The G8 Summit ended yesterday and here’s a quick summary of what we learned:

For the first time, freedom and democracy are headlining and ONE welcomes them. However, we are concerned that the final statements are primarily statements of good intent.

We would like first to refresh the G8′s memory regarding the $14 billion to help sub-Saharan Africa that is still missing compared to the G8′s promises in 2005.

Agriculture gets barely any attention and it has hardly been discussed. It is needless to recall the grand promises made in L’Aquila in 2008 at the height of the last food crisis: $20 billion to be disbursed by next year. Yet less than $5 billion have been provided so far.

On health issues, particularly vaccines, the G8 has until next month – when the international conference of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) will be held in London – to lead by example. The final declaration stressed the importance of GAVI and calls for its funding. We welcome this support. However, regarding the amounts of contributions, for the moment, they are neither seen nor heard.

Transparency is the real champion of the summit. For the first time the G8 supports legislation to ensure transparency in the extractive industries. This is a very important step. President of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and US President Barack Obama deserve to be applauded on this issue. At ONE, we will follow closely the detail of future legislation to ensure that these efforts will not be wasted.

To conclude, despite some positive steps, Deauville failed to deliver for Africa. So will we be waiting for the 2012 G8 Summit in the US for concrete action?

Image courtesy of the G8

The Final Deauville Declaration has been made public. It is full of good intentions. Great. However, you must read between the lines to find (or not) concrete commitments, particularly on immunization, from the G8.

At ONE, we wonder if all these good intentions will change the face of the world?

Even if the G8 have expressed support for the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) and called for its funding, there are no firm commitments regarding the amounts to be allocated by rich countries.

It’s really time for world leaders to take concrete action. Otherwise, children under 5 years will continue to lose their lives due to preventable diseases such as diarrhea and pneumonia, 2 of the biggest killers of children around the world.

Dear leaders, if the 2.8 million children dying each year because of these diseases were yours, what would you do?

Today, for the very first time, we have two new vaccines that will help stop these “serial killers”. These vaccines are already available in developed countries, but their distribution in the developing world depends on what the international community is willing to pledge at the next international GAVI conference, to be held on June 13th in London.

We have already said it and we will keep saying so: dear world leaders, by funding these 2 proven vaccines, you will help saving the lives of 4 million children in 5 years. It’s time for you to lead by example.

Take action now and sign the petition

During two days, the French capital was the world capital of the Internet. The e-G8 gathered the web elite –- from Google’s Eric Schmidt to Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg to Rupert Murdoch — in the Tuileries Park. Their objective? Discuss the web economy and changes happening.

For the first time, a discussion about the Internet has been put on the agenda before the G8 in Deauville that starts today.

At first, ONE welcomed the concept of such a meeting. We have all been witnessing the key role that the Internet played, in particular during the recent Arab revolutions. The web is an effective means to enforce rule of law, to increase transparency and to end poverty.

Improving Internet access and mobile connectivity in developing countries can allow farmers to consult market prices on their mobile phones, pupils and teachers to do distance learning or civil society to use social networks to fight against electoral fraud or corruption.

But unfortunately, these questions have been relegated to the second row, giving way to the predominance of the usual preoccupations: economic growth (ours), protection of children (ours), copyright (ours), etc.

This meeting could have been a historic moment for the people from the developing world, but we are far from there!

Despite this, an interesting conclusion on governance merits attention though: neither governments nor entrepreneurs nor civil society will be able to resolve the challenges of good governance on their own.

At ONE, we believe that we urgently need a new partnership: web companies, states and civil society should commit to work hand-in-hand in order to end censorship.

The two days of debate have ended without any agreement on concrete actions. The so-called leaders of the Internet are content with a simple state of play that will be presented at the G8 today and tomorrow. One can only hope for the leaders of the richest countries on earth to finally act: as long as the most marginalized are forgotten, the promise of the Internet will be unfulfilled.

Video and photo courtesy of e-G8.

The first elements of the final communique were revealed in the press. The Arab spring and democracy in North Africa placed high on the agenda. At ONE, we are delighted. However, we believe it is essential that the G8 efforts affect the whole continent, particularly sub-Saharan Africa.

For the first time, the existence of a joint declaration by the G8 countries and Africa was announced. That said, this text does not mention in any case how the G8 is planning to keep its aid promises. A regrettable “omission” ?

Another important element is missing from the communique: while we are only few weeks away from the international conference of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), there were no concrete commitments regarding the amounts to be allocated by rich countries to vaccination. Yet, these countries have 4 million good reasons to do so … to help save the lives of 4 million children in 5 years!

Ending on a positive note, ONE welcomes the G8 commitment to fight against corruption through increased transparency in the extractive sector. Nicolas Sarkozy committed to this in January, and this morning, President Barroso signaled the European Commission’s explicit support for such a project.

Photo courtesy of the G8

Following the tradition started last year at the G8 in Canada, this year’s French presidency prepared an accountability report together with the other G8 countries, which outlines the state of delivery and results of the G8’s commitments on fighting extreme poverty.

Let’s start with the positives: it is commendable that the G8 continues with preparing such reports. Great promises are one thing, but keeping them and proving to have kept them is equally important. This is exactly what ONE has been saying for years (and showing the example for) with the DATA report.

It is also good to draw attention to the commitments on food security and maternal health, the focus of this year’s report. The report has the merit of establishing a baseline for the different commitments, reporting back on disbursements already made and giving a time line for outstanding disbursements. So far, so good. But…

There is a massive “but”. The G8 have found an artful way to embellish their performance. The report puts the spotlight on figures in today’s prices and tracks progress against them. It is a major issue, because current prices cannot be compared properly across years. This is why the OECD recommends using constant prices, prices that take into account changes in exchange rates and inflation from year to year and give an honest picture of the real efforts that were made. To put it simply $1 in 2010 doesn’t buy as much as $1 in 2005.

