G8
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!
As you’re probably aware, next month world leaders making up the G8 and G20 will convene in Muskoka and Toronto, Canada respectively. These Summits occur in a pivotal year: the final deadline for the historic 2005 G8 commitments, and five years left to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.
In advance of these Summits, ONE has released our list of recommendations which you can read here. We’ve also published our suggested language for the 2010 G8 communique here. (This is essentially the commitments the G8 will agree to after the Summit.)
In the run-up to the Summits in June, we’ll have more pre-game analysis and commentary right here on the ONE Blog. But the aforementioned two documents are your best sources for a detailed outline of what we’ll be advocating for in Canada on behalf of the world’s poor. Stay tuned!
On 26 April, G8 development ministers will be meeting in Halifax, Canada, to develop an action plan on maternal, newborn and child health. This builds on Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s pledge in January that as president of the G8 in 2010, Canada will use this year’s summit to “champion a major initiative to improve the health of women and children in the world’s poorest regions.”
For those of us working to fight global poverty, this announcement came as welcome news. Despite improvements in global health in recent years, progress on maternal and child health is still far from where it should be. More than 300,000 mothers still die a year during pregnancy and childbirth and nearly 9 million children die before their 5th birthday.
Yet most of these deaths are the result of preventable and treatable causes. New support for cost-effective, proven interventions could make a dramatic impact on maternal, newborn and child health.
In the past, the G8 has acknowledged the urgent need in maternal and child health along with some of the solutions, but has made few concrete commitments on how it will help African countries make improvements. With Canada’s leadership and public commitment to this issue, 2010 can be the year when the G8 finally takes action.
It’s also an important time for these issues to be highlighted. When African Heads of State meet at the African Union Summit in July they will focus on maternal and child health. In September all global leaders will meet in New York to review progress on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and with MDGs on maternal and child health being some of the most off-track, a robust plan from the G8 on this issue could galvanise the international community.
Ahead of the meeting of G8 development ministers in Halifax, ONE is outlining its recommendations to the G8. In order to be effective and to make a real difference in the lives of families in the world’s poorest regions, the G8‘s action strategy should:
- Be results-oriented – Canada and other G8 countries should commit to an action plan that combines high-impact interventions and long-term investments in local capacity with the ultimate goal of training 1 million health care workers in countries with a high burden of maternal and child deaths. They should work towards universal access to skilled birth attendants, universal access to bed nets, vaccination packages (including pneumococcal and rotavirus vaccines) and anti-malarial drugs, and support comprehensive education campaigns about pregnancy to women of child bearing age. Finally, any initiative should have the goal of eliminating mother-to-children transmission of HIV by 2015.
- Mobilize new resources – Canada and other G8 countries should double bilateral Overseas Development Assistance to maternal, newborn and child health from approximately USD $4 billion in 2010 to USD $8 billion by 2013. This funding should be channelled through existing bilateral initiatives or new multilateral approaches in the future, such as an expanded Global Fund. In addition, the G8 should commit to full replenishment of multilateral organizations already working to improve maternal and child health such as GAVI (Global Alliance of Vaccines and Immunizations), the Global Fund, the United Nations Population Fund and the World Bank.
- Emphasise integration, coordination and country ownership – In addition to new resources, Canada and other G8 countries should also commit to improving the quality and effectiveness of maternal and child health efforts through a commitment to the principles of country ownership, integration and coordination. The G8 and other donors should commit to working with developing countries to devise technically sound national health plans through their internal processes and mechanisms like the International Health Partnership and the private sector to coordinate support and mobilise resources. The G8 should also support and encourage efforts by developing country governments to transparently mobilise domestic resources for improving maternal, newborn and child health and the expansion of affordable access to quality care.
- Ensure accountability based on the TRACK principles – Canada and other G8 countries should use this initiative to pilot a robust G8 focus on accountability in line with the accountability matrix and the TRACK principles, which calls for new promises to be Transparent, Results-orients and Accountable, while also articulating any Conditionalities and mapping out a strategy to ensure that will be Kept.
The following op-ed from ONE’s Executive Director Jamie Drummond and Policy Board member John Githongo has just been published in Canada’s Globe and Mail and newspapers across Africa:
As host of this year’s G8 and G20 meetings, Canada is in a great position to lead the essential process of reinvigorating the global campaign against extreme poverty. Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s call for greater accountability in G8 development promises and increased investments in child and maternal health are very welcome and we look forward to more details. European leaders and U.S. President Barack Obama, who has called for a new global plan to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, are already on board.
A new plan can avoid the pitfalls of past top-down approaches – if it supports a more bottom-up citizen-led strategy for sustainable development. Take Africa, where there have been real improvements over the past decade. Economic growth has been averaging about 5 per cent a year, 42 million more children are in school, malarial death rates have nearly been halved in a number of countries and more than three million people are on life-preserving AIDS medications. We suggest a new citizens compact to build on these results. It would ensure that development is devolved, that citizens are connected with new technologies, that executive powers are diffused, that political parties are strengthened and that the integrity of leaders and governance institutions firmly take centre stage.
