Italy
Limber up! We want you to try and throw Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi out of the G8 because he’s let us down once again…We’ve even made a cheeky little game to give you some practice!
We all love a bit of fun, but there’s a serious point to the game – since promising to increase aid to Africa in 2005 PM Berlusconi has actually cut it. spanking new DATA report puts him firmly at the bottom of the class.
On a brighter note, some G8 countries have actually made real strides despite the tough times, and these investments have helped to give over 40 million children in Africa an education and halved malaria deaths in a number of countries.
So, enjoy the game (my top score is 8720) and please pass on to let people know that we don’t just believe in promises but delivery too.
The G8 Summit in Italy has been going on for half a day and already the first of a reported 10 communiques has been released.
In predictable fashion, the release of the communique covering the world economy, climate change and development was of great interest to us, and we quickly issued this reaction to it yesterday.
While the scramble for the communique was going on, a group of over 100 journalists were shepherded into an auditorium to meet with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
On development, Berlusconi started by recalling that the Global Fund stands out as a success of the Summit in Genoa, having saved millions of lives since it was founded in 2001. He also said that the 2009 dues would be paid by the end of the year. Otherwise, he referred vaguely to a commitment to increase aid.
No mountains have been moved yet, but we’re working to keep the pressure on for a better outcome tomorrow. More soon!
-Eloise Todd
The G8 Summit in L’Aquila just released the communiqué, which we’re now in the process of reading and analyzing. We’ll have further analysis soon, but in the meantime wanted to share with you this reaction from ONE’s Oliver Buston:
We welcome the fact that the G8 are focusing on accountability this year – announcing a new more in-depth way of reporting back on their development commitments. But what the world’s poorest people need now is not a re-cooking of old promises or yet more plans. They need immediate action, especially from G8 host Italy. Prime Minister Berlusconi now has two days to reverse his disastrous aid cuts and salvage his credibility. The G8 as a whole can show they are serious by announcing significant new money for African agriculture on Friday, and ensuring it is spent effectively.
As we mentioned earlier, ONE is calling on the Italian Government to immediately:
- Reverse its €411 million aid cut
- Provide an extra €350 million for agriculture
- Pay up their dues for 2009 to the Global Fund To Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria.
We’ll have more on this soon!
-Chris Scott
We’ve arrived! A team of us from ONE are now in L’Aquila, Italy for this year’s G8 Summit.
The journalists, NGOs and others have all started arriving, with the 3 day summit officially starting tomorrow.
Tomorrow morning ONE are holding a joint press briefing with Oxfam, which will cover Africa, development and food security issues in relation to the G8.
We’ll be writing a bit more over the coming days so keep checking back!
-Jessica Gomez-Duran
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
Bob Geldof will be guest editing the Italian newspaper “La Stampa” this weekend as part of ONE’s campaign to encourage Italy to improve its record on Africa when it hosts the G8 summit next week.
La Stampa is a respected Italian newspaper based in Turin in northern Italy. Its editor has turned over Sunday’s paper to a dedicated Africa/G8 edition. It will feature stories on a wide range of African themes, and contributions from prominent African, Italian and global figures including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Bono, Kofi Annan and Sophia Loren.
So far Italy has delivered just three per cent of the development aid to Africa it promised at the 2005 Gleneagles Summit. ONE is calling on Prime Minister Berlusconi to seize the opportunity of next week’s summit to turn around this abysmal record or forfeit all credibility as G8 host.
-Helen Palmer
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
