Kenyan health worker Pauline greets patients at her clinic. Photo: Morgana Wingward
“Ending extreme poverty” may sound like a broad phrase and an impossible task, but our policy analysts have identified 14 development milestones that will ultimately help us achieve this goal by 2030. These 14 hopes are just that – hopes – but with your support and action, we really can make the end of extreme poverty a reality.
1. Ensure new support for vaccines. To help drive down preventable child deaths, we need to ensure new support from government donors to The GAVI Alliance. The GAVI Alliance has already supported the immunisation of 440 million children and saved 6 million lives. Later this year, government donors will likely be asked again to step up and make new commitments to GAVI—and we’ll be there to remind them why the programme is such a worthy investment.
2. Keep the drum beating on AIDS, TB and malaria. Government donors gathered in 2013 to pledge more than $12 million to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria between 2014 and 2016. This year, ONE will be holding governments’ feet to the fire on these promises, while also putting pressure on governments like Australia and Germany, who still have room to increase their contribution.
3. More transparency in global health systems. At any given point, one donor might be providing pills and medicines, while another donor is helping pay for the hospitals and clinics, while the host government is paying for the nurses and doctors. If a patient receives health services in that environment, who gets to take credit, and for what? And how do we ensure that the services are provided in a cost-effective way?
4. Stop using the phrase “AIDS in Africa.” Seriously. We mean it!
5. Bring energy access to 50 million: 2014 marks the start of the UN Decade for Sustainable Energy for All and early in the year we hope a US Senate version of the Electrify Africa Act is introduced. Following this and with your support, we are confident that this can be passed into US law at some point in 2014 – bringing energy access for the first time to 50 million people in Africa by 2020.
6. Increase the recognition of the importance of energy access in development. Outside the US,Europe will continue to expand its Africa–EU energy partnership to bring electricity to 100 million people in Africa, there will be developments in global energy access tracking frameworks, and the importance of energy access will play a central role in post 2015 new development agenda discussions.
7. Work to support a post-2015 New Development Agenda that delivers for Africa: Following ONE’s work in 2013 calling for the New Development Agenda to be informed by the needs of those actually living in poverty (See: What the World Wants and You Choose) and then ensuring the new development agenda is open and accountable (See: Open for Development), ONE will be increasing our engagement on the New Development Agenda. We’ll be building momentum and support for leaders to reach an agreement in 2015 that truly delivers for people living in poverty.
8. Make sure our African Year of Agriculture campaign takes off. We will work with our partners to launch a new campaign to commemorate the 2014 African Union Year of Agriculture. The campaign will call for an agricultural revolution in Africa that will boost productivity, increase incomes, and help lift millions out of poverty over the coming decades.
9. Ramp up our support for the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP), an innovative multilateral fund that supports agricultural development in the world’s poorest countries. We’ll encourage donors to step up their financial support for GAFSP, which has shown promising results so far.
10. Get that $4.1 billion to fight malnutrition. We will help ensure donors, civil society, and the private sector follow through on the $4.1 billion commitment they made to fight child and maternal malnutrition at June’s historic Nutrition for Growth event.
11. Crack down on phantom firms. This year, our goal is for the European Union to take decisive action to crack down on the use of phantom firms by money launderers, tax evaders, arms dealers and drug traffickers, by requiring information about who owns and controls companies and trusts to be made public. The US, having seen the European Union take the lead, will hopefully follow suit.
12. Publish what you pay. We hope that the US and Canada deliver on commitments made to require oil, gas and mining companies registered on their stock exchanges to make public the payments they make to governments where those resources are extracted.
13. Keep the fight against corruption going. We hope that the G20 – when it meets in Australia in November – builds on the transparency wins delivered by the G8 in 2013, on extractives transparency, tax transparency and the fight against phantom firms.
14. Read our policy analysis. Stay on top of our issues by checking our policy page – you’ll get loads of in-depth analysis and coverage of our global health, transparency, agriculture and energy issues.
Special thanks to the policy team for bringing these wishes together!
Ready to make these 14 hopes a reality? Become a ONE member and join 3.5 million others in the fight against extreme poverty.