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G8: Leaders Produce More Than NGOs Expected

Ramesh Jaura

TOYAKO, Japan, Jul 8 2008 (IPS) - Three key documents – on African development, food security, and corruption – emerging Tuesday from the summit of major industrial nations’ leaders seem to have taken non-governmental organisations (NGOs) by surprise in delivering more than expected, even if they did not please all.

In a document titled ‘Development and Africa’ the G8 countries (Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Japan, Canada and the United States) “firmly committed (themselves) to working to fulfil their pledges on official development assistance (ODA) made at Gleneagles (three years ago), and reaffirmed at Heiligendamm, including increasing, compared to 2004, with other donors, ODA to Africa by 25 billion dollars a year by 2010.”

And they went a step further: “We acknowledge that ODA from G8 and other donors to Africa should be reassessed and may need to be increased for the period after 2010, beyond our current commitments.”

Several NGOs had expressed the fear that the Jul. 7-9 G8 in Toyako on the northern Japanese island Hokkaido would backtrack on earlier commitments, leaving Africa in stark need of funds.

The document made commitments in other areas. “We reiterate our commitment to continue efforts to work towards the goals of providing at least a projected 60 billion dollars over five years to fight infectious diseases and strengthen health. Some countries will provide additional resources for health systems including water.”

This drew criticism from a coalition of HIV/AIDS and health organisations. “An existing commitment from the 2007 G8 summit to spend 60 billion dollars ‘over the coming years’ on AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and health systems has been weakened by the G8 meeting into a broad health spending pledge over five years, that is completely inadequate when compared to developing countries’ needs,” said Asia Russell of Health GAP, a U.S. NGO campaigning for global AIDS treatment.

Paola Giuliani of the Italian Network Against AIDS said that conservative investments of the G8 fair share of funding for strengthening AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and health systems alone are at least 173 billion dollars over five years.

“The G8 has negotiated countless hours over this pledge – only to commit to a target and timeline that do not require the massive increases in health spending needed now to fight the world’s leading killers,” Giuliani added.

Emmanuel Trenado of AIDES, a French AIDS NGO, said that the G8 has year after year merely acknowledged the health worker crisis. Solving this crisis will require billions of dollars in additional funding – to double the health workforce in Africa and to reach the minimum target of 2.3 professional health workers per 1,000 people.

“The G8’s vague promise to ‘work towards’ that goal is hollow to millions living with HIV in Africa,” Trenado said.

In their statement on the global food crisis, the G8 leaders said they were determined to take all possible measures in a coordinated manner, and since January 2008 have committed, for short, medium and long-term purposes, over 10 billion dollars to support food aid, nutrition interventions, social protection activities and measures to increase agricultural output in affected countries.

The G8 pledged to work with the international community in forming a global partnership on agriculture and food, involving all relevant actors, including developing country governments, the private sector, civil society, donors, and international institutions.

“This partnership, strengthening and building on existing UN and other international institutions, could provide efficient and effective support for country-led processes and institutions and for local leadership, draw on the expertise in existing international organisations and, in particular, ensure monitoring and assessment on progress,” the statement said.

The G8 stressed the need to remove export restrictions and expedite the current negotiations at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) aimed at introducing stricter disciplines on those trade actions which prolong and aggravate the situation, and hinder humanitarian purchases of food commodities.

The G8 leaders also agreed to “explore options on a coordinated approach on stock management, including the pros and cons of building a ‘virtual’ internationally coordinated reserve system for humanitarian purposes.”

Asked whether a new institution was planned, Japanese Foreign Ministry spokesman Kazuo Kodama told IPS he did not want to preclude a possibility but his understanding was that in the first place a “virtual” system would be established.

Surprised by another move by the G8, Transparency International (TI) welcomed Tuesday’s unprecedented publication by the G8 of its ‘Accountability Report: Implementation Review of G8 Anti-Corruption Commitments’, while noting the many areas where G8 performance fell short of past pledges.

“The report comes after over a year of pressure from Transparency International for the G8 to report back on anti-corruption commitments made since the 2002 Kananaskis Summit,” TI’s Jesse Garcia told IPS.

“We are pleased that the G8 have proven responsive to demands for accountability from civil society, but the report also shows just how far they have to go,” Cobus de Swardt, managing director of Transparency International said in a statement. “Corruption continues to undermine democratic institutions, distort public decision-making as well as fuelling abject poverty and inequality across the world.”

TI finds in the report a remarkable amount of detail, although the data provided by the different countries is not standardised and is difficult to quantify, defying easy comparisons. And detail on certain questions, such as Britain’s failure to fully enforce the ban on foreign bribery, or Germany’s failure to ratify the UN Convention against Corruption, remains scant.

Garcia said it was notable that Russia had stated its intention to become a party to the Anti-Bribery Convention of the Organisation for Economic Development (OECD, a grouping of 30 wealthy nations). As the only G8 member that has not already ratified the convention, which criminalises overseas bribery by corporations, and the member state with the highest levels of public sector corruption, this is a positive development, he said.