassador to the United States.

The Brookings Institution, Saul Zilkha Room, 1775 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington, DC

Moderator
Federiga Bindi
Visting Fellow, Center on the United States and Europe The Brookings Institution

Speaker
Simon Hix
Professor of European and Comparative Politics, London School of Economics and Political Science

Respondent
Jeffrey Anderson,
Graf Goltz Professor and Director
BMW Center for German and European Studies (CGES), Georgetown University

The EU seems incapable of undertaking economic reforms and defining its place in the world. At the same time, public support for the EU has declined dramatically in the last decade and throughout Europe citizens feel they cannot influence what goes on in Brussels. What the EU needs, Simon Hix argues in his new book What’s Wrong with the European Union and How to Fix It (Polity, 2008) is ‘limited democratic politics’. More open political competition would promote policy innovation, foster coalitions across the institutions, provide incentives for the media to cover Brussels, and enable citizens to identify who governs in the EU and to take sides in policy debates. The EU is ready for this new challenge. The institutional reforms since the 1980s have transformed the EU into a more competitive polity, and political battles and coalitions are developing inside and between the European Parliament, the Council, and the Commission. This emerging politics should be more central to the Brussels policy process, with clearer coalitions and identifiable winners and losers, at least in the short term. For example, there should be a genuine contest for the Commission President. The risks are low because the EU has multiple checks-and-balances. Yet, the potential benefits are high, as more open politics could enable the EU to overcome policy gridlock, rebuild public support, and reduce the democratic deficit.

Southeast Asia Young Professionals DC (SEAYP) is an organization of young professionals whose work focues on or are interested in Southeast Asia. We meet once a month for happy hours or dinners. Our members work at non-profits, government agencies, private sector firms and a few are graduate students at local universities.

We will be having our next happy hour on Thursday April 17 at 5:30pm at Singapore Bistro on 19th St. NW between L & M streets. Come look for us on one of the restaurant's top floors.

We love to add new members to our group and would happy to have anyone stop by!

Misha Glenny on Global Crime
Dear Colleague:

The Stimson Center’s Regional Voices: Transnational Challenges project cordially invites you to attend a discussion with Misha Glenny at the Henry L. Stimson Center on April 18, 2008 from 10:30 am to 12 pm.

Mr. Glenny will discuss his latest book, McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld, which makes clear how organized crime feeds off the poverty of the developing world, how it exploits new technology in the forms of cybercrime and identity theft, and how both global crime and terror are fueled by an identical source: the triumphant material affluence of the West. Mr. Glenny won the Sony Award for his coverage of the Yugoslavian crisis. He is the author of The Balkans: Nationalism, War and the Great Powers, 1804-1999, The Fall of Yugoslavia (won the Overseas Press Club Award in 1993 for Best Book on Foreign Affairs), and The Rebirth Of History: Eastern Europe in the Age of Democracy.

RSVP: https://www12.georgetown.edu/sfs/rsvp/index.cfm?Action=View&EventID=1646

A symposium examining the contribution of citizen diplomacy to shaping the role of the United States in the world.

Featuring:

Hon. Earl Pomeroy (D-ND)
Hon. Mac Thornberry (R-TX)

You are invited to a symposium co-sponsored by Georgetown University and World Learning. The event will draw on World Learning's 75-year history of facilitating experiential education through its Experiment in International Living and the Georgetown University Mortara Center's long-standing commitment to understanding the full range of foreign policy tools. Together with The Aspen Institute's Global Interdependence Initiative, we are exploring citizen diplomacy as an investment in a U.S. foreign policy that both advances U.S. interests and responds effectively to issues that are global in scope. The event will explore "high road," high-quality citizen exchange and diplomacy as an undervalued element of strategic communication, economic development and higher education. The event will kick off with a keynote address and response. Two panel discussions will follow. The first, "What Can Citizens Do? Experiencing High-Road Diplomacy," will pair exchange alumni from several fields with experts on crafting fruitful international exchange programs to explore the outcomes and limitations of such experiences. The second panel, "Democratizing Diplomacy and Development," will bring experts and practitioners from government, academia and the private sector together to situate "high road" citizen diplomacy within larger strategic questions about U.S. foreign policy in the 21st century.

