Select Committee on International Development Memoranda


GSUM02

ActionAid International UK Submission to International Development Committee 19th July

Background

On Tuesday 19th of July, UK Secretary of State for International Development, Hilary Benn, will give evidence to the IDC on the outcomes of the G8 Summit in Gleneagles. His evidence will address four key areas:

·  Resources for meeting the MDGs - debt relief and aid

·  Trade Justice - a sustainable route out of poverty

·  Conflict, governance & politics

·  Keeping promises - monitoring & accountability

ActionAid UK, as part of ActionAid International, has closely monitored the G8 summit outcomes. Based on our work on over 40 countries worldwide, and the key role we play in both the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP) and the Make Poverty History coalition (MPH), we would like to make the following observations:

Resources for meeting the MDGs

Debt relief. The Summit re-announced the debt relief deal agreed at the G8 Finance Ministers Meeting in London in June. This will provide 100% cancellation of the debts owed by 18 HIPCs to the World Bank, IMF and African Development Bank. The Summit also welcomed the agreement made with Nigeria to provide substantial debt cancellation through the Paris Club.

While the debt relief offered is welcome and will undoubtedly benefit the 18 countries immediately eligible, the deal on offer only provides some 10% of the debt cancellation needed. Moreover, debt relief will still come with harmful economic conditionality, such as privatization and trade liberalization, attached. Some creditors are also allegedly proposing to increase the burden of IMF conditionality, even after countries have reached so-called 'Completion Point' in the HIPC initiative.

Aid: The G8 summit announced that aid to all developing countries would increase by $50bn between 2004 and 2010. Again, any aid increase is welcome, but this amount is too little, comes too late and is largely a re-announcement of commitments made in previous years. The summit also failed to make concrete commitments to improve aid effectiveness, for example by untying aid. G8 leaders did acknowledge that economic policies should be determined by local people not staff in the World and IMF, a move which was welcomed by NGOs including ActionAid. However, the real test of the G8's commitment will be the extent to which they use their power on the World Bank's board to commit to ending harmful World Bank conditionality at the Annual Meetings in September.

Trade Justice - a sustainable route out of poverty

G8 leaders failed to commit to ending the forced liberalization of low-income countries. At the same time there is deep concern that we will see a further push on liberalizing services and non-agricultural markets that will threaten livelihoods and jobs in poor countries worldwide. No date has been set to end export subsidies. Despite the talk at Gleneagles, in ongoing trade talks in Geneva the US and EU are still pushing to retain subsidies by another name. There was also a failure to prohibit the dumping of goods in developing countries at prices which farmers are unable to compete against, devastating livelihoods. No undertaking from the G8 to make multinationals legally accountable for their social and environmental impact

Keeping promises - monitoring & accountability

The review of the Africa Action Plan acknowledges progress needs to be made on aid effectiveness, particularly in providing predictable multi-year or annual commitments. Yet little actual progress at Gleneagles on aid quality in terms of quantifiable targets being set.

G8 summits in the past have failed to deliver on promises made. It will be vital to ensure that the promises made at this year's summit will be met.

One of the first tests of commitments made at Gleneagles will come in September at the Global Fund replenishment conference in London. ActionAid strongly welcomed the announcement of the G8 supporting universal access to anti-retrovirals by 2010. However, there is a funding gap of $18 billion over the next 3 years, which the replenishment conference will have to meet if this target is to be implemented.



 
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