In the lead up to the G20 meetings, African leaders expressed dissatisfaction with the representation of Africans at the meeting of world leaders to discuss the global financial crisis. African leaders urged the G20 not to forget them in the face of the current crisis. South Africa was the only country invited to attend from the continent and was asked to convey an African perspective by the African Finance Ministers, who met in Tunis on November 12, to consider the impact of the crisis for the continent.

At the end of the G20 summit the new South African President, Kgalema Motlanthe, said in a press release that while African countries were making progress, they were now threatened by the global financial crisis which could exacerbate the recent volatility in food and commodity markets. The president also confirmed that a review of representation from African countries in the international financial institutions was proposed at the meetings and that the international community promised to fulfill its commitments to increase aid flows to Africa.

Though they were not present, several other African leaders also offered commentary on the G20 Summit:

President Blaise Campaore, Burkina Faso:

Africa and other developing regions of the world must be more closely associated with the discussions underway on the reform of the international financial architecture,” …”If the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are to play a bigger role in the governance of international finance, it is fair that developing countries be more involved in the way reform is carried out.

President Amadou Toumani Toure, Mali:

The current crisis confirms the need to build a new financial architecture, involving not only emerging countries, but also Africa.

President Marc Ravolamanana, Madagascar:

To be “credible” and treated as “responsible partners”, we have to take our future into our own hands and show the world that we, African leaders, are serious, engaged and determined.” “African states could start to rebuild international confidence by improving governance standards” …. the West must also “honour its promises” in terms of development aid.

Former Senegalese leader Abdou Diouf:

While everyone is mobilized for a few weeks to try to resolve the financial crisis, rampant poverty continues, and the food situation in Africa and Asia continues to worsen.

-Edith Jibunoh

Did you know that today is World Toilet Day? Of course you did. And while this may seem a bit silly at first, it’s worth remembering how many lives are lost due to water and sanitation-related diseases each year—as many as 2 million, in fact.

Here are some other fast facts to keep in mind, as we commemorate World Toilet Day:

• 6 in every 10 Africans lack access to a proper toilet.
• In sub-Saharan Africa, 322 million people lack access to clean water and 463 million people lack access to adequate sanitation.
• Together, unclean water and poor sanitation are a leading cause of child mortality: an estimated 5,000 children die daily from diarrhea, which is spread through poor sanitation and poor hygiene. Universal access to improved sanitation could reduce diarrhea-related morbidity by more than a third.
• Studies have found that about half of girls who drop out of primary school in sub-Saharan Africa do so because of a lack of separate toilets and easy access to safe water.

So have a chuckle if you’d like, but remember to be especially grateful if you’re blessed with proper and clean sanitation today—because many people, unfortunately, are not. You can find more articles about World Toilet Day here, here, and here.

-Chris Scott

President-Elect Obama has just selected former Senate Majority Leader Senator Tom Daschle as our next Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Currently, Daschle is a Senior Policy Advisor with the law firm Alston & Bird, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and, critically to us, serves as National Co-Chair, of ONE Vote ‘08.

Below find relevant quotes, a summary of his experience in development, and a list of key legislation he introduced or sponsored.

Quotes

“We have a moral obligation to assist those suffering from abject poverty and disease…Investments in the development of our world’s poorest nations must be a pillar of our foreign policy going forward, no matter who is leading the next administration.”- Daschle, ONE Campaign appearance in Kigali, Rwanda, July 22, 2008

“I am encouraged by the tremendous impact that these programs have had in fighting the spread of disease across Africa… Over the last four years, 2 million more people living with AIDS now have access to lifesaving medication… Nevertheless, much work remains.” – Daschle, ONE Campaign appearance in Kigali, Rwanda, July 22, 2008

“The primary foreign policy challenge confronting the United States in the next three decades is also our country’s largest domestic policy challenge: climate change. In both arenas—foreign and domestic policy—we are in effect racing the clock, aware that the longer we delay action, the more costly the fixes at home will be, and the less able we will be to induce the kind of change necessary in China, India, and beyond.”-Daschle, “Changing the Political Climate on Climate Change” Georgetown Journal on International Affairs: Winter/Spring 2008

“We face a deadly pandemic that claims tens of thousands of lives daily and threatens stability in key regions of the world. While we have made – and will continue to make – great strides, the true solution lies in making sure that no matter who is elected to be the next President of the United States, he or she is committed to ending extreme poverty.” -Daschle, The ONE Blog, May 24, 2007

Foreign Policy Related Activities

• Senator Daschle is a longtime advocate of strengthening U.S. diplomacy and foreign assistance, consistently backing foreign assistance bills throughout his career. He opposed H.R. 2606, a bill in the House of Representatives that would have capped foreign assistance at only $12.7 billion for FY 1999. He also championed the Foreign Operations Appropriations Bill for FY 2004, S.1426 which substantially increased funding for the Peace Corps and foreign assistance to combat HIVAIDS.
• As co-chair of ONE Vote ’08, Senator Daschle has proven (more…)

Reuters, Roll Call and AP are reporting that former Senator Majority leader, and ONE Vote ‘08 Co-Chair, Tom Daschle has been selected by President-Elect Obama to be the next U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary.

