By Suvendrini Kakuchi
NAGO, Japan, Jul 23 2000 (IPS)

Leaders from the Group of Eight (G-8) countries ended their summit Sunday with a pledge to bring more of the benefits of globalisation to all people, and to share more of the rich nations’ wealth with the poor.

But while the statement played lip service to the development of poor countries, the world’s richest economies failed to deliver concrete actions in the terms of resources and regulations, activists said at the end of the Jul 21-23 summit. Some called it the wasted summit.

The G-8 leaders’ communique represented the culmination of three days of lavish pomp and ceremony and long working schedules between the leaders of the seven richest countries in the world and Russia, who gathered on Japan’s southernmost idyllic island starting Friday.

“We must change the reality of millions of people living on one dollar per day and Japan will promote active cooperation with countries outside the G-8,” Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori told reporters.

The G-8 communique pointed out that while the economies of the industrialised countries remain prosperous, in many parts of the world poverty and injustice undermine human dignity and conflict brings human suffering.

To “tackle the root causes of conflict and poverty, we must engage in a new partnership with non-G-8 countries including developing countries, international organisations and civil society including the private sector and non-governmental organisations,” it said.

At a press conference, French President Jacques Chirac said the G-8 countries have to “be more considerate and careful with emerging countries, industrialised countries and the international community as a whole.”

“This is the first time, at least in my experience, and this is my last G-8 conference, that there has been such a systematic focus on the developing world,” U.S. President Bill Clinton said, pointing to discussions on disease, information technology and education

At the summit, Clinton pledged the U.S. donation of 300 million dollars worth of surplus farm crops to poor countries under school feeding programmes.

The G-8 communique went on to outline the new charter on information technology, saying the ‘digital divide’ between rich and poor nations would add one more aspect to the already big gap between them.

It also renewed its commitment to 100 percent debt cancellation for heavily indebted countries, including the G-8 call this year for quicker progress toward getting more countries to receive relief, and called for the promotion of responsible lending and borrowing practices.

Mori also referred to a special section on health where the G-8 pledged to do more to meet UN development goals — such as the target of 2010 to reduce the number of AIDS and HIV cases in the 15-24 age bracket by 25 percent, halving tuberculosis deaths and lowering malaria.

At Japan’s call, a medley of issues such as food safety, environment protection, and crime, under the title “peace of mind” were put on the agenda for discussion at the summit.

Japanese officials said this development was the result of growing concern over the darker side of globalisation, which many Asian economies hit by the Asian crisis are still grappling with and which affects rich countries as well.

Mori, watched by a hundred schoolchildren invited by the government to enhance the Okinawa summit as a step toward creating a better future for the next generation, told the press that aging was included in discussions with the aim of developing a society that respects the elderly. Okinawa is home to the oldest people in Japan.

Seth Amgott of Oxfam Washington described the summit as “completely appropriate”. He added, “The decision by rich countries to focus the summit on issues of development and poverty is extremely positive.”

But promises and good intentions are not enough, the British non-governmental organisation Oxfam said in a statement.

“Now they have to deliver,” says Amgott. Amgott points out that it is totally appropriate for the rich countries to focus on the develping world, becuase it is getting richer by the day because of globalisation and should share its benefits with the world’s poor.

Oxfam goes on to support the summit targets on HIV/AIDS as well as the commitment to get every child to school by 2015, which Oxfam describes as “one of the few bright spots of the Okinawa summit”.

A bitter disappointment for NGOs, which have been tucked away from the summit in a separate centre, has been the lack of new initiative in the debt relief campaign despite intense pressure from activists and compelling support from citizens across the world. Seventeen million signatures seeking genuine debt relief were presented to Mori at the summit.

In a statement, Jubilee 2000 UK Director Ann Pettifor blasted the final communique and called the G-8 gathering “the squandered summit”.

“The final communique offers no response to the public outrage at the G-8’s failure to act. The G-8 (countries) have committed themselves to ambitious targets to reduce death caused by malaria, AIDS and TB. These kinds of targets are no more than a pipedream without debt cancellation,” said the statement.

Jubilee notes that the slow progress made on the debt issue in Okinawa will mean that debt relief will reach not more than 15 billion dollars by the end of 2000 despite the plan at the Cologne summit last year to cancel 100 billion dollars to the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPCs).

The failure of the G-7 — Russia was not included in the economic discussions — to act on new initiatives to debt cancellation is attributed to divisions that remain between the rich countries.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair has played the role of a leading supporter of total debt cancellation in Okinawa, while press reports indicate Japan, the largest donor owing 10.5 billion dollars in bilateral claims to the HIPCs, is reluctant on debt cancellation.

Japan has taken a different stance by proposing debt relief without outright cancellation, but through a system of providing grants.

In another illustration of the different range of interests among the G-8, Japan’s push for stronger support for NGOs, while endorsed in the communique, failed to gain more resources from the others despite a pledge of a 100 million dollar fund to be started within the United Nations.

“We have to be grateful for Japan,” explained Amgott. “At least it came up with resources whereas the other countries have not come up with a penny.”

Oxfam estimates it will cost 8 billion dollars a year to put every child in to school and teach every illiterate adult to read and write.

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