2007/06/08

Social Watch Reacts to G8 Summit Declaration

Social Watch

(June 8).The Group of 8 most powerful countries in the world meeting in Germany approved Friday a final declaration that once again shows their lack of political will to implement development aid that would enable poor countries, especially from Africa, to offer their populations a minimum level of welfare.

The final declaration, called “Growth and Responsibility in Africa”, showed significant differences with the draft version that circulated among representatives from civil organizations in the alternative summit and was commented on by the press since the start of the Summit on June 6th.

The initial pledge to increment development aid in 50 billion dollars per year became in the final version a mere declaration of intent without specific goals. “The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development estimates the global increase of official development assistance by 2010 at around 50 billion dollars a year”, states the final paper.

Regarding Africa, one of the key issues of the summit, the G8 proposed to “continue our efforts” to give a “projected” 60 billion dollars with the goal of universal access to health care for HIV/AIDS and to strengthen health systems.

Does this aid have a date of delivery? The paper only refers to “the coming years”, while the draft statement suggested 2013 as a specific goal.

The conclusion arising from these figures is that, in general terms, the G8 countries should give double the amount they allocated in 2006 in order to fully achieve the goal of contributing 0.7% of their gross national income to official development assistance.

Of those 60 billion dollars for Africa, the United States would contribute half. Even leaving aside the fact that 15 billion of those 30 billion dollars were already pledged at Gleneagles in 2005, the total contribution the United States is making to development aid amounts to 22 billion dollars. If those 30 billion dollars were added, it would still be far from honouring its pledge of giving 0.7% of its income, equal to 93 billion dollars.

Meanwhile, by July 2006 the George Bush administration had spent 336 billion in the war “on terror”, and in March 2007 requested another 300 billion for the 2007-2009 period.

The statements of intent are not enough, although the first paragraph of the declaration admits that without “vigorous impetus” the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) agreed in 2000 by world leaders will not be achieved.

The Basic Capabilities Index developed by Social Watch has shown that, at the current rate of progress, access to a minimum set of social services would only be reached in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2108, almost a century after 2015, the deadline for the MDGs.

On the last day of the summit, G8 members had a special meeting with five African heads of State and Government (Egypt, Algeria, Nigeria, Senegal and Ghana). However, the draft of the final declaration had been ready an hour before this meeting.