A team from ONE is going to Doha this week for the UN Financing for Development Conference. This is a follow-up conference to the 2002 conference, where the famous Monterrey Consensus (well, famous at least among development geeks like us) was adopted by the heads of states around the world. The “Follow-up International Conference on Financing for Development to Review the Implementation of the Monterrey Consensus” (phew, long name!) aims to “assess the progress made, reaffirm goals and commitments, share best practices and lessons learned and identify obstacles and constraints encountered, actions and initiatives to overcome them and important measures for further implementation, as well as new challenges and emerging issues”.

The Doha Conference occurs at an economically challenging time, but we are going to try our best to make sure that the rich countries don’t backtrack on their development promises, and to try to explore new opportunities for funding development. In particular, we are going to focus our efforts on the following points:

• G8 countries to reiterate their existing commitment to increase ODA and reassure developing countries that these will be forthcoming
• International community to explore concrete steps that can be taken to advance innovative financing mechanisms, including carbon finance for development
• Encourage new donors, especially oil exporting countries, to follow the example of Scandinavian and other countries, to spend more on fighting poverty

Stay tuned to the ONE Blog for updates from our team on the ground in Doha!

-Mikiko Imai

UPDATE: ONE’s policy brief for Doha conference.

The G8 Summit closed yesterday and I’m already back in Tokyo which feels a bit strange. The final day was once again busy but interesting. The G8 Chair’s summary was released by Prime Minister Fukuda of Japan, and leaders of the G8 held their press conferences. Meanwhile, we delivered our final verdict on the Summit - Bob Geldof was our unofficial ‘spokesperson’ for the day and he really worked hard to get the message out, being interviewed by journalists from as far afield as Russia and the Middle East as well as the more usual suspects.

The media centre thinned out early evening - leaders had headed back home, and many journalists and organisations followed suit. Others were headed for beers, including us! The NGOs had a small get-together at the canteen nearby - it was such a relief to stop for a moment and bond over drinks and food with our friends and colleagues.

Some were celebrating victories, while others were outraged by the result. We can however all claim at least one important albeit small victory – the media coverage of civil society opinions and activities at the G8 this year has been very high, which we didn’t really anticipate. Especially in Japan, where advocacy is still a new concept and NGOs have struggled to be recognized as a credible voice. Hokkaido has been different in this respect – major media outlets have all carried stories and news articles on these ‘outside’ opinions daily. It’s not without problems of course - the Japanese government has refused entry of at least 19 activists into the country – but this year highlighted that NGOs are now established as an integral part of the G8 Summit process and that our voices really do matter.

ONE’s final verdict was that the “G8 post small gains to the poorest, but little that’s new.” While there was some progress, much more needs to be done if the G8 countries are serious about achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), an internationally agreed set of goals that if delivered could save millions of lives.

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I just send this email out to ONE members:

I’ve been on the ground in Hokkaido, Japan, making sure leaders of the G8 heard your voice as they gathered for their annual summit this week. The result has been mixed…

Before the summit, the Financial Times leaked that the G8 may backtrack on their 2005 Gleneagles commitments to the world’s poorest. But thanks in no small part to a massive outcry from around the world  - over a million people in 190 countries, including nearly 200,000 ONE members through our 2 petitions - they reaffirmed their promises.

Unfortunately, reaffirming their promises doesn’t address the fact that their commitments are not being backed up by money. Germany, the UK, and the US are doing well in delivering their part, but the other countries are lagging behind, and dragging down the group as a whole. 

We’ve helped stop the G8 from slipping back, and encouraged them to take some small steps forward. But they didn’t meet our request to deliver on their promises, nor did they set a timeline for spending $10 billion in pledged agricultural aid.

The G8 still have the chance to hit the targets they set for themselves, and we’ll have more opportunities to pressure them to do so in the coming months.

Thank you for taking part,

- Roxane Philson, ONE.org

Day 2 of the G8 Summit, and it was a key day for the G8 as well as for ONE. A very early start saw, our friend Bob Geldof and a couple of my ONE colleagues meet Prime Minister Gordon Brown of the UK, President George W. Bush of the U.S., Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, as well as top level government officials from other G8 countries to give a last push to agree something big and meaningful for the problems in African and other developing countries. This was our last chance - an agreement on it was due to be reached by the afternoon.

