The Rev. Mark Hanson, Presiding Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and President of the Lutheran World Federation, writes in a recent opinion piece of the “test of moral leadership” for President Barack Obama at this week’s G-20 Summit in London. Noting that people of faith and conscience have a particular interest in this topic, ONE supporter Rev. Hanson notes that this is “a critically important test of the President’s leadership for people living in poverty [that] will be determined by his ability to lead the group of 20 leaders from the world’s wealthiest nations, the G-20, to an effective, practical and immediate response to help people weather this financial storm.”
So- I just finished helping coordinate the CNBC interview with two African G20 Voice bloggers, Daudi Were of Kenya and Sokari Ekine of Nigeria alongside Bob Geldof. (I’ll be able to upload some video of it in a bit.) We are working to make sure the media are giving space for opinions and insights from Africa. Many media outlets are now coming by to interview Daudi, which is amazing.
Overall, it’s an incredible privilege to be able to attend this summit and to have the opportunity to advocate for ONE’s goals in such a giant room full of journalists who are often prone to forgetting to cover Africa. So what exactly are our goals? Here they are again below in a very simple list:
1. We want the leaders to agree an immediate $50bn fiscal stimulus for sub-Saharan Africa – many African countries are suffering from the effects of economic downturn, even though they were little to do with the origins of the crisis. Vital development assistance will not only help save trade and jobs but also lives.
2. We also want international institutions to be reformed so that the people of developing countries have a voice at the global level. The World Bank and other organizations are run by developed countries – making them represent developing countries will help ensure a fairer world.
3. We also need better regulation of the financial system – over $800billion of illicit cash flows out of tax havens – imagine if governments could capture that money and put it to good use. So we’re hoping for a deal on tax havens today.
William Wallis’s lead article in the supplement makes a powerful case for G20 taking urgent action to provide the resources developing countries need to weather this downturn, saying:
“Today many of sub-Saharan Africa’s 47 states are seeing their incomes evaporate, leaving holes in national budgets and foreign reserves as wide as the pits from which their resources have been extracted.
Without urgent measures to limit the damage, fragile recent development gains could be swept away, conflicts will reignite and more states will fail, warns Meles Zenawi, Ethiopia’s prime minister, who is representing Africa at today’s summit of the Group of 20 nations in London.”
There are over 2,000 media here to cover this summit and our job is to try and ensure developing country needs and voices are represented (more on this soon)… a daunting prospect in such a huge room (see below), with locations for every major TV broadcast, radio and newspaper in the world. Even the journalists themselves seem a bit lost – the smart outlets are taping homemade signs around on the walls so that people can locate them…
Once inside the center, I found my way to the table with the large G20 Voice sign. We were told that we’d have a G20 sign just like all the G20 countries’ delegations’ tables had signs. But that didn’t turn out to be exactly right.
Our sign is much, much larger than the other ones.
Below- see our sign, and then Japanese and South African tables’ signs. (Note that South Africa is the only African country in the G20.)
And then here is a shot of our G20 bloggers table.
Like a kid on Christmas morning – or a global poverty advocate with accreditation to the G20 Summit – I was up early to start the day. Only 2,000 people are allowed into this summit, and we’ve been told that the 50 bloggers of the G20Voice project are the only members of civil society who were allowed accreditation. Below a photo journey of my way in.
I took this during my 5:30 am walk to the Tube -
which opened 6 minutes after I arrived.
I arrived at the proper station by sunrise for the first of four accreditation/passport checks.
Then we boarded the first of 2 shuttle buses.
Where we received our photo badges. (Somehow my passport ID was one number off in their records, but the woman behind the desk remembered my name from the list of bloggers she’d received, so I got in fine.)
We went through security.
Onto a “clean” bus.
And then into the Media Centre for the 2009 London G20 Summit.
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