Finance ministers urged to act on G8 poverty pledges

from Action Aid

Here is a link to a report from Action Aid of the UK. It examines the actions of the G8, with the upcoming meeting hosted in Germany. What follows is a press release from Action Aid....

Germany’s ambitions to help Africa at the G8 summit in June could be undermined by the inaction of the group’s finance ministers, ActionAid warns in a report released today (8 February 2007).

The report’s author Tom Sharman said: “The success of the Heiligendamm summit depends on preparatory work by the finance ministers. So far, they have done very little about this year’s Africa agenda. But an even bigger worry is the unfinished business from Gleneagles in 2005.”

A doubling of aid by 2010, and universal access to Aids treatment by the same date, are among the Gleneagles pledges that the charity says could still be achieved if finance ministers initiate the necessary planning when they meet in Essen, Germany this week.

At Gleneagles the EU nations, the US, Japan and Canada made commitments which, by 2010, would amount to an extra $50bn a year of aid.

ActionAid says that nearly two years on, Germany, Italy, Japan and the US have made no plans to meet the 2010 target, and on current trends will miss it by a wide margin.

In 2005 it was the finance ministers who agreed the goal of universal access to treatment for HIV by 2010, later adopted by the heads of government at Gleneagles. But poor countries are still waiting for the G8 to set a funding plan for reaching the goal. 1.6m people now receive treatment for Aids but a further 5.2m need it.

Aditi Sharma, coordinator of ActionAid’s international HIV and Aids campaign said: “Since G8 leaders made this pledge in 2005, Aids has claimed more than four million lives. 2007 is the G8’s final opportunity to make universal access by 2010 a reality. The finance ministers must now follow up their commitments with real money.”

ActionAid’s report ‘From poverty of ambition to ambition on poverty’ examines the G8’s performance on international development issues including HIV and Aids, aid and debt, trade, climate change, and reform of the IMF and World Bank.