Yesterday Bob Geldof, advisor to ONE, appeared on the Canadian Television News segment “Power Play” to discuss Canada’s progress in meeting the 2005 Gleneagles Summit commitments and its role in hosting the upcoming G8 Summit. He had some very kind words for the Canadian peoples’ strong commitments (and strong follow-through) in ending extreme poverty.

You can check out the clip here:

The G20 has a lot to do tomorrow in Pittsburgh. But, I hope they take a moment to look north. Next June, some, maybe all of the members of the G20 will be about 300 miles north in Huntsville, Ontario for the next G8 Summit.

Development advocates have watched cautiously as the political center of global discussions has moved between the G8, the G20 and the United Nations. Which of these is the best forum to move the development agenda forward? No one has a definite answer on that; certainly all are important. But, no development advocate should doubt the importance of Canada’s G8. Canada’s G8 Summit in 2002 in Kananaskis really launched the G8’s focus on Africa that eventually led to the Gleneagles set of commitments that have since framed the discussion on development assistance to Africa. It is at Canada’s Summit when these commitments come due. How Prime Minister Harper and the Canadian government approaches that will be the subject of much of ONE’s work for the next 9 months.

Lots more to come on this topic, but for now check out this article from Tuesday’s Global and Mail discussing Canada’s G8.

-Josh Lozman

On Tuesday, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Grameen Bank founder Muhammad Yunus and the former President of Ireland Mary Robinson joined together to present the G8 with one simple request: send every child to school.

In an open letter to the leaders of the G8 countries, the group asked for the G8 to commit to launching a Global Fund for Education. The proposal comes from a pledge made by President Obama himself, which you may have read about here before.

The letter reads:

We are heartened by the commitment of the United States President, Barack Obama, to provide a contribution of at least $2 billion dollars to a Global Fund for Education which would help to eliminate the global education deficit by 2015. Such a bold and ambitious plan should be endorsed by other members of the G8 through a public commitment to such an initiative, which must be launched before the end of the year with full funding. A Global Fund for Education would ensure that the funding shortfall is no longer the main impediment to progress on basic education, and moreover that those investments have the greatest impact on access to and quality of education.

Putting every child in school seems like a tall order, but history has shown that remarkable progress is possible with a combination of dedicated government investment and international support. Ethiopia, for example, was able to double its enrollment rates between 1999 and 2007, leading to a total of 3.3 million more children in school. Increased government spending on education, incentives for girls to enroll and the construction of schools in rural areas all contributed to this impressive progress. Across Africa, stories like this have resulted in 34 million more children in school since 1999.

A Global Fund for Education could help replicate successes like Ethiopia’s by helping to galvanize new momentum toward basic education and reverse the declining investment the sector by international donors. This is more vital than ever given the current global financial climate. In many countries, expenditure on sectors like health and education will be one of the first victims of stretched government budgets, and a skilled, educated workforce will be one of the key ingredients to recovery and fueling long-term economic growth.

We’ll be following the G8 closely next week, so we’ll keep you posted on any new education commitments and hopefully, a plan to launch a Global Fund for Education.

-Nora Coghlan

At the end of last week I attended G8 Development Ministers’ meeting in Rome. It fell the day after the launch of ONE’s 2009 DATA Report in Rome. During the final press conference a journalist asked the Italian Foreign Affairs Minister Franco Frattini what his response was to the Report’s findings – Italy has fulfilled only 3% of its commitment and accounts for nearly half the G8’s total gap for 2008. Frattini, without contesting the content of the Report, replied that Italy is aware of the shortfalls and that it would make up for the 2009 financing gap by the end of 2009! This is quite an amazing statement, particularly given what this would mean in dollar terms combined with the government’s deep cuts in bilateral aid that have been foreseen by the 2009 budget.

During the press conference I had the opportunity to ask Frattini when exactly Italy would pay its full 2009 contribution to the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Frattini answered that the relevant appropriation law for this will definitely be passed before the end of this year, and that it’s very likely that it may pass before the G8 Summit in L’Aquila.

The 2009 DATA Report has already had a significant impact in Italy and been covered widely in the Italian media. One example of this was during a press conference with Colonel Gaddafi of Libya, also current head of the African Union, someone asked Prime Minister Berlusconi for his response to the DATA Report. Prime Minister Berlusconi confirmed that Italy would certainly honour all of its commitments. He also stated that donors have to be extremely careful to ensure money given reaches the intended recipients.

This Development Ministers’ meeting was followed by the G8 Finance Ministers’ meeting in Lecce, southern Italy. Unfortunately, there were no major agreements or announcements made on our issues. The focus of the meeting was on the “Lecce Framework” – legal standards being drawn up to try and avoid future economic downturns. Here at ONE we are really concerned about the current and future impacts of the recession on the poorest countries around the world. The Managing Director of the International Fund for Agricultural Development, Kanayo Nwanze, also recently echoed this: “the impact of the financial crisis on developing countries is going to be more visible in several months,” he said, warning that African governments would encounter budget problems in paying civil servants and subsidising food in urban areas.”