The result of tracking progress in current prices? Forgetting inflation suddenly makes the G8 look much better than it really is. Gleneagles’ targets are missed, but only by a “little” $1.27 billion. Great success. Pat on the back. Except that taking inflation into account shows a very different picture. The G8 shortfall is in fact $19 billion!

Careful readers will notice that the report also mentions the $19 billion shortfall. Very careful readers, in fact. The figure is dropped in passing, immersed in a sea of data and tables all in current prices. Predictably, it is a blessing for countries that haven’t performed well and can conveniently quote the report to avoid facing their failure. Take Germany. The Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development issued a press release yesterday, which selectively quotes the report to give itself a pass, when Germany’s under performance is in reality costing $4 billion to the developing world.

As ONE’s Executive Director, Jamie Drummond, said yesterday:

“We cannot allow countries who are breaking promises to the world’s poor to hide behind misleading figures. When the G8 leaders gather in France next week they must acknowledge that accountability is more than just a PR exercise.”

This year’s G8 meeting on Africa (with the African Union and founding members of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development – NEPAD) will also examine the first accountability report prepared by the African side. We can only hope that Africa will have the courage to look shortfalls in the eyes.

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.

While the press release is important for a number of reasons, it puts President Obama squarely on the record of embracing a series of sound global development principles that will significantly advance his campaign promise to bring coherence to US development programs and to “elevate development as a central pillar of our national security strategy”. The President pledged to issue a new policy directive — presumably referring to the PSD — “in the near future”.

The new development policy will strengthen US efforts to reduce global poverty, promote economic growth, and enhance the impact and results-based approach of American foreign aid, all fundamental principles that ONE has championed for some time. Of particular note, the plan promises to:

• Support sustainable economic development and good governance;
• Meet basic human needs by building public sector capacity to deliver services;
• Hold recipients accountable;
• Be selective in where and on what the US will focus;
• Strengthen multilateral approaches; and
• Install rigorous standards for monitoring and evaluation

While all solid elements, I found one part of the plan a little too vague that hopefully will be explained more fully in the final PSD. The President’s approach stresses country ownership and mutual accountability, critical elements of successful development outcomes. But I would like to see further elaboration of this concept that instead of just focusing on well governed countries, as the White House statement suggests, it broadly includes a direct response to country priorities, whether they flow from national development strategies of the government or those articulated by citizens at the local level.

Much of what we see in the President’s policy statement is not new – many of these ideas have been discussed, and some applied, for a number of years and proven to be successful approaches to more effective development policy. And some are clearly evident in President Obama’s initiatives on food security and global health. But what is different is the effort to codify and consolidate these principles – for the first time ever – into a coherent and comprehensive strategy with clear goals and priorities against which the United States can shape its global development programs, policies, and funding allocations.

As we approach the MDG summit in September, the President has a unique opportunity to lead by example and demonstrate to the rest of the world that the United States is making it a priority to help raise people around the globe out of poverty, giving them opportunity, dignity, and a voice in holding their elected officials accountable to high standards of good governance. Nearly a year ago, President Obama told the United Nations that he would return in September 2010 with a plan to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. With the articulation of a new global development policy, as reflected in a signed and issued PSD, the President will strengthen his call to action in New York with a clear vision of how the United States itself plans to tackle poverty and foster global growth.

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

More details on the so-called “Muskoka Initiative” were revealed with the release of the official G8 communiqué on Saturday, which included an annex outlining the initiative. Here at ONE, we were pleased to see that the initiative embraces some critical principles for long-term sustainability and effectiveness, like support for country-led national health plans and increased coherence through coordination and harmonization. Although there is a strong focus on outcomes (with an estimate from the World Health Organization and the World Bank that pledged funds will prevent the deaths of 1.3 million children and 64,000 mothers over the next five years), it stops short of setting out clear targets to meet these goals, such as supporting the training of an additional 3.5 million health care workers by 2015, a critical input to strengthening the health care that mothers and children need, especially during pregnancy, labor and the first five years of life, and an issue that 61,000 ONE members urged the G8 to support.

Moreover, in a year when G8 accountability was high on the summit agenda, the lack of clarity around individual country pledges is extremely disappointing. Although the communiqué states that the G8 will release the methodology used to define each country’s commitment and baselines, without this info it’s not clear which countries are truly delivering additional funding and which are using creative counting and hiding behind the G8’s collective commitment. It is critical that these details be made available, not only so advocates can chart the delivery of them, but also so governments and citizens in developing countries can start planning for them and make sure that the funds promised lead to lasting results for mother and children.

Yesterday, the G8 announced the Muskoka Initiative on maternal, newborn, and child health. Although Canada deserves some credit for putting maternal and child health in the developing world on the G8 agenda this weekend, world leaders have not done enough to truly turn the tide on this vital issue.

At ONE, we campaigned for a robust maternal and child health initiative at this year’s G8 summit and for it to be accompanied by a concrete accountability framework. We also delivered a petition signed by more than 60,000 of you to world leaders to push them to deliver for the world’s more vulnerable – mothers and children.

While we were disappointed in the total G8 pledge of $5 billion to the Maternal and Child Health Initiative, our efforts elevated this issue, raised awareness, and will raise the bar for world leaders to address this and the other Millennium Development Goals at the UN Summit in September.