Canada

And one more update to fill you in on today, straight from ONE’s Nora Coghlan.

Canadian Prime Minister Steven Harper just took the stage at the UN. He talked about Canada’s top three development priorities over the next five years – food security, children and youth, and economic development – and highlighted some of Canada’s global development contributions to date, such as its comprehensive food security strategy, the untying of all Canadian food aid and their continued leadership on maternal and child health.

More details have emerged in the past couple weeks on the G8’s commitment to improve maternal, newborn and child health through the “Muskoka Initiative,” but not enough to deliver on the G8’s other critical commitment at the 2010 summit – to enhance their own accountability.

Wondering what the NGO community thought of the G8 and G20 Summits in Canada? Here’s a great round-up of responses from a host of our partners and friends from the online news source The Sherpa.
The G8:
http://www.sherpatimes.com/g8/179-g8-summit-ngo-responses.html
The G20:

The G8 summit has now drawn to a close and the Deerhurst resort in Muskoka will be getting back to normal. The world leaders flew back to Toronto by helicopter with Obama and Cameron flying together to start their bilateral meeting. Apparently Cameron and Merkel will be watching the England v Germany World Cup match together tomorrow and the press are invited can't imagine he'll look anything other than awkward!

Sheila Nix, our U.S. Executive Director, was featured on CBC’s The National, the Canadian equivalent of NBC Nightly News, as part of segment on maternal and child health. Sheila talked about her trip to Ghana and Sierra Leone, and how simple interventions can prevent the mother-to-child transmission of HIV/AIDs giving children a whole new lease on life.
You can watch the clip here.