Jessica Gomez-Duran

The 2009 edition of the DATA Report, ONE’s annual assessment of the G8’s progress on their commitments to global development, is  launching this morning in London at a special kick-off event featuring Bill Gates, co-Chair of Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Bob Geldof, anti-poverty activist and ONE principal, Dr Francoise Ndayishimiye, of the Global Fund to Fight Aids, TB and Malaria; Arunma Oteh, of the African Development Bank, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Visit the DATA Report website to watch the event live beginning at 10:30a.m. GMT.

-Aaron Banks

This week in Rome, around 240 delegates from more than forty countries, representing around 100 million people, presented their priorities to the representatives of our G8 governments – the sherpas that prepare the territory before the Summit. There were development organisations, climate change groups, trade unions – a broad range of civil society. (The G8 Sherpas literally surrounded by civil society delegates from all over the world was quite a sight.) Despite that breadth, the messages that came out on alleviating poverty for the poorest in the world were loud and consistent. The food crisis was top of the agenda – the crisis that many feel has been forgotten amid the economic and financial problems engulfing the globe. Justice and fairness were themes: there was a strong call for a new kind of global governance whereby decision making processes include developing nations’ governments as well as representatives of civil society from all over the world.

The document that NGOs presented to the sherpas covered five different topics: basic necessities, climate change and the environment, food and agriculture sovereignty, global governance and finally, finance and labour.

The meeting was hosted by the City of Rome in collaboration with the Italian Coalition of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP). We heard positive remarks from the Sherpas about how the G8 Summit will focus on Africa, agriculture and climate change. ONE’s priorities are to see the G8 stump up at least the money they promised during these difficult times – we need a stimulus for sub-Saharan Africa. It was also reassuring to hear the Sherpas affirm unanimously that the so-called “Whole Country Approach” – whereby the whole range of investments from donor countries into developing countries, including charities, business, private donations, be counted up and just aid contributions, -will not detract from existing ODA commitments and is no replacement for these. All organisations clearly reaffirmed that rich countries must keep their promises so that innovative financing, other contributions, remittances and other investments must be additional to existing ODA pledges.

There’s a lot of work to be done between now and July. The G8 must deliver on their aid promises, we need an ambitious plan to fill the spending gaps on agriculture and we must make crucial investments in the Global Fund for HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria, health systems, education, and water. There’s quite a way to go before we reach that Summit. Stay tuned for the climb.

-Eloise Todd

On April 2nd, Gordon Brown will be chairing the next G20 meeting in the UK, and we’re going to be following it here on the ONE Blog. To start it off, I wanted to give you a background on all this Gx stuff

Is it me or are there a lot of G’s flying around? G7, G8, G13, G20 …

The G20, established in 1999 in the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis, has been the focus of much attention recently, primarily due to the global economic turmoil. The G20 is made up of the finance ministers and central bank governors of 19 countries: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the UK and the USA and the European Union. The IMF and World Bank also participate in G20 meetings on an ex-officio basis.

In areas such as global economic stability and growth, the G20 aims to promote open and useful exchanges between the cross-section of countries, including emerging countries as well as advanced. Its members are one of the things that really set it apart from the more well known G8. The G20 also plays a significant role in the reform of the international financial architecture which is one of the reasons why it has become so prominent in recent months. As well as measures to cope with the financial crisis, the G20 should also be making progress on international development and climate change for example.

On 15 November 2008, leaders of the G20 countries met in Washington for an emergency summit were they came up with a declaration and action plan. This meeting wasn’t in isolation though but rather the first of a series of meetings and processes which will unfold. One of the key meetings coming up is the G20 summit in London on 2nd April hosted by Gordon Brown (the UK are chairing the G20 this year) where Heads of State and others will seek ways to implement the actions put forward in the November summit.

Paul Martin, Canada’s former prime and finance minister (who attended the G7 meetings and helped form the G20), believes that (more…)

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…)

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

African development was again the subject of G8 discussions as world leaders gathered in Toyako, Hokkaido in northern Japan from July 7-9 for the 2008 G8 Summit. While the G8 was confronted with multiple global challenges, including climate change and a weakening global economy, the 2008 Hokkaido Summit marked an important “mid point” moment in the fight against poverty. The Hokkaido Summit came at the critical halfway point to both the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the G8 Gleneagles promises to Africa. The G8 are dangerously behind on their landmark commitments to the region, having delivered only $3 billion of the promised $25 billion in additional assistance to Africa by 2010, according to the 2008 DATA Report.

After difficult negotiations, the G8 summit yielded small gains for the poorest. The bulk of G8 agreements on development and Africa and food security reiterated previous pledges rather than outlining new measures to get the group back on track. The G8 did announce plans for a new effort to tackle the global food crisis, though more details are needed to ensure its effectiveness and delivery. They highlighted the UN High-level meeting on the MDGs in September as an important opportunity to review progress and identify actions needed to overcome remaining challenges.

At a time when G8 credibility is at risk due to slow progress in delivering on commitments, there was a strong call for greater accountability in the G8 Communique. The G8 agreed to track progress against previous commitments in health, education, water and agriculture, as well as its compliance with anti-corruption measures.

Overall, the US, UK and Germany provided strong leadership in negotiations and have significantly increased their funding for Africa in recent years.

After the jump, the following brief overview of outcomes for Africa from the 2008 G8 Summit.

-Ben Hubbard

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