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G8 SUMMIT: NGOs See Clouds Over Gleneagles

Sanjay Suri

GLENEAGLES, Scotland, Jul 5 2005 (IPS) - This week’s summit of the Group of Eight leading industrial powers is set to fall short of the response needed to tackle global poverty, says the non-governmental organisation War on Want.

The London-based anti-poverty group released calculations on the eve of the G8 summit Tuesday showing that the money on the table at the July 6-8 meet at Scotland’s Gleneagles golf resort will provide less than five percent of the debt relief and less than 20 percent of the aid needed to meet the objectives of the Make Poverty History (MPH) campaign.

“Our information is based on reports we’re getting from the Treasury,” John Hilary, director of campaigns and policy at War on Want, told IPS.

For aid, the total package likely to be announced is 25 billion dollars, Hilary said. “And much of that has already been pledged. (U.S. President) George Bush has said he will produce an extra 4.5 billion dollars over what was given earlier. But of that, three billion dollars has already been pledged under the Millennium Challenge Account.”

Bush proposed the Millennium Challenge Account as a means to link more development aid from industrialised nations to “greater responsibility” from developing nations.

Japan too is announcing new aid, but much of that is “just a re-allocation,” Hilary said. “We are not getting any sense that anything new will be done. At the most there could be a little extra here or there on particular deals.”

Aid, debt and trade have been cited as the three pillars of development. “We are hearing now that the United States and the European Union will launch a savage attack on the trade regimes of developing countries. So the tiny crumbs that are given by way of aid and debt relief will be wiped out by the trade policies of the G8 countries.”

In place of the 45 billion dollars which would be released by the 100-percent cancellation of the poorest countries’ debts, the G8 are offering just over one billion in cancelled debt service payments – a fraction of what is required, War on Want said in a statement.

The G8 deal announced at the finance ministers’ meeting last month provides debt relief to 18 countries in a package totalling 40 billion dollars, with the possibility of more countries being included in future, War on Want says. The package translates into just over one billion dollars in saved debt repayments which these countries will no longer have to make to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and African Development Bank each year.

“Yet this is well short of the 45.7 billion dollars which would be released if the G8 included all 62 poor countries which need 100 percent debt cancellation to meet the Millennium Development Goals,” the group says.

The United Nations General Assembly established eight MDGs in 2000, which include halving global poverty and hunger by 2015, as well as improving primary education, maternal health and environmental sustainability; reducing infant mortality and combating HIV/AIDS and other major diseases.

“In addition, the countries in line for debt cancellation are required to have ‘qualified’ by virtue of meeting harmful economic conditions under the Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) process, which includes sweeping programmes of trade liberalisation and privatisation. These programmes have in turn been shown to cause increased poverty – undermining the positive potential of debt cancellation.”

The G8 members of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) have responded to the Make Poverty History coalition’s call for trade justice by hardening their positions against it, War on Want says.

“The EU and the United States have launched a new assault on the industrial and services sectors of developing countries at the WTO, attempting to force open these ’emerging markets’ for the benefit of their own corporations – even as they concede that this will lead to large-scale bankruptcies, mass unemployment and widespread poverty in the South,” the group says.

At the same time, they have hardened their stance on eliminating the agricultural subsidies which undermine the livelihoods of farmers in the developing world, it says. “The UN has calculated that trade subsidies cost developing countries between 125 billion and 310 billion dollars a year in lost sales and lower prices for their goods.”

By comparison, the G8 military expenditure rose dramatically last year – the sixth year in a row to see an increase, the group says. World military spending topped one trillion dollars (1,000 billion) during 2004, with G8 countries (United States, Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia) responsible for the vast majority, according to figures released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute last month.

The U.S. military expenditure alone accounted for almost half the global total, at 455 billion dollars. These do not look like signs that the G8 countries are set to do more for the world’s poor, says War on Want.