In the afternoon, the ONE team, other NGOs, media, and Bob (in between his busy afternoon of media interviews) all waited with great anticipation for the G8 Summit statements to start coming forward. Apparently, this year was unusual in that the statements were being released to us topic by topic. The first came in the early afternoon, and it was an agreement on the World Economy, followed by a statement on the Environment.

Then, at around 5pm, the agreement on Development and Africa and the statement on Global Food Security were finally released. It was war against time after that - a number of possible outcomes had already been anticipated, and we had been sharing our positions according to different scenarios with our NGO colleagues by then. So when the agreement was finally out, our team all went silent for a few minutes to read the agreements - word by word, then a quick chat with our NGO colleagues, followed by a relatively brief but meaningful conference call with our colleagues in London and in (very early) Washington to finalise our position. We had to get the press release on our reaction out quickly to the media, so that they could include it with their news article on the agreement.

An hour later, when I finished going around the media centre handing out the press release, I finally took a deep breath. As a first timer to the G8 Summit, the whole intensity of it was very new to me.

The outcomes were mixed. A few countries are showing genuine commitment and leadership - the US, UK and Germany, but others are letting the side down. There were a few new stepping stones that we hope will make it even more likely they will deliver on their important promises - a commitment to provide critically needed health workers; 100 million anti-malaria bednets which should save hundreds of thousand of lives; and acceptance that as a group they must be more accountable, highlighting education and water as focus areas. (You can read our press release on the G8 outcomes here).

I have to say, it was personally one of the most interesting days that I’ve had. I felt a real buzz in me to be at the core of where the information of today’s global news was being gathered and honored to represent ONE. It’s just such a shame that none of us felt a true buzz regarding the G8 summit agreement itself…

-Mikiko Imai

On the second day of the Japan summit, G8 leaders promised to pursue targeted sanctions against members of the Zimbabwean government.

G8 leaders pledged, in an official statement to “take further steps…introducing financial and other measures against those individuals responsible for violence.” They also called for a special UN Security Council envoy to report on the situation in Zimbabwe and help mediate.

For the past week, the US and UK have been pushing for the UN Security Council to tighten targeted sanctions. The BBC reports that a sanctions package is expected to be presented to the UN by the weekend and that Russia, which has traditionally been against such sanctions, will not oppose it.

African leaders have expressed reservations against sanctions, favoring some sort of power-sharing unity government, which they called for last week at a two-day African Union Summit in Egypt.

Zimbabwe’s state media reported today that interparty-talks were to resume under the mediation of South African President Thabo Mbeki.

Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai maintains that his party will not resume talks until the current Zimbabwe government halts all political violence and accepts that Tsvangirai won the first round of elections on March 29.

-Nora Coghlan

In Japan today, the G8 released its agreements on Development and Africa and also Food Security. The bulk of the agreements reiterate previous pledges, rather than promising major new initiatives to get the group on track to meet their promises.

There is a new effort to tackle the global food crisis, although the $10 billion pledged since January for agricultural development has no delivery date. The commitment to create a global partnership on agriculture includes some promising elements, but a lot of work needs to be done to turn it into a meaningful response to the food crisis.

Agreement to provide $60 billion over five years to fight disease globally, although a large sum, does not reflect a substantial increase in real terms. This is the same $60 billion announced at the last G8 in 2007 without a time line attached. Nevertheless, agreement to increase the number of health workers in developing countries to a WHO recommended minimum of 2.3/1000 people is welcome.

Progress reports for the next G8 on education spending and on water are signs of a new G8 awareness that their credibility is at risk in Africa and represents welcome developments on accountability to be followed up by Italy as the G8 chair in 2009.

There are some more details in ONE’s recent press release and we’ll be posting more analysis of the agreements here in a bit.

-Nora Coghlan

The G8 Summit kicked-off today in rainy Toyako and first on the agenda, happily for us, was Africa. The G8 leaders, 7 African leaders and heads of the African Union, UN and the World Bank met for a working lunch and into the afternoon.

We know that African leaders spoke to the G8 leaders about the importance of keeping their commitments, especially for increasing devleopment assistance to Africa. But, as yet, no clear announcements have been made. We expect some outputs from the G8 on Africa and Development tomorrow as well as a statement on the food crisis – I am keeping my fingers firmly crossed for positive outcomes.

