POLITICS: G8 Set to Snub Development, Poverty Issues – Groups

By Emad Mekay Reprint | | Print |

Emad Mekay

WASHINGTON, Jun 3 2004 (IPS) - The Middle East, security, Iraq, nuclear proliferation, oil and the world economy will likely squeeze aside other pressing issues like HIV/AIDS, development, poverty and debt at the coming meeting of the leaders of the world’s richest countries, activists here say.

The summit of the Group of Eight (G8) most industrialised nations will be hosted by the United States at Sea Island in the state of Georgia, Jun. 8-10..

G8 members Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United Kingdom will attend, along with the European Union, which will be represented by the president of the European Commission.

Members of the G8, set up with only six members in 1975 as an international forum to coordinate macroeconomic policy, control most of the world’s resources and all of the major global decision-making bodies, including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Its critics say the group is fixated on members’ economic and security needs and to serving the interests of multinational corporations, to the disadvantage of poorer nations. Next week’s meetings are unlikely to be an exception, they add.

At the top of the agenda will be a plan to boost U.S. and western security interests in the Middle East, record-high oil prices and their possible negative impact on global economic growth, new efforts to liberalise world trade and the future of U.S.-occupied Iraq.

Despite having trumpeted its anti-HIV/AIDS programme and the new Millennium Challenge Account (MCA), which promises development money to countries that liberalise their economies – two programmes for which Africa has a crying need – Washington was reluctant to invite African leaders to Georgia, although they were asked to attend the past three G8 summits.

“And that sent a message not only to the other G8 partners but to the Africans that they were going to lose momentum à and that somehow Africa was going to be marginalized again, and that would reinforce all the problems that had occurred before,” said Princeton Lyman, a fellow at the New York based Council on Foreign Relations.

The United States changed that position two weeks ago, inviting leaders from Algeria, Nigeria, South Africa and Senegal, countries that originally proposed the Partnership for Africa Development (NEPAD) – a programme devised to give Africa more say in determining its trade and economic agenda.

Washington also included Ghana, which has been named eligible for the MCA; and Uganda, which has figured largely in President George W Bush’s campaign against HIV/AIDS.

Lyman welcomed the invitations but said that they were probably motivated also by Africa’s increasingly important role in global security and Washington’s “war on terrorism”.

In recent years, U.S. embassies have been blown up in East Africa, and Washington has sent troops into the region to ferret out terrorists and Special Forces “green berets” to the Sahel strip that runs from Senegal to Ethiopia. South Africa recently announced that it had arrested and deported representatives of the al-Qaeda terrorist organisation.

“Africa is not outside the worldwide concern over terrorism, and the atmosphere, the conditions of poverty, of instability, et cetera, open the doors to that,” Lyman said.

But the Africa expert predicted no major announcements will be made at the meeting concerning the continent, HIV/AIDS or debt.

“I think there will be discussion of … HIV/AIDS and foreign assistance. I think it will be more overall re-commitment to some of the things that they’ve always talked about before rather than any new major breakthroughs.”

African issues groups previewing the summit also anticipated few developments.

Washington-based grassroots network Africa Action called the meeting a “form of global minority rule, whose policies and actions have resulted in patterns of gross global inequality that are clearly linked to race and place.”

“There is a yawning gap between the narrow priorities of the G8 rich country leaders and the true priorities of the majority of global citizens,” added the group’s executive director, Salih Booker, in a statement.

“HIV/AIDS is the greatest threat to human security in the world today, and this should appear at the top of the G8 agenda. But instead, the G8 is focused on safeguarding its own narrow economic and security interests,” said Booker.

That echoes the criticism made by developing country leaders, led by Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, at a meeting in China last week.

“The international agenda has focused excessively on security issues and we must rebalance this international agenda to pay more attention to social issues,” said Lula.

Booker said that as a result of the G8-controlled global economic system, Africa has the world’s largest share of poverty, the greatest HIV/AIDS burden and a huge debt load.

“And still, the G8 leaders refuse to take real action to end Africa’s debt crisis, which remains the biggest obstacle to the continent’s economic development,” he said.

African civil society organisations have also decried next week’s summit, on Thursday alleging “a credibility gap between the well meaning rhetoric and the limited tangible action” that traditionally emerges from the group’s meetings.

“G8 commitments to Africa have been buried beneath an avalanche of inaction on core areas such as HIV/AIDS, poverty eradication and debt,” said Barbara Kalima, who heads anti-debt group Afrodad.

“Africa’s cheque remains unsigned and un-cashable in spite of obvious need and progress by the African Union and member states to meet their obligations to Africa’s poor and marginalized”, added Kalima, who travelled to the United States for the summit.

Groups like Jubilee USA Network, Foreign Policy in Focus, 50 Years is Enough, the Centre for Economic and Policy Research and United for Justice and Peace have echoed the critiques of the G8’s treatment of Africa, including its debt.

The groups will call for full cancellation of the debts of impoverished countries at the summit, and will also protest against the war in Iraq and demand that Washington recall its troops.