2010 G8/G20
Cross-posted from the Gates Foundation website:
The G8 summit gets underway tomorrow in Muskoka, Canada. It’s exciting that a focus of the summit is a new G8 initiative – conceived and led by Canada – to improve maternal, newborn, and child health in poor countries.
G8 countries are expected to commit major resources toward the initiative. Other public and private donors are also lending support, including the Gates Foundation — we recently announced the foundation will make new grants totaling $1.5 billion over the next five years to support family planning, maternal and child health, and nutrition programs in developing countries.
The G8 commitments are an important landmark, but it’s more critical than ever to step up advocacy on global health. Right now there’s tremendous pressure in most donor countries to cut budgets, so we need to continue highlighting the fact that global health investments are working and are incredibly cost-effective. Maternal and child health is a great example – there’s very clear proof that low-cost solutions are saving lives, and can save many more if we expand effective programs.
This is a pivotal moment for women’s and children’s health. The task ahead is to be ready to make the most of the opportunity we created – to do the hard work of saving women’s and children’s lives. We must move forward together, as one, with the courage to overcome the obstacles that have stopped us in the past.
Our unity and our courage will be tested. Canada’s new initiative is the most ambitious effort on behalf of women’s and children’s health in history. And in a few weeks, the United Nations will publish its Joint Action Plan, leading up to the special session on the Millennium Development Goals in September. The whole world will be looking to us for leadership.
It will not be easy, but we must not fail. We are making a new world for poor women and children: a world in which every birth is a promise – a promise of a better future.
Check out groups like ONE and CARE for info about ways to make your voice heard.
ONE’s Mark Entwistle with our 58,000 signature strong petition
Yesterday, ONE’s Mark Entwistle delivered our petition with over 58,000 names calling for 3.5 million new health workers to help mothers and children to the Prime Minister’s Office in Ottawa, Canada.
Unfortunately, photographs aren’t allowed within the Langevin building itself, but we have it on good assurance that shortly after the above photo was taken Mark proceeded into the building to hand off the wishes of ONE members to the Canadian government.
This delivery presented some unique scheduling difficulties – on the eve of the G8, most senior members of the Canadian government are en route to Hunstville, Ontario, far away from the media centre for civil society organisations in Toronto where ONE will be based during the summit. So if we wanted to make sure the G8 heard our message before meeting, we needed to do it now, in Ottawa. But scheduling wasn’t easy given that the Prime Minister’s Office had quite a bit on their plates.
Luckily it all worked out for the best. In fact, it almost appeared that the fates conspired to make sure we could deliver our petition as a mere 20 minutes later, Ottawa was hit by an earthquake that caused all parliamentary and government offices to be evacuated!
During the summit ONE will be on the ground, fighting to make sure this G8 has the strongest outcome possible for people living in poverty. We’ll be keeping you updated through our blog and twitter – so watch this space!
The ONE team has arrived in Canada and is already hard at work raising awareness in the fight against extreme poverty with Toronto’s Mayor David Miller. We’re in town for the G8 and G20 Summits where maternal and child health and accountability are on the agenda. For several months, ONE has been actively engaging Canadian leadership to push for a robust maternal and child health initiative that includes accountability measures to make sure that country commitments are kept. We’re also calling for the G8 and G20 to forge a new partnership with Africa based on mutual accountability, good governance, trade and investment – a good start would be giving African countries more formal representation at the G20 to ensure that the poorest countries have a voice at global summits.
We’re currently in the Alternative Media Center which separates the NGO community and civil society from the media. Despite the logistical hurdles, we managed to meet Toronto’s Mayor David Miller, talk about ONE and our issues and give him a t-shirt to sport around town.
Today, leaders are arriving from the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, and, of course, Canada for the start of the G8 Summit tomorrow in Muskoka.
We’ll be checking in with updates and any news as it breaks – and we’ll be keeping the pressure on global leaders to agree to commitments that make a difference to the world’s poorest!
Looking for a smart, easy, innovative way to brush up on some of the topics that will likely be discussed at this week’s G8 and G20 summits? The Halifax Initiative—a group of Canadian NGOs that works to promote reforms in international financial institutions—just released a great podcast that offers interviews and speeches on everything from education and trade to maternal and child health and debt relief. Featured speakers include UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University’s Earth Institute and Dennis Howlett from the Make Poverty History Canada campaign.
To listen to the podcast, click here. And let us know what you think in the comments below.
This morning I attended a bloggers roundtable discussion with Melinda St. Louis, Deputy Director of Jubilee USA, to discuss their new report on the G20′s commitments to the world’s poorest. The release of the report is obviously well-timed, with the G20 and G8 Summits in Canada just days away.
So how has the G20 done this year in keeping their commitments to the world’s poorest? Well, according to Jubilee, not too great: a “D” in their report card. According to Melinda, the G20 has made “shockingly little progress”, primarily because the G20 a) is “unaccountable to affected communities” b) has “little political will to deliver on commitments” and c) is actually “contributing to a renewed debt crisis”.
You can read more about the G20′s barely passing grade here, and take action here.
The Canadian Press reported over the weekend that Canada is planning to pledge $1 billion towards an initiative on maternal, newborn and child health (MNCH) at this month’s G8 summit.
Heather Scoffield of CP writes: “The federal government is telling other G8 countries that Canada is willing to put about $1-billion toward maternal and child health – as long as other countries ante up too. The Canadian cash will likely target poor countries with the worst records of maternal and child mortality and malnutrition.”
Although the initiative has been in discussion since Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced in January that he would champion maternal and child health at the summit, with less than a month until the G8 summit few details have been outlined. To ensure that the initiative delivers results for women and children around the world, Canada and the rest of the G8 should take this opportunity to outline an action plan for maternal, newborn and child health with clear objectives and how the G8 will ensure that promises made at the summit are kept in the months and years ahead.
Last month, ONE released its own set of recommendations for the G8, including a call for a robust, results-based initiative to improve maternal, newborn and child health in the world poorest countries.
For maximum impact, new resources for maternal and child health should be channeled through effective bilateral and multilateral mechanisms (especially the Global Fund and the Global Alliance for Vaccines Initiative) and delivered in an integrated, coordinated manner that supports national health plans and works towards ambitious targets such as the recruitment of 3.5 million health care workers, universal access to basic immunization (including new vaccines for rotavirus and pneumococcal disease), and the elimination of mother-to-child transmission of HIV by 2015.
In addition, any new initiatives by the G8 and G20 must incorporate accountability safeguards to ensure that new commitments are kept. As a champion of accountability within the G8, Canada has the opportunity to demonstrate how an MNCH initiative will pilot a new era of accountability by the G8 and the G20. The TRACK principles, a guide developed by ONE and its partners call for commitments to development to be Transparent, Results-oriented, clear about the degree of Additionality and Conditionality, and monitored by an independent mechanism to ensure the promises are being Kept.
If the $1 billion figure is accurate, in the coming days Canada should clarify how it meets the TRACK principles – including where the money will be spent, the timeframe it will be delivered, interim targets and the outputs it intends to achieve – and encourage other donors to do the same to ensure that any new initiative includes both ambition and accountability.