Senator Daschle has been a leader in ONE’s presidential initiative since 2007, including leading a delegation of American leaders to Rwanda in July of this year. You can check out his many appearances on the ONE Blog here.

Much more on Senator Dasche’s background on global poverty issues to follow shortly.

-Virginia Simmons

(Senator Daschle touring a Rwandan clinic with John Podesta and Cindy McCain on a ONE delegation trip to Rwanda in July 2008.)

Accra Daily Mail: Africa looks East for aid and trade
Eager to maintain the growth that has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in their own countries, Asia’s booming economies are courting cash-poor but resource-rich African countries with billions of dollars worth of investments, trade deals and development aid. Yet even as Africa enjoys strong growth due in part to increased exports to Asia, concerns are mounting that Africa’s new partners aren’t playing by the North’s rules of the trade and aid game.

The Tennessean—Central Africa could pose test for Obama
While Iraq and Afghanistan dominate U.S. media coverage of foreign policy challenges facing President-elect Barack Obama, a writer in the Tennessean says the new president’s first opportunity to make a bold decision may well come from Africa, whose stability is crucial to international order and the future of the global economy. The writer points to the crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo as possibly the best opportunity for President Obama to take action and help turn around a humanitarian disaster.

International Herald Tribune—Tsvangirai urges Europe to increase food aid to Zimbabwe
Morgan Tsvangirai, the prime minister-designate of Zimbabwe, made an urgent appeal to European countries Tuesday to be generous with food aid to alleviate increasingly critical food shortages in his country. Tsvangirai, who remains Zimbabwe’s main opposition leader and entered a fragile power-sharing agreement with President Robert Mugabe in September, said food agencies needed $200 million dollars to feed more than 500 million people through January. He blamed Mugabe’s rule for the shortages.

Financial Times—Red Cross looks at cost-cutting round
The world’s biggest humanitarian organization, the Red Cross, is considering cutting staff and shelving projects as it braces itself for the slashing of aid contributions by recession-hit donors. As the organization launched an appeal for more funding, it warned of greater social unrest in poor countries as high food prices were compounded by slowing economic growth, job losses and falling revenues from the commodities and remittances on which they depend.

-Steve Wilson

I know that you have all been eagerly awaiting ONE’s analysis of the G20 economic summit that took place this past Saturday. To re-cap, in October, President Bush called for a first-ever meeting of the G20 to discuss solutions to the global financial crisis, and mechanisms to prevent future crises. The G20 is a group of finance ministers from the world’s leading economies (the G8, the European Union and Australia), as well as a group of ten emerging economies including Argentina, Brazil, China, India, and South Africa. After the summit, officials issued a communiqué detailing their resolutions. Here are a few highlights:

1. Developing Country Representation: The G20 calls for better representation of developing countries – both emerging economies and poor countries – in the Bretton Woods Institutions like the IMF and World Bank, in order to accurately reflect the world economy and increase the legitimacy and effectiveness of these institutions. The G20 calls for these reformed institutions to play a role in identifying future crises and responding to them.
2. Trade: The G20 rejects the impulse to turn to protectionist measures to stabilize their economies and promises to refrain from raising new barriers to trade or investment in the next 12 months. The G20 also calls for a successful completion to the World Trade Organization’s Doha Round trade talks.
3. Official Development Assistance (ODA): Considering the impact of the financial crisis on developing countries, and particularly on the most vulnerable in those countries, the G20 countries reaffirm the importance of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and their development assistance commitments. They urge all countries to undertake commitments consistent with their capacities, and re-iterate the principles agreed upon at the UN Conference on Financing for Development that took place in Monterrey in 2002 that emphasize country ownership of and mobilizing all sources of financing for development.
4. Anti-Corruption: (more…)

In his annual foreign policy speech to the Lord Mayor’s Banquet in London, Prime Minister Gordon Brown set out the five great challenges the world faces today. One of these challenges is meeting the Millennium Development Goals.

In the speech he said:

For now more than ever it is both our duty and in our interest to help meet the Millennium Development Goals. For we cannot solve climate change without Africa; nor can we solve the food crisis without Africa. We need a fully financed ‘energy for the poor’ initiative; where commercial sources of capital dry up support from the international institutions; and we need to support agricultural development in Africa, in the past feed the world meant that we helped to feed Africa. In future, if we do things right, we will do best by enabling Africa to feed the world.

