After an intense day of negotiations and campaigning, we have had some disappointing news in from the G8. There appears to be a lot more slipping up than stepping up. The final communiqué does not include the targets and time tables we and global campaigners sought and backtracks from the promises they made in 2005. I think Bono sums it up pretty well when he said as part of DATA’s press release today:

“G8 leaders say they are serious about keeping their promises from 2005, but today they have made their job seriously harder. They say $60billion for AIDS, TB and malaria and it sounds great, but that’s not earmarked for Africa, it’s a global figure and there’s no timeline. Even if their laudable commitment to put 5 million people on lifesaving drugs had a due date of 2010 - which it doesn’t - it would only be half their stated ambition of 2005.

“This summit outcomes document isn’t readable in any language, it’s called a communiqué but it seems to have been deliberately designed not to communicate the real facts. Do they think we can’t read or count? We are looking for accountable language and accountable numbers: we didn’t get them today.”

But as Bono also said - “But we are not lost; right now it’s the G8 that are lost.”

The day also showed the tremendous growth and strength of the global movement as the nearly 1 million voices collected urging the G8 to keep their promises were delivered as part of the grand finale at the concert in Rostock and more than 100 journalists packing into a airless press room to hear from five Global Call to Action against Poverty (GCAP) activists from Africa. (Followed by a boat chase just outside the press center, with Greenpeace and a number of police motorboats playing high speed cat and mouse live on TV!)

As it seems our world leaders have a long way to go toward fulfilling their these promises to the world’s poorest, it reminds us all the more how important the ONE Vote 08 work we will launch on Monday and undertake in the next several months is, so that we might ensure that our leaders make global poverty a key issue at the 2008 ballot box and we hold them to account! So in that spirit, back to work preparing to help ensure Monday’s launch is a success! Click here to sign-up for the ONE Vote ‘08 Conference Call on Monday night.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 1st, 2004 at 12:00 am and is filed under The ONE Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.