Jessica Gomez-Duran from ONE’s UK office checks in with this exciting development from the Labour Party Conference in Brighton:

Yesterday was a pretty incredible day. And no it wasn’t because the sun was actually shining in the UK (although that is pretty incredible). The Labour Party Conference is happening in Brighton this week and yesterday the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown made his big 59 minute speech to Labour supporters and the UK population more generally.

During his speech, Gordon Brown announced that the UK’s commitment to spend 0.7 per cent of national income on development assistance will become law under forthcoming legislation.

As the Prime Minister stated, “And let me say what was once an aspiration – 0.7% of national income spent on international development aid, has become with Labour a promise, and will in future become a law. We will pass legislation that the British government is obliged to raise spending on aid to the poorest countries to 0.7% of our national income. Others may break their promises to the poorest, with Labour Britain never will.”

This is a significant step and it will contribute hugely towards the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. We welcome this great news here at ONE but we will of course be working to ensure that money to help Africa adapt to climate change will be above and beyond the 0.7 per cent and not included within it, as well as making sure that the aid is spent effectively.

You can read the full transcript of his speech here.

-Jessica Gomez-Duran

After all today’s activity in New York at the U.N. and Clinton Global Initiative, and before the world’s attention turns to the G20 Summit in Pittsburgh tomorrow, I wanted to flag two pieces of great news on global health that came out this afternoon, which you—understandably—probably missed.

First, it was announced that an extra $1 billion has been secured in support of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), which funds major programs to protect children from preventable diseases, such as pneumonia, measles, meningitis and diarrheal diseases. U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown helped make the announcement today during one of the many events in New York. GAVI will use the additional funding not only to support and distribute more vaccinations to save more children’s lives from these diseases, but also to improve health systems in comprehensive ways in poor countries.

ONE sees this as an especially important announcement in light of the fact of last week’s historic UNICEF report on child mortality, which found the number of children dying before their fifth birthdays each year had been cut to the lowest level ever on record—8.8 million. This progress was largely thanks to scaled up support for relatively inexpensive solutions, many of which GAVI supports, such as vaccinations and supplements.

However, the UNICEF report also found that although great gains were made thanks to the targeting of many major diseases, a lack of investment in pneumonia and diarrheal diseases have made them the two main causes of children’s deaths worldwide. Today’s $1 billion announcement means that vaccines that can help prevent deaths from these two diseases—which account for 3 million deaths each year—will be available soon at greatly reduced costs through GAVI.

As ONE’s President David Lane said in a press release ONE put out: “We know how to stop deaths from pneumonia and diarrheal diseases, but these conditions are the biggest killers of children under five. Today’s GAVI announcement is an important step to accelerate progress in areas where we’ve seen big results, but will also target more diseases that so far have not been targeted and that needlessly take the lives of children.”

The second big announcement was a new airline ticket program that will allow you to voluntarily contribute $2 each time you fly to help fight global disease. The program was announced today, also in New York, by the U.N. agency UNITAID, which is attached to the World Health Organization. UNITAID helps reduce the costs of treatment for HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, making these lifesaving medicines available to those that need them.

As David Lane said in the press release: “Paying $2 to help save lives in the fight against preventable disease sure beats baggage fees.”

The initiative, which in particular will help fight HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis in Africa as well as help improve maternal health, is backed by several major travel industry companies, the Clinton Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Recipients of the donations will include UNICEF and the Clinton Foundation. It looks like you can expect to see the initiative start at airports this January.

We expect lots more news in the days ahead, so stay tuned to the blog. To read more about ONE’s reaction to today’s two announcements, you can see ONE’s full press release here.

-Steve Wilson

Jessica from our UK office brings us this great bit of news!

In a packed House of Commons today, the Chancellor delivered the annual budget. We had been waiting eagerly to see what the results would be for development aid. With the current economic downturn affecting everyone, some worried that the development pot would be raided.

At lunchtime, we found out that Gordon Brown and Alastair Darling have kept their promise to the world’s poorest- they did not roll back their spending commitments even in these tough times. Chancellor Alistair Darling said Britain’s Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) budget would be £7.48bn for 2009/10 and £9.14bn for 2010/11, as proposed in last year’s Comprehensive Spending Review.

What does that mean? It means that the UK is still on track to keep its promise to devote 0.56% of national income to effective overseas aid by 2010. This is great news!