Our own ONE campaigning kicked-off in style too. This morning, Max Lawson and Takumo Yamada from Oxfam and our own Olly Buston packed the room for a media briefing on the G8 and Africa. Olly talked about the G8 countries’ mixed performances on aid - and highlighted the importance of boosting investment in health and agriculture. “The G8 promised at the Gleneagles summit in 2005 in Scotland to boost aid to Africa by a further $25 billion by 2010. But so far the G8 has boosted development assistance to Africa by only $3 billion - It’s fair to say the progress so far has been desperately slow,” he said to an audience of international reporters.

Our other highlight of the day was Bob Geldof’s arrival in Hokkaido in the late afternoon. Even after a long journey from London to Tokyo, another flight to the northern island of Hokkaido and a two hours drive once he landed, his mind was completely focused on the G8 and African issues. Expect to hear a lot more from him tomorrow.

-Mikiko Imai

European Union head Barroso announced today that the E.U. will be channeling 1 billion euros (the equivalent of 1.6 billion US dollars) in unused-farm subsidies to farmers in Africa. The proposal must still be approved by the 27 EU member countries and the European Parliament, but could begin operating in January.

From Reuters’:

“The EU really can give a boost to agriculture in developing countries,” European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said on the first day of a meeting of G8 rich nations’ leaders in northern Japan, where soaring food prices are high on the agenda.

The Reuters article also spoke with our own Oliver Buston of our UK ONE office.

“A lot of things about Europe’s agricultural policies are not great for Africa, but this is a really positive step,” said Oliver Buston, a spokesman for the anti-poverty One Campaign.

“We hope it will encourage EU member states to raise their own commitment bilaterally and also encourage the rest of the G8 to do more.”

-Virginia Simmons

[photo credit: Oxfam Japan]

Ahead of the 2008 G8 Summit which starts tomorrow, the leaders of Canada, Italy, Russia and U.S. all arrived today in the northern island of Hokkaido. But they weren’t the only ones. Hokkaido is hosting NGOs and civil society organizations that have been gathering in the past couple of days from all over the world. Yesterday, some of these NGOs and several thousand citizens staged a demonstration march in the center of Sapporo, the capital city of Hokkaido, to promote their hopes for world peace and greater equality. Check out the people from Oxfam Japan above, wearing large G8-leader masks and yukatas (cotton kimonos) requesting the G8 nations to tackle international problems in earnest.

I also landed in Hokkaido today, and headed straight to the International Media Centre (IMC) of the G8 Summit. The IMC is in Rusutu, a good two hours drive away from the main airport in Hokkaido. I knew I was close when I started seeing rows of security vans and guards in the middle of Japanese countryside. Apparently Japan has spent $280m on security for the G8… Our team set ourselves up in the main hall of the IMC. The place was only 75% full, but during the course of the day and evening, more and more journalists, camera/video men, and NGO guys like us arrived and catching up with each other in their different languages.

The big interest in the IMC today, at least for the Japanese and American journalists, was the bilateral meeting between Prime Minister Fukuda and President Bush. We were glued to the small TV screen listening to the live coverage of the press conference, being held at Toyako. I was happy to hear President Bush passionately say that there is too much suffering in Africa and that G8 must take firm actions to help Africa fight HIV/AIDS and other illnesses. I do hope that he and other G8 leaders follow through with this and make a firm, deliverable commitment this year… Well, I’ll certainly be keeping a close eye on it in the days to come.

-Mikiko Imai

I’ve just come back from an afternoon tea party on maternal health issues hosted by the wives of two G8 leaders - Mrs. Sarah Brown, wife of the British Prime Minister and Mrs. Kiyoko Fukuda, wife of the Japanese Prime Minister. Mrs. Brown, a Patron of the White Ribbon Alliance, flew in a day earlier than her husband (who’s coming to Japan for the G8, just in case anyone’s wondering…) to talk about maternal health alongside Mrs. Fukuda.

In Mrs. Brown’s speech, she talked about the devastating situation surrounding expectant mothers, babies and infant children in developing countries and how neglected this issue is - the global goal to reduce the number of mothers dying in childbirth by three-quarters by 2015 has made absolutely no progress. She cited the global shortage of 4 million health workers and appealed for the G8 to answer to the calls to secure the investments in women’s health care needed to save lives at the forthcoming Summit in Hokkaido.