that’s one every minute. Africa needs $32 billion (£21bn) over the next five years to reduce maternal deaths and deaths of children. The money could save 11m African women and children by 2015. But gaps in financing has been one key factor in the collective failure to keep the MDGs within view. Success hinges on the eighth MDG – “devel- oping a global partnership for development”. We need to provide the investment and struc- tures necessary for poor communities to be able to lift themselves out of poverty. Rich nations have made some progress on the issue. At the Gleneagles G8 Summit in 2005, they promised to cancel debt in 42 countries, and give an extra £50bn in aid by 2010 – half of it to Africa. But the commit- ments made at Gleneagles would not have been enough even if they had been fulfilled (they haven’t). We need more aid, better spent. Only Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden have met the target of giving 0.7 per cent of GDP in development assistance. The rich world set this target in 1970. Extreme weather born of climate change is making the task even more difficult, as 21m people affected by floods in Pakistan know well. So has the Millennium project to halve
poverty by 2015 failed already? The question is key for world leaders, diplomats, experts and civil society representatives meeting for a special summit next week at the United
Nations in New York. The answer, according to a draft UN communiqué for the meeting, is not quite yet. “The Millennium Development Goals can be achieved, including in the poorest countries, with renewed commitment, effective imple- mentation, and intensified collective action by all UN member states and other relevant stakeholders,” says the communiqué. Sure, but how is that going to happen now when it didn’t before? The 27-page declaration is short on an action plan. For Caritas, aid must double to $100bn a year and be more efficient, effective and fair. It must not be tied so as to benefit the giver, and the receiver must be allowed to choose and plan more what is best to do with it. Poor countries lose 14 times the money
they get in aid because of unfair trade rules. The United States, for example, subsidises its cotton farmers and so encourages over- production. The surplus is then dumped on the international market, lowering prices and undercutting the livelihoods of millions of farmers. Cotton-subsidy reform would raise incomes of 1m households in West Africa by 5 to 12 per cent, improving the lives of 10m people. The poorest 49 countries make up 10 per cent of the world’s population but account for only 0.4 per cent of world trade. The UN estimates that unfair trade rules deny poor countries $700bn every year.We need fairer trading rules and we need more
technical help for poorer countries to develop their trade and production capacities, and make sure this is done without strings, and fairly priced. Talks in Copenhagen last December failed to deliver a package that would save us. Fresh life needs to be breathed back into the next round of negotiations in Mexico at the end of the year. Halving poverty is just not good enough. But the targets were a useful step towards achieving our aim of zero poverty. We cannot turn our backs on the poor and vulnerable because it’s inconvenient or hard-going. What will failure mean? It will be another dent in the UN reputation to deliver on grand idealistic projects. The moral authority of rich donor countries in the West will be further diminished. And of course for millions of peo- ple it will mean more suffering in abject poverty and lives lost that could have been prevented for a relatively small amount. With five years to go, victory seems very far
off on the ground in Senegal. Here, few people know about or have heard of the Millennium Development Goals. But we are striving for them every day. That’s because we know the MDGs by another name. We call them sur- vival. For us falling short isn’t really an option.
■Abbé Ambroise Tine is the Secretary General of Caritas Senegal. He will be representing Caritas Internationalis at the three-day UN summit beginning on Monday.
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