In reaction to the news, ONE Executive Director Jamie Drummond said the following:

“The Prime Minister and the Chancellor have shown true global leadership in keeping Britain’s promises to the world’s poorest. Britain is setting the standard for other G8 countries at a time of global crisis when effective overseas assistance has an even more vital role to play.

“This pledge reflects the British public’s firm belief that effective international aid is a smart investment in a fairer, more prosperous world.”

-Jessica Gomez-Duran

A couple hours ago British Prime Minister Gordon Brown held a global press conference at the London G20 Summit, and right now, US President Barack Obama is holding one as well (which ONE’s Virginia Simmons is currently attending.)

Here are some important excerpts from Brown and Obama’s speeches:

Brown:

This time of financial crisis is no time to walk away from our commitments to the world’s poorest. So when people are suffering – and, yet, it is within our capacity to help – we will not pass by on the other side. We remain firmly committed to meeting the millennium development goals and all of our pledges on aid. To deal with this crisis we have today asked the IMF to bring forward proposals to use the proceeds of agreed gold sales to support low income countries. So in total we have now reached agreements worth $50 billion for the poorest countries – alongside our support for a world bank vulnerability fund.

Obama:

Finally, we are protecting those who don’t always have a voice at the G-20, but who have suffered greatly in this crisis. The United States is ready to lead in this endeavor. In the coming days, I will work with Congress to provide $448 million in immediate assistance to vulnerable populations, and to double support for agricultural development to over $1 billion so that we are giving people the tools they need to lift themselves out of poverty. We will also support the United Nations and World Bank as they coordinate the rapid assistance necessary to prevent humanitarian catastrophe. This is not just charity though. These are future markets for all countries, and future drivers of growth.

-Chris Scott

Today members of the ONE team attended a debate, My word is my bond? Rebuilding trust – the G20 and beyond, at the iconic St Paul’s Cathedral in London. UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd both spoke and answered questions from the audience in a panel chaired by the Bishop of London. It was also the last public speech Mr Brown is to make before the G20 Summit on Thursday.

Gordon Brown told faith leaders and NGO representatives that the world must adopt global economic rules based on common values. He said that the leaders of the G20 need to make decisions that will shape the global economy in the interests of everybody with “shared global rules founded on shared global values”. He went on to say, “I believe that both markets and governments have a responsibility to serve the public interest, that the poor are our shared responsibility and that wealth carries unique responsibilities too.”

In his speech, Gordon Brown set out what he deemed our four biggest challenges facing the world today:

1. Financial and economic instability
2. Environmental degradation
3. Violent extremism
4. Extreme poverty

Most notably for our issues, the UK Prime Minister explicitly said that “we must never ever forget our obligations to the poor” and added that “even while others may use this financial crisis as an excuse […] nothing will divert the United Kingdom from keeping to our commitments to the Millennium Development Goals and to our promises of development and aid” – a statement which roused the audience and delivered the loudest applause.

To close the debate, both Prime Ministers were asked what their final message would be to this audience before the G20 Summit. Interestingly, Kevin Rudd said that we shouldn’t let the Millennium Development Goals slide and that they must be core business for every government. He also went to say that Gordon Brown was the “collective conscience of the West” and that he always has it on the agenda and is continuously engaged on this subject.

This is all great to hear, particularly on the eve of such a significant summit, now it just remains to see what does actually get agreed upon on Thursday. We will be blogging increasingly as the week progresses and keeping you all updated so do check in regularly!

See ONE’s reaction to the St Paul’s debate here.

View Gordon Brown’s speech at St Paul’s here.

-Jessica Gomez-Duran

Prime Minister Gordon Brown undertook a whirlwind pre-G20 tour from 24th to 29th March which took him to Strasbourg, New York, Brasilia, Sao Paulo and Santiago.

In New York, Gordon Brown met with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and in the press conference afterwards both of them said they were committed to helping the world’s poorest nations at the G20. Ban Ki-Moon wrote a letter to all the leaders of the G20 in which he asks them to commit to a large fiscal stimulus for developing countries. He said:

‘G20 countries should commit to sustaining an international stimulus package on top of their national stimulus packages. It needs to be of a very substantial size.’

In the third leg of his trip, the Prime Minister held talks with the Brazilian President, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, as well as leading business figures. On Friday, Mr Brown and President Lula agreed to call for countries breaking free-trade agreements to be named, and for the G20 to provide $100 billion in trade credit.