In the past several years, Muslim views of America and the West have been a preeminent concern of American policymakers. Though often discussed, the topic is rarely understood and several basic questions remain unanswered. Why do ‘they’ hate us? Is Islam compatible with liberal democracy? Is terrorism a result of American foreign policy, a reaction to corrupt rulers or something else entirely? To discuss these questions and more, please join Dalia Mogahed, Executive Director at the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies and co-author with John L. Esposito of Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think.

Where: East-West Center in Washington, Second Floor Conference Room, 1819 L St. NW, Washington, DC 20036
When: April 23, 2008, 12:30-2:30pm
What: East-West Center Special Luncheon Seminar

In her groundbreaking new book, The China Price (Penguin, 2008), acclaimed Financial Times correspondent Alex Harney delves deep into China's enormous ecosystem of export-oriented industry to uncover the truth about how China is able to offer such amazingly low prices to the rest of the world. What she has discovered is a world in which intense pricing pressure from Western companies combines with corruption and a lack of transparency to exact an unseen toll on human capital and the environment. Harney's book is a landmark eyewitness exposé of how China's factory economy competes for Western business, and how China will manage the impact of its changing industrial landscape on the global economy.

YPFP New York in conjunction with the Carnegie Council for Ethics in Internaitonal Affairs will host a short screening of Full Disclosure followed by a discussion with the filmmaker, Brian Palmer.

Full Disclosure is a feature-length documentary that offers a clear and nuanced view of the Iraq occupation from the vantage point of a reporter embedded with a US Marine infantry unit, 1st Battalion/2nd Marine Regiment. Upon returning from Iraq, Palmer followed up with members of the unit routinely, and continued to monitor the situation in towns he visited in Babil and Anbar provinces through media accounts, US government and NGO reports, documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, and interviews with returning service members.

A Special Briefing Co-Sponsored by the East-West Center and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)

Where: 385 Russell Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C. 20510
When: April 24, 2008, 9:00-11:00am
What:

Energy security ranks as one of the highest-priority issues in Asia and the Pacific.The East and South Asia region is the fastest growing oil consumer in the world, and because the region has such a small percentage of the world's oil reserves, it is the most highly dependent on oil imports of any world region. In the future, Asia will become even more dependent on imports as its energy needs expand with changing lifestyles and overall economic growth. Fereidun Fesharaki and Kang Wu, two leading international energy experts based at the East-West Center, will discuss the trends and challenges of the region's energy security landscape in a briefing on their new edited volume, "Asia's Energy Future: Regional Dynamics and Global Implications" (East-West Center, 2007), a pioneering study of Asia's role in global oil and energy markets and implications for the environment and the region's overall energy security. Copies of the book will be available at the event.

Thursday, April 24
5:00-7:00 pm

Democratic Leadership for the 21st Century's Political Author Series continues with:
GARY HART
Former U.S. Senator (D-CO) and Democratic Presidential Candidate (1984, 1988)
Discussing his book, Under the Eagle's Wing: A National Security Strategy for 2009

Rosie O'Grady's Pub (lower level)
800 7th Avenue (at 52nd Street)
1 train to 50th Street, B/D/E to 7th Avenue, N/R/Q/W to 49th Street
Books available for purchase and signing on-site.
This event is free.
REGISTER HERE: http://www.dl21c.org/rsvp.php?event_id=257.

Please join the Georgetown Club of Metropolitan New York for a fascinating cocktail hour and reading with acclaimed author, Parag Khanna, as he discusses his new book, The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order.

DATE:
Thursday, April 24, 2008

TIME:
6:30 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. EDT
6:30 – 7:00 Light cocktails and hors d'oeuvres
7:00 – 8:00 Reading, Q&A and book signing

LOCATION:
The Williams Club (24 East 39th Street)

COST:
$25 for members of the Georgetown Club of MetroNY
$35 for non-members

To register, visit https://www.sporg.com/pom/registration?cmd=event_info&event_id=107520.