President Bush just finished addressing the UN Assembly in New York. During his remarks he pushed for stronger economic and HIV/AIDS fighting initiatives in Africa. He noted that “every country and institution that provides foreign assistance including the United Nations will be more effective by showing faith in the people of the developing world and insisting on performance in return for aid ”while asking countries to “adopt a model of partnership not paternalism.”
He also spoke at length about PEPFAR (the President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief):
Every nation that receives American support through this initiative develops its own plan for fighting HIV aids and measures the results. And so far these results are inspiring. 5 years ago 50,000 people in Sub-Saharan Africa were receiving treatment for HIV/AIDS. Today that number is nearly 1.7 million. We’re taking a similar approach to fighting malaria, and so far we’ve supported local efforts to protect more than 25 million Africans. …All [nations] who have made pledges to fight disease have an obligation to follow through on their commitments.
The full clip can be found here.
-Chris Scott
Bono has been blogging today from the United Nations’s Summit on the MDG’s in NYC. The below post he wrote after meeting with the President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy. You can read his complete posts at FT.com.
Tough meeting with the Président de la République of France. He’s a tough guy. We like tough guys because they get straight down to business. They don’t waste their time or yours. The French budget is out this Friday and in it we will see if France intends continuing its leadership role on the continent of Africa. In the last few years, French aid has been falling.
My point was that as much as Africa needs French aid and the energy that Sarkozy himself provides, he/we need Africa. Why? Africa has never been so strategically important as it is now, economically and politically. Just ask…
Read the full post here.
-Virginia Simmons
Right now, 30 countries are in immediate need of emergency food assistance and essential seeds and fertilizer.
As world leaders meet in NYC this week to discuss the Millennium Development Goals at the UN Summit, ONE members are signing a petition to the G8 leaders asking them to commit critical funding to address the world food crisis. Without addressing this crisis now – all other poverty-fighting efforts will be blunted.
If you haven’t already, please sign today. And if you have, please forward this on to your friends.
Petition text:
Please provide life-saving food and essential seeds and fertilizer to the 30 countries that need it most by filling the 2008 food and agriculture funding gap of $1 billion without delay.
-Virginia Simmons
All this week, Bono and Jeffrey Sachs will be blogging for the Financial Times from the United Nation’s summit on the Millennium Development Goals.
As a precursor, the Financial Times conducted a Q & A with Bono. An excerpt is below, and the full piece is at FT.com.
AB: What is this week [and the Millennium Development Goals summit] all about?
Bono: Most of us woke up on New Year’s Day 2000 with a hangover and a hazy memory of a night of pleasant fanfare and dumb parade. However, the new millennium was also celebrated by our commitment to eight goals that would change the planet and demonstrate to the developing world how we might, through a combination of know-how and resources, partner with them in efforts to help millions out of desperate poverty. We gave ourselves 15 years, we’re halfway there. How do we measure up?
AB: What are the two or three goals you want to achieve this week?
Bono: 1. Blogging for the FT, being your roving reporter in the canyons of Manhattan. While the world upends on Wall Street, I’ll be mostly midtown at the UN and the Clinton Global Initiative talking about the resilience of the world’s poor while the world’s rich find out how fragile life can be.
2. Unlock €1bn of unspent European Union Common Agricultural Policy money. This year our farmers don’t qualify for it, food prices are high. African farmers desperately need it.
3. Show what’s working as well as what’s not. Bad news about Africa travels much farther than good news. There will be a historic and innovative announcement on malaria on Thursday – watch out for it. Thanks to debt relief, aid and African leadership, 29m more children are going to school.
Read the full Q & A here.
For the weekend of September 20th and 21st the ONE Bus took the Big Apple by storm! New York City was hosting a week of meetings surrounding the United Nations Millennium Development Goals and ONE decided to get a head start on the meetings and hit the streets to get the word out about the fight for the world’s poorest people.
On Saturday we were on Fifth Avenue and 58th street and on Sunday we were right on Broadway and 52nd Street- both proved to be great locations with lots of people to talk with about ONE and the MDG’s.
-Kim Smith
