Canada
More details have emerged in the past couple weeks on the G8’s commitment to improve maternal, newborn and child health through the “Muskoka Initiative,” but not enough to deliver on the G8’s other critical commitment at the 2010 summit – to enhance their own accountability.
The initiative (which includes a $5 billion in funding from G8 countries, $2.3 billion from non-G8 donors and a handful of qualitative principles and targets) was unveiled by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper on the first day of the summit and outlined in an annex of the final G8 communiqué. Harper specified that the $5 billion commitment from the G8 would be “additional” funding and that Canada would be contributing $1.1 billion in new resources over the next five years. Advocates and experts alike were disappointed by the G8’s lack of ambition (with $5 billion representing just a fraction of the estimated $30 billion needed from donors to meet maternal and child health targets), and without details on individual country commitments, it was also impossible to applaud the clarity of the announcement.
Last week, an official “methodology document” shed some light on the numbers behind the initiative, with details on how the G8 had calculated their current spending on maternal, newborn and child health (i.e. their collective baseline). To anyone familiar with the tedious business of tracking DAC purpose codes and calculating imputed percentages of multilateral organizations like the Global Fund and the World Bank, this analysis is both incredibly thorough and extremely valuable for advocates and recipient countries.
Yet some of the most critical details on the $5 billion G8 commitment are missing. It’s still unclear what each country is contributing towards the initiative and whether their commitments are truly additional to current spending. The United States, Germany and France have announced their contributions (though not necessarily their baselines) and some additional details have been unofficially reported.
For those of us accustomed to following international summit processes, this story is all too familiar: a vague commitment is made, advocates respond with tepid applause (and a reminder that more is needed), and the following year is spent haranguing governments to clarify what they promised to ensure that it is eventually delivered (if you haven’t seen my colleague Erin Thornton’s recent post on tracking G8 commitments, check it out here).
This year felt different though. Prime Minister Harper put accountability squarely on the summit agenda back in January, and one week before the summit the G8 released a self-evaluation of their progress towards meeting development commitments with the Muskoka Accountability Report. Although the G8 promised to “ensure follow-up” on the conclusions and recommendations of the report, they shunned the first opportunity to actually implement them through the development of a robust, transparent and accountable Muskoka Initiative.
The G8 would argue that advocates can now calculate each individual donor’s baseline using the agreed methodology- a somewhat painful exercise, but certainly not impossible. But by failing to offer up these details themselves, the G8 are not only allowing some countries to hide flimsy, potentially dishonest commitments behind a collective promise, they are missing the bigger picture on accountability.
And everyone loses in this scenario. Advocates are still ill-equipped to hold their governments accountable, recipient countries face another hurdle to planning their budgets for next year, and, in a critical year when the changing global architecture and emergence of the G20 is grabbing the lion’s share of media headlines, the G8 has missed another opportunity to flex their muscle and demonstrate their relevance.
Wondering what the NGO community thought of the G8 and G20 Summits in Canada? Here’s a great round-up of responses from a host of our partners and friends from the online news source The Sherpa.
The G8:
http://www.sherpatimes.com/g8/179-g8-summit-ngo-responses.html
The G20:
http://www.sherpatimes.com/g8/185-ngo-responses-to-the-g20-summit.html
Sheila Nix, our U.S. Executive Director, was featured on CBC’s The National, the Canadian equivalent of NBC Nightly News, as part of segment on maternal and child health. Sheila talked about her trip to Ghana and Sierra Leone, and how simple interventions can prevent the mother-to-child transmission of HIV/AIDs giving children a whole new lease on life.
You can watch the clip here.
On June 3, ONE hosted a parliamentary reception at the National Gallery in Ottawa, Canada to raise awareness on maternal and child mortality ahead of the G8 in Muskoka later this month. Featuring a special appearance by model and activist Christy Turlington-Burns, we showed a clip of her new documentary No Woman, No Cry.
Ottawa-based ONE member Kirika Bussell attended the screening, and sent us this great photo and blog update:
People often advocate for a cause because of a direct link to a situation, or because we know someone who has been affected. It was her health scare following the birth of her first child that prompted Christy Turlington-Burns to learn about and then advocate for maternal and child health. She survived a common post-partum complication because of timely access to quality medical treatment, but not all women are so fortunate. It was this experience that inspired No Woman, No Cry.
ONE member Kirika Bussell and Christy Turlington-Burns at the event in Ottawa
Every minute a woman dies from preventable complications during pregnancy or birth. What is stopping us from keeping these preventable deaths occurring again and again? If the answer lies in education, compassion and understanding, then Ms. Turlington Burns has made the job of spreading the message more accessible, and more importantly, she has put a human face on what could simply be seen as another sad statistic.
At the screening I was fortunate enough to speak with Christy Turlington Burns about the concept that we all have a stake in the future of maternal and child health. She agreed that it doesn’t matter if you’re a man or woman, a father or mother, or if you’re childless- this is a universal issue.
When I volunteered to assist with the ONE’s screening at the National Gallery, one of my goals was to help maximize the opportunity to generate interest and keep the issue moving. Reflecting on this event after the fact, I can say my interest in this issue has only grown the more I’ve learned. I hope other ONE members come to feel the same way. Everyone’s reasons to act are different, but when we do act, together we can act as ONE voice for proactive, comprehensive change. The future is ours, but the choice to act is yours.
Kirika M. Bussell, Ottawa, Canada
If you’d like a sneak peak at Christy’s documentary, visit www.everymothercounts.org.
To sign ONE’s petition to the G8 for 3.5 million new health workers go to: http://www.one.org/us/actnow/g8healthworkers/
Yesterday, Make Poverty History—Canada’s largest coalition of civil society organizations—released a new report that says the country is falling dangerously short of meeting its commitments to the world’s poorest people. As their press release pointed out:
“Canada holds a special place on the world stage. Not only are we hosting the G8 and G20 summits in Canada this month, but, as our Prime Minister rightly reminds us, we are also the G8 nation which best survived the economic crisis. That puts us in an excellent position to lead by example.”
As the report shows, Canada has made impressive progress on several of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), including hunger reduction and gender equality. But it’s still behind on half of its promises, including universal primary education, maternal health, and foreign aid spending. And if the Canadian government sticks to its recent decision to freeze aid spending, this could jeopardize all 8 MDGs.
To take a look at the entire report, click here.
Exciting news out of Canada today. Jim Flaherty (the Minister of Finance) just announced that the Canadian government will forgive nearly $24 million owed by the Republic of Congo. This means that Canada has now cancelled close to $1 billion of debt owed by the world’s poorest countries.
“Canada’s debt relief program continues to support nations that have demonstrated a commitment to invest in the current needs of their citizens, even as they struggle with the debt burdens of their past,” said Minister Flaherty. “Today’s debt relief announcement will free up more resources that can be better invested in the health and education of the Republic of Congo’s citizens.”
To read the full release put out by the Canadian Department of Finance, click here.
Image from Department of Finance Canada website.
