Group calls on G8 to live up to anti-poverty commitments

Social justice news
June 2003

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CAFOD calls on G8 to live up to anti-poverty commitments
British aid agency CAFOD (Catholic Fund for Overseas Development) says the G8 leaders must not be distracted by the Iraqi conflict and the war on terrorism from tackling the "scandal of poverty in Africa." CAFOD officials charge that leaders of the G8—United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Japan, and Russia—have failed to live up to their "meager commitments on reducing poverty."

G8 leaders' promised at their summit last year in Kananaskis that: "No country genuinely committed to poverty reduction, good governance, and economic reform will be denied the chance to achieve the Millennium Development Goals through lack of finance."

CAFOD says that Ethiopia, Niger, and Rwanda are being prevented from doing just that. The three African countries have drawn up plans consistent with meeting the Millennium Development Goals, a series of targets aimed at cutting poverty by half by 2015 in the world's poorest countries. Yet these three countries are being deprived of the necessary money to put those plans into action because the extra finance would take them above their debt sustainability agreements with the World Bank and IMF, according to CAFOD.

CAFOD's Head of Policy George Gelber says, "The cases of Ethiopia, Niger, and Rwanda highlight the hypocrisy of the G8 leaders. On the one hand, the G8 leaders come up with a scheme to fight poverty in the Third World, but then they deny poor country access to the funding. This is either a failure in joined-up thinking or, more worryingly, exposes the emptiness of G8 promises on reducing poverty."

Analyses indicate that most African countries will miss out on the Millennium Development Goals through lack of finance. Only two countries, Uganda and Mozambique, have the economic growth consistent with the target of halving the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day by 2015.

CAFOD says G8 leaders can make the debt relief mechanism work by basing it on achieving the Millennium Development Goals. CAFOD is also calling on G8 leaders not just to talk to African countries, but also to act on what they say.

CAFOD is calling on the G8 to reform its trade policies that harm Third World producers and to back a global regulation of oil, gas, and mining companies as part of the Publish What You Pay campaign.

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