Clinton Global Initiative Reconvening to Target 'Steep' Challenges

Former President Bill Clinton announced Friday that the Clinton Foundation will reconvene its Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) to address the "steep" challenges facing the world.

The CGI meeting is scheduled for Sept. 19-21 in New York City.

Clinton said the need to bring together "a community of doers from across a broad section of society" never has been "more urgent than it is now."

"The COVID-19 pandemic has ripped the cover off of longstanding inequities and vulnerabilities across our global community" Clinton said in a statement. "The existential threat of climate change grows every day. Democracy is under assault around the world, most glaringly in Ukraine where Russia has launched an unjustified and unprovoked invasion that has put millions of lives in grave danger.

"The number of displaced people and refugees worldwide is higher than it has ever been — more than 1 in 95 of all people alive on the planet today has been forced to flee their home — and rising. And it seems that all across the globe, people are pulling away from those who are different from them — putting our future at greater risk and making it harder to solve the challenges and seize the opportunities in front of us."

It had been announced in September 2016 that CGI, founded in 2005, would be winding down to be discontinued. The Associated Press reported the decision stemmed from concerns over what could be seen as a possible conflict of interest during Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign, The Hill said.

Former President Clinton suggested that the this year's meeting would look different than those previously held.

"Just like the world we're living in, the September meeting will likely look different than the ones we held before," he said in his statement. "But what will not be different is the spirit that has driven CGI from the very beginning — the idea that we can accomplish more together than we can apart."

Bill Clinton said in 2005 he learned there was "a hunger to create change, and to do it with unlikely partners who might otherwise never have the opportunity to meet or work together."

The former president added that more than 435 million people in more than 180 countries had been positively impacted by CGI's 3,700-plus partnerships and projects.

• Plurality at CPAC Say Hillary, Not Biden, Will Be 2024 Democratic Nominee
• Dershowitz to Newsmax: 'Probable Cause' Clinton Campaign Involved in Dirty Politics