In the final leg of the tour, Gordon Brown met President Michelle Bachelet of Chile and discussed the key issues covered by the London Summit, including avoiding protectionism during this financial crisis. Whilst in Chile, Prime Minister attended the Progressive Governance Conference, which was also attended by Presidents Bachelet and Lula, Argentina’s President Cristina Kirchner, and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. For more information on this conference, see here.

-Jessica Gomez-Duran

Helping to set the stage for the G20 Summit in London in April, the UK Department for International Development (DFID) held a conference this week titled Eliminating World Poverty: Building our Common Future. The video below shows some of the highlights from the three keynote speeches delivered by Development Secretary Douglas Alexander, Sir Bob Geldof, and Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

All three speakers made a case about the progress that we’ve made and the potentially devastating impact the financial crisis could have on the world’s most vulnerable people if we don’t continue to take action. This point was reinforced by research that DFID released at the conference showing that the crisis threatens to push 90 million more people into extreme poverty.

-Weldon Kennedy

Today British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is in Washington, DC where he addressed the US Congress just a few hours ago. In his remarks, the Prime Minister spoke at length about extreme global poverty, particularly about the need for education.

Below are some excerpts from his delivered remarks, full transcript here

And let us not forget the poorest.

In the Rwandan Museum of genocide, there is a memorial to the countless children who were among those murdered in the massacres in Rwanda.

And there is a portrait of a child, David. The words beneath him are brief yet they weigh on me heavily.

It says name David, age 10, favourite sport football, enjoyed making people laugh, dream to become a doctor, cause of death tortured to death, last words – the UN will come for us.

But we never did. That David believed the best of us, that he was wrong is to our eternal discredit.

We tend to think of a day of judgement as a moment to come. But our faith tells us, as a writer says, that judgement is more than that.

It is a summary court in perpetual session and when I visit those bare, rundown yet teeming classrooms across Africa, they are full of children, like our children, desperate to learn.

At their best, our values tell us that we cannot be wholly content while others go without, cannot be fully comfortable while millions go without comfort, cannot be truly happy while others grieve alone.

And this too is true All of us know that in a recession the wealthiest, the ten most powerful and the most privileged can find a way through for themselves.

So we do not value the wealthy less when we say that our first duty is to help the not so wealthy.

We do not value the powerful less when we say that our first responsibility is to help the powerless. And we do not value those who are secure less when we say that our first priority must be to help the insecure.

-Chris Scott

Jessica, Emily, and I just returned from Number 10 Downing Street in London where we delivered two petitions to Gordon Brown. The first, was the Include Africa petition, asking the Prime Minister to invite a representative from the African Union (AU) to the G20 summit in April. 51,583 ONE members around the world, including 2,333 from right here in the United Kingdom.

However, while we were working with Downing Street to arrange delivery of that petition, the Prime Minister reached out to the AU at their annual summit, and invited them to participate in the G20 summit. Since we already had the delivery date for our original petition set, we thought that rather than just delivering our old petition, we’d add in a thank you note to the Prime Minister for taking the initiative. 32,319 ONE members around the world, including 1,104 in the UK, signed that thank you message.

Altogether we delivered around 2,000 sheets of signatures from tens of thousands of ONE members, all printed double sided to save some paper. I feel great knowing that because we all raised our voices together, there will now be a voice speaking on behalf of the 53 nations of the African Union at this important summit.

-Weldon Kennedy

At midday in the UK yesterday, Gordon Brown launched a report entitled ‘The Road to the London G20 Summit’ which is essentially a plan or outline of how we are going to get the global economy back on track.

The report clearly presents the priorities for the G20 and what will be tackled at the summit on 2nd April. This global new deal includes increased resources for the IMF, reform of financial institutions, and a call for developed countries to meet their commitments to boost aid to developing countries.

This is a positive step in the right direction, with the report stating the following:

So the international community must respond quickly to help the most vulnerable. First, by ensuring continued progress towards the Millennium Development Goals. Second, through increased support to middle- and low-income countries from the Multilateral Development Banks. Third, by both targeting support towards investment in employment and social protection and meeting our aid-for-trade commitments, helping the poorest countries – and their citizens – to take advantage of, and play their full role in supporting, the opportunities of global economic recovery.

You can read the report here.

-Jessica Gomez-Duran