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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
In his annual foreign policy speech to the Lord Mayor’s Banquet in London, Prime Minister Gordon Brown set out the five great challenges the world faces today. One of these challenges is meeting the Millennium Development Goals.
In the speech he said:
For now more than ever it is both our duty and in our interest to help meet the Millennium Development Goals. For we cannot solve climate change without Africa; nor can we solve the food crisis without Africa. We need a fully financed ‘energy for the poor’ initiative; where commercial sources of capital dry up support from the international institutions; and we need to support agricultural development in Africa, in the past feed the world meant that we helped to feed Africa. In future, if we do things right, we will do best by enabling Africa to feed the world.
He goes on to make some interesting statements in relation to sustainability and bringing the environment and development together:
This is why as we prepare for an ambitious post 2012 climate change agreement at Copenhagen, for which I pledge our Government’s unbending commitment, the European Union must, and I believe will, agree in December its ’2020′ programme for energy and climate and show European leadership at its best. And I want the World Bank to become a bank for environment as well as on development, helping developing countries move towards sustainable energy paths of their own.
It’s great news that the British Prime Minister has explicitly made the Millennium Development Goals one of his top foreign policy priorities. Let’s keep him to his word.
Here are a handful of articles we rounded up about this weekend’s G20 summit:
The Economist looks at this weekend’s G20 meeting, saying that while the rules of the global financial system cannot be rewritten in a five-hour powwow, some useful things can come out of the meeting, such as commitments on trade and on reforming the IMF.
Ban Ki-moon has appealed to leaders meeting at a financial summit in Washington this weekend not to let the global crisis become a “human tragedy” for people in poor countries. In a letter to leaders of the G20 Ban said, “The poorest and most vulnerable everywhere, but particularly in the developing countries, will be the most affected” by the world growth slowdown now being predicted. We need most of all to join forces to take immediate action to prevent the financial crisis from becoming a human tragedy.”
In Great Britain, Gordon Brown has called for a new international financial architecture, citing the Bretton Woods conference in 1944 as an example. The Bretton Woods agreement, which resulted in the creation of the IMF and World Bank, is particularly relevant today as we address the “need for global policy co-ordination in tackling” this financial crisis.
The New York Times editorial board today examines some of the challenges that confront the G20 during America’s presidential transition. The Times champions the need for all the participating 20 of the world’s leading economies to reach fundamental agreements as a platform to “begin a serious discussion about the roots of the financial crisis and set the stage for future meetings to discuss substantive reforms.”
I thought I should share some inside skinny on the week we spent in New York September 22-26 at the UN’s special summit on the Millennium Development Goals. We went there to try to attract some attention to – indeed celebrate – the efforts against extreme poverty in recent years, and to call for an acceleration of that progress.
Bono was frantically blogging for the Financial Times in every spare second throughout the week on his way to and from meetings with various leaders. The meetings were many: with Spanish President Zapatero to plan for their E.U. presidency in 2010; with President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf of Liberia to discuss their remaining private commercial debt (think that’s sorted now); with UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown to push on the overall Millennium Goals project; and with President Sarkozy of France and President Barroso of the EU to push Europe on delivering an extra billion euros from the EU budget to fight hunger and invest in agricultural productivity in Africa. Bob Geldof arrived a few days into the melee and participated on the opening panel of the Clinton Global Initiative, popped up on CNN, and met with Mayor Bloomberg, Bill Gates and others along the way.
One highlight was unveiling our “Celebrate Accelerate” video to a crowd of activists and leaders (including Bill Gates, Bob Geldof, Jeff Sachs) honoring the “quietest storm in town”: the UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon. Another, was dropping in on the “In My Name” launch where we regrouped with will.i.am and other activist allies.
An important part of the week was passing over ONE members’ hunger petition, with 50,000 signers, to Bob Orr, the Assistant Secretary General. The petition targets Ban Ki-moon, and all the G8 leaders, asking them to finance the current $1 billion gap in worldwide agricultural financing.
In addition to all of this, Kim Smith and a team of staff and volunteers brought the ONE Bus to town and, thanks to Mayor Bloomberg, parked it in some highly visible locations in the city.
By September 26th, it was clear it had been a decent week. In total there were $16 billion worth of commitments, some old, and some new, focused largely on building upon success to get more kids in school; eliminating malaria deaths by 2015 (yes, that’s got chutzpah – but by acting together it can be done); and renewing efforts against maternal mortality and hunger.
By investing in the fight against extreme poverty we can create new and stable markets where currently there are none; build strong global growth engines that can keep the global economy going when some of us falter; ensure strong health systems; and ensure that other’s instability doesn’t become ours. Above all – because it’s morally the right thing to do.
So now this piece of the campaign goes on to upcoming votes in Brussels on agriculture funding, and a key meeting about financing for development that is happening in Doha, Qatar, in the Middle East, at the end of November. We’ll keep you updated on both.
ONE is campaigning to ensure that the Congressional budget does not cut foreign assistance programs like Feed the Future that help people break the cycle of poverty and hunger.
The Horn of Africa is experiencing its worst drought in 60 years. More than 11 million people, mostly nomadic pastoralists and farmers in south-central Somalia, north-eastern Kenya, and south-eastern Ethiopia, are severely lacking access to food.
2011 marks 30 years since the first cases of AIDS were documented. Take a closer look at the specific, achievable goals we must hit by 2015 to make this year the beginning of the end of AIDS.
As aid agencies warn more than 9 million people could be affected by a food crisis in East Africa, world leaders are failing to keep their 2009 promises to tackle the causes of chronic hunger and support farmers in the world's poorest countries.
An important part of the week was passing over ONE members’ hunger petition, with 50,000 signers, to Bob Orr, the Assistant Secretary General. The petition targets Ban Ki-moon, and all the G8 leaders, asking them to finance the current $1 billion gap in worldwide agricultural financing.