He goes on to make some interesting statements in relation to sustainability and bringing the environment and development together:

This is why as we prepare for an ambitious post 2012 climate change agreement at Copenhagen, for which I pledge our Government’s unbending commitment, the European Union must, and I believe will, agree in December its ‘2020′ programme for energy and climate and show European leadership at its best. And I want the World Bank to become a bank for environment as well as on development, helping developing countries move towards sustainable energy paths of their own.

It’s great news that the British Prime Minister has explicitly made the Millennium Development Goals one of his top foreign policy priorities. Let’s keep him to his word.

Full speech can be read here.

-Jessica Gomez-Duran

It’s been almost 5 months coming, but hopefully on Friday we’ll finally know if the European Union will dedicate an additional 1 billion Euros to help struggling farmers in the developing world. For the last month we’ve turned on the heat to make sure these farmers get as much help as possible.

It feels like Eloise Todd – our Government Relations Manager – doesn’t live in London any more as she has been constantly in Brussels and Strasbourg. Yesterday, she just delivered our petition with over 13,000 signatures to Alain Joyandet, Secrétaire d’Etat chargé de la Coopération et de la Francophonie (Minister of State responsible for Cooperation and Francophony) at the European Development Days in Strasbourg.

ONE members across the EU have also sent nearly 5,000 emails and letters to their national finance ministers and chancellors, urging them commit to giving as much additional aid as possible. On Friday, 21 November, these finance ministers will be signing off on the European Budget and we’ll know how well all our hard work as paid off.

The key thing to watch out for this Friday is how much will be additional within the EU budget. After that, we can’t afford to take our eye off the ball in case countries try to finance this from their bilateral aid budgets. If they take this money from within their aid budgets, we’re looking at this additional billion not being additional at all. The money must be additional and spent on the most urgent needs of farmers in the developing world. We want a political commitment on additionality at the budget negotiations on Friday. We’ll keep you posted on how things look.

-Weldon Kennedy

On Saturday, world leaders pledged to shore up global growth, avoid protectionism and move quickly on regulatory reform. Presenting a united front, leaders from both developed and developing nations promised to take “whatever further actions are necessary to stabilize the financial system” and vowed to “use fiscal measures to stimulate domestic demand to rapid effect, as appropriate”. World leaders also pledged to ensure that developing nations caught up in the crisis have access to dollar finance. They said they would review the resources available to the IMF and other institutions.

Trade negotiators will step up work for a new global pact following a call from the weekend’s G20 summit, but have not agreed on a date for ministers to come to Geneva to seek a breakthrough, diplomats said on Monday. A meeting of about 30 key WTO ambassadors agreed negotiators must still narrow the gap on a range of technical issues before trade ministers can follow up that clear political signal with any chance of success.

As they attended this weekend’s summit, one by one, the leaders of big emerging economies made a single point again and again: no longer will the world’s financial rules be set just by a club of rich countries. That the summit was of the group of 20 emerging and industrialized countries, not the G7 or G8, was itself an indication of the shift in power – as was the fact that the future meetings in the process will also occur in the G20 format. Moreover, the summit agreed to throw open to emerging economies the membership of all the key groups that frame the rules of global finance. “We are talking about the G20 because the G8 doesn’t have any more reason to exist,” said Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s president. “In other words, the emerging economies have to be taken into consideration in today’s globalised world.”

G20 leaders insisted the call for a breakthrough by year-end in the troubled Doha round of trade talks represented real progress, but gave no signs of specific concessions needed to reach a deal. The summit is the latest in a long string of heads of government meetings to promise prompt action on Doha. The G20 agreed not to impose new protectionist measures for the next 12 months. Officials believe there are signs of movement to resolve the dispute between India and the US over agriculture, the sticking point when the previous meeting of trade ministers collapsed in July.

-Chandler Smith & Steve Wilson

Organizers of this year’s New York City marathon braced for a massive toilet incursion. The New York Times reported that the marathon would haul in 2,250 toilets into the city for race day—requiring more than 80 six-axle trucks, tens of thousands of dollars in rental fees, and a gaggle of 16,000-gallon tankers to suck them dry afterwards. Spread out evenly over the 26.2 mile distance, that’s an average of 86 toilets per mile. Why? Because, as the event organizers knew, toilets are a big necessity.

UK-based journalist Rose George would have agreed. On October 22, she visited Washington, DC for an event co-sponsored by PATH and Water Advocates and spoke to a crowd of 70 at the Equality Center about her new book, The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters. As a series of stories that collectively highlight the plight of the 2.6 billion people in the world who do not have access to a toilet, the book also showcases the world’s “toilet crusaders” and the solutions they are employing to address the problem in their own countries. She describes these individuals in many of her recent interviews, including on Chicago Public Radio.

Lack of toilets causes some of the world’s most (more…)