On his first day in office in 2001, President George W. Bush  reinstated the so-called Mexico City Policy — known to critics as the global gag rule. It prevents the US government from giving money to organizations that provide counseling and referral for abortion, lobby to make abortion legal or more available in their country, or perform abortions except in cases of a threat to the woman’s life, rape or incest (even if those activities are funded by somebody else).

On Development Drums this week, we heard about the impact of the global gag rule on women in Africa, in an interview with Dana Hovig from Marie Stopes International. (Full disclosure: my partner works for MSI.)  My expert guests were sceptical that Barack Obama would give priority to reversing the global gag rule any time soon.

But this weekend, we have heard that Obama is preparing to reverse some key decisions that President Bush took using executive authority, including on stem cell research, oil and gas drilling and - according to the Washington Post, the New York Times and Bloomberg - the global gag rule:

President-elect Barack Obama will reverse U.S. family-planning and AIDS-prevention strategies that have long linked global funding to anti-abortion and abstinence education, a public-health adviser said. Obama “is committed to looking at all this and changing the policies so that family-planning services — both in the U.S. and the developing world — reflect what works, what helps prevent unintended pregnancy, reduce maternal and infant mortality, prevent the spread of disease,” Wood said.

These seems like a good time to raise the profile of this important issue, to make sure that reversing the global gag rule is on the list of decisions for President Obama to take in his first day in office.  The Center for Reproductive Rights has written to Barack Obama calling for the repeal of the global gag rule.  Now is the time to make as much noise as possible about this to generate political support for an early decision to reverse this policy.

For more information about the global gag rule, listen to the interview with Dana Hovig in Episode 6 of Development Drums (about 30 minutes in to the podcast).

There are two new episodes of the Development Drums podcast now online.

Episode 4 with Shanta Devarajan discusses the impact on developing countries of the financial crisis; latest developments in the food crisis; the award of the Mo Ibrahim prize for good governance in Africa.  Sheila Page discusses moves towards a Free Trade Area from Cairo to Cape Town.

And there is a special extra edition of Development Drums about currente events in the Eastern Congo.  Patrick Smith of Africa Confidential explains the background to the crisis.

You can use this link to subscribe to Development Drums:

If you use iTunes, you can search for Development Drums in the iTunes store (it’s free), or use this link:

The third edition of the development podcast, Development Drums, is now online.

This week the guests are:

• Ngaire Woods
  Professor of Political Economy at Oxford University, and Director of the Global Economic Governance Programme.
• David Roodman
  Center for Global Development in Washington DC, and architect of the Commitment to Development Index.

This week the focus is on the impact of the financial crisis on developing countries, and on proposals to reform international institutions.

The podcast is now hosted on a new server.  If you have already subscribed, you may need to remove the old subscription and then subscribe again.  You can use this link:

If you use iTunes, you can search for Development Drums in the iTunes store, or use this link:

In the meantime, I’ve made some more technical improvements.  I have moved the server, to make it easier and faster to download for our listeners in Khartoum and Kinshasa; and though the file size is smaller (15Mb) the sound quality is a little better.  I’ve also kept is a bit shorter, to just 45 minutes.

As ever, I’d welcome feedback about this podcast.  Do you find it interesting? Do you have suggestions for future topics, or guests?  Perhaps you would like to come on yourself?

The second episode of Development Drums is at http://developmentdrums.org.  You can also subscribe on iTunes here.

Professor Adrian Wood and Peter daCosta joined me to discuss whether donors should cap aid to Africa; the power-sharing agreement in Zimbabwe; the Care International paper criticising wasted aid; and the new Doing Business survey.

I would say that this episode is 50% better than the first episode.  It works better having two guests rather than one; we kept the discussion of each topic shorter; and the sound quality is a better.

I’ve got mixed feelings about the length. This episode is 50 minutes, which is too long for many people (and it results in a very long download, unless I degrade the sound quality even more).  But I like the fact that we are not constrained like a radio or TV show to limit the experts to talking in sound-bites, so we can have a real and substantive discussion.   I think I’ll try to bring the next one down to 40 minutes next time.

By the way - it is great fun recording and producing this.  This week was much quicker and easier because I’m getting used to the software.

Please let me know if you have suggestions for future topics or guests, and feedback on the podcast so we can make it better next time.

The inauguaral edition of my new development news podcast, Development Drums, is now online.

Simon Maxwell, Director of ODI, joined me for a discussion of this week’s Accra Agenda for Action, the UN MDG Gap Report, and the latest poverty statistics from the World Bank

To listen to the podcast, you can use this link:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/DevelopmentDrums

I’m aiming for a weekly roundup of development news.

This is my first effort at podcasting. I’d welcome feedback - do you like the format? How can we make it better?