There are three urgent considerations for such a strategy.
First, African accountability efforts by civil society and think tanks must be expanded dramatically. Efforts such as Twaweza, an East African citizen accountability movement, can be scaled up across the continent and deliver great returns on investment by empowering citizens to demand their rights. Canada’s International Development Research Centre has already partnered with the Gates Foundation and the Hewlett Foundation to invest more in African think tanks, and this can be expanded. These efforts are easier with today’s technology, especially mobile telephony. From the student who can text a hotline when her teacher does not turn up to the anti-corruption monitor who pores over statistics from national budgets online, new technology is the tool of the activist. Also, a new citizen strategy should not repeat past mistakes of lionizing specific political leaders – this makes it harder for Africans to hold them to account.
Second, experience shows that constant vigilance about transparency, especially with regard to national budgets, is critical. Thieves have more to hide. Regimes run by kleptocrats are more likely to fumble and fall, with wider security implications. But it is not just African budgets that must be more transparent. One of the great scandals in development is the lack of good statistics to measure progress – this area needs much more investment. Another scandal is the hypocrisy of most high-profile global promises, such as the vague billions alluded to at the Copenhagen climate-change summit. Donors must be clearer about what is really new money. Canada’s effort to chart all existing G8 development promises and improve accountability is especially important in this regard. Companies doing business in Africa must also be more transparent, as must the international banking system, so bribery can be exposed and stolen funds tracked down and recovered.
Third, private investment can also drive the citizens strategy. Proliferating mobile telephony is allowing Africans to leap digitally from the Third World into the First. Africa has tremendous renewable energy potential that is ripe for investment. African stocks have been doing well, although this has been barely noticed by investors abroad. This summer’s soccer World Cup in South Africa is an opportunity for a rising generation of African entrepreneurs to present this new image of their continent, a chance that must be seized. We propose a new “Africa Rising” fund to capture the moment – campaigners who once rightly called for disinvestment to help end the injustice of apartheid can now call for new investment to help fight the injustice of poverty.
These measures can increase the effects of much-needed new investments to boost education, agriculture and health and fight infectious diseases and climate change. Without them, reversals may occur. With China offering less democratic options for development, it is no longer politically incorrect to ask whether democracy really suits Africa. The situations in Kenya and Nigeria both show the challenges where growth takes place but most citizens are excluded.
This need not be Africa’s path, though. This year is the key moment to renew the right kind of Canadian, G8 and G20 support for citizen-led development.
When you have a minute, check out Canada’s new G8 website. The idea behind it is to give Canadians a chance to sound off and participate in June’s G8 summit which Canada will be hosting this year in the Muskoka Region.
A press release issued by the Canadian government frames the new website as “part of the [government's] goal to make the G8 process as transparent and accountable as possible.” The site will give the public a forum for open discourse about the summit as well as provide behind-the-scenes blogging.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper today has an op-ed laying out his priorities for the G8 ahead of the G20 Toronto summit in June. In it, he states that he believes “security concerns and human welfare” will be the focus of the G8 and talks about the need for “leaders of the world’s most developed economies to assist those in the most vulnerable positions.”
You can read the full op-ed here.
The plight of the people of Haiti concerns us all and the world’s response has been uplifting and encouraging. Within hours of the devastating earthquake demolishing the capital, governments around the world mobilized and coordinated a massive relief effort. Soon after, donations began pouring in as people opened their hearts and wallets to help. It serves as a reminder of the innate human kindness we hold toward one another.
Yet, it should not take a natural disaster to turn our attention to the less fortunate. The world’s poor have been hit hardest by the global economic downturn and in these difficult times we must address their pressing needs.
Indeed, all too frequently, tragedy strikes those who can least afford it. The lack of the most basic services can lead to dire consequences, especially for the world’s most vulnerable populations. Each year, it is estimated that 500,000 women lose their lives during pregnancy or childbirth. Further, an astonishing 9 million children die before their fifth birthday.
This is simply not acceptable. The United Nations had hoped to reduce the number of deaths related to pregnancy by 75 per cent by 2015 as part of its Millennium Development Goals. It now appears this target will go unfulfilled. What makes it worse is that the bulk of the deaths during pregnancy – experts claim as many as 80 per cent – are easily preventable. There is a pressing need for global action on maternal and child health.
As president of the G8 in 2010, Canada will champion a major initiative to improve the health of women and children in the world’s poorest regions. Members of the G8 can make a tangible difference in maternal and child health and Canada will be making this the top priority in June. Far too many lives and unexplored futures have already been lost for want of relatively simple health-care solutions.
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:
