The 2010 Millennium Development Goals Review Summit - International Development Committee Contents


Written evidence submitted by ActionAid

KEY OUTCOMES FROM THE SUMMIT:

MDG 1—"halve between 1990 and 2015 the proportion of people who suffer from hunger"

  1.  The MDG 1 goal to halve the proportion of hungry people in developing countries—from 20% to 10% between 1990 and 2015—is badly off track and has been going backwards. This failure has significant economic, as well as human, costs. ActionAid estimates that 925 million people go hungry worldwide and that hunger could be costing poor countries $450 billion a year in lost output and social costs—10 times the amount needed to halve hunger by 2015.[2]

  2.  ActionAid recently assessed countries for their efforts in tackling hunger, and found 20 out of 28 poor countries are currently off track in halving hunger by 2015, and 12 of these are going backwards.[3]

  3.  This lack of progress is particularly disappointing because we have the tools we need to achieve MDG1. There is enough food available in the world to feed everyone. There are excellent examples of countries that are winning the fight against hunger. Brazil, for example, recently cut child hunger by 73% in six years by making it a priority, adopting a right to food framework, extending social protection, and supporting women and smallholder farmers.

  4.  It is against this backdrop that it is clear that we need a fully funded action plan to achieve MDG1. The summit's final outcome document falls far short of this. However, the document does have several excellent elements. It reaffirms the right to food, reiterates the Five Rome Principles for Sustainable Global Food and calls on donors to meet their L'Aquila funding commitments. The document also highlights support to three important elements of tackling hunger: rural women, small-scale producers and sustainable agriculture. DFID played a constructive role in negotiating this document and deserves credit for some of the positive language that the document includes.

  5.  DFID is also making some important contributions to the fight against hunger. For example, the UK's G8 L'Aquila pledge of £1.1 billion in aid to agriculture over three years is very welcome.

  6.  DFID publicly supports the new "Scale Up Nutrition" (SUN) roadmap. SUN strives to intensify and scale-up efforts to tackle malnutrition amongst mothers and infants in the crucial first 1,000 days of an infant's life. The Secretary of State announced support for a new research programme related to this work, but to date there has been no information about what this research will entail.

  7.  This detail is vitally important because a focus on simple nutrition interventions alone is not enough to tackle hunger and food insecurity. For example, vitamin supplementation is a cheap and effective way to improve people's health, but it does not solve the underlying problem of access to nutritious food. It is essential that DFID continues the more holistic approach to nutrition that was outlined in their recent nutrition policy paper.

  Support for small holder farmers, particularly women, has a key role to play in fighting hunger and malnutrition and we hope the new research programme will help move this agenda forward.

  8.  Overall however the UK could and should have placed a greater priority on hunger before attending, and during, the MDG Summit. For example, the UK's flagship speech was an opportunity to highlight the importance DFID puts on hunger. Although the Deputy Prime Minister very briefly mentioned hunger, his speech did not provide the same attention or level of detail on hunger as it did on other issues. The UK did not find an opportunity to highlight the importance of supporting smallholder-based agriculture as a key route to tackling poverty, hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition.

RECOMMENDATIONS ON MDG1 AND TACKLING HUNGER

  9.  A much clearer and more detailed road map for how to achieve MDG1 is essential and we would urge DFID to play a much stronger role in this and further outline the steps it will take to address hunger.

  10.  DFID must commit to addressing the three important elements involved in tackling hunger as outlined in the MDG outcome document and urgently invest in poor women, smallholder farmers and sustainable development.

  11.  Developing countries and donors like the UK must agree to national MDG 1 "rescue plans" backed by costed, time-bound actions and firm financing commitments by both government and donors.

  12.  Donors, including the UK should announce a timetable for the disbursement of the full $7 billion per year announced at the 2009 G8 for food security. It should also scale up this investment to finance its fair share of the US$40 billion per year needed in additional resources is needed to achieve MDG1, as estimated by the UN. This would be $20 billion annually, requiring donor countries like the UK increasing their contribution to tackling food security by a third.

  13.  Developing countries and donors should focus on meeting the needs of women farmers, and improving women's control over land; Women produce 60-80% of the food in developing countries, but they have little access to or control over agricultural resources. Women, for example, currently own only 1% of titled land in Africa and receive only 7% of extension services and 1% of all agricultural credit.[4]

  14.  Donors should also support developing country government to reverse the decline in extension services, which are vital for supporting small-holder farmers; provide affordable credit to small farmers and expand agricultural support for sustainable climate-resistant agricultural inputs such as soil conversation, organic fertiliser and land reform.

WOMEN AND THE MDGS

  15.  Women and girls make up 70% of the world's poorest people—a result of systemic discrimination against women which is steadily undermining progress on all of the Millennium Development Goals including MDG 1. Gender equality must be mainstreamed into every MDG and unless gender inequality is addressed, no MDG will be achieved. Violence against Women is a particularly stark problem and is currently stunting the achievement of all the goals.

  16.  We welcome the UK leadership in putting MDG 5 firmly on the agenda at the recent MDG summit and in particular the commitment to double the number of maternal, newborn and children's lives saved by 2015. However to succeed, this work must not only be fully funded but must also address the underlying causes of maternal ill-health and maternal mortality, social exclusion, gender inequality and violence against women. MDG 5 is therefore dependent on sufficient progress on MDG 3.

  17.  Women's rights are not just about women as mothers, but also about women as agents of change and as people who are entitled to rights, in their own right. For example, we were concerned that Andrew Mitchell did not mention women in his recent speech on conflict, despite Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg's recognition at the MDG Summit that the 22 states emerging from violent conflict are the furthest behind in achieving the MDGs.

  18.  We were disappointed that the Summit did not formally recognize violence against women as central to the achievement of the MDGs through the adoption of a dedicated global target and specific indicators for country and regional reporting on ending violence against women and girls as part of the core MDG framework Violence against women and girls continues to undermine all global development efforts.

  19.  Finally it is important to note that despite being a valuable tool, the MDGs have masked the particular experiences of some of the world's most marginalized groups, including women, who have not been able to share the benefits of development in part because the targets and indicators do not reflect the full challenges and consequences of gender inequality.

RECOMMENDATIONS

  20.  The UK Government must also push for gender equality across all mainstream development areas within its own work and in encouraging other donors and developing countries to recognise the importance of focussing on women in meeting all MDGs.

  21.  Positive steps to address this agenda from the UK government, with concrete resources directed to tackling violence against women and girls in conflict and post-conflict contexts as well as Ministerial responsibility for work on violence against women and girls overseas, is critical.

FINANCING THE MDGS

  22.  The availability of adequate finance is clearly a necessary (although not sufficient) condition for achievement of the MDGs. The financial crisis has led to dramatically reduced revenues in some countries, making attention to finance even more important if the MDGs are to be met. In this regard, ActionAid strongly supports the continued cross party consensus to meet the 0.7% aid target by 2013, demonstrating the UK's long-standing and continued international leadership role on international development.

  23.  The quality of aid is clearly as important as its quantity and we also welcome the cross party focus on aid effectiveness in recent years, the commitment to the international Paris process on aid effectiveness, and the new government's focus on transparency which will help to ensure that aid spending is accountable to citizens in recipient countries, as well as taxpayers in donor countries.

  24.  The UK is a world leader in aid quality but there are always further improvements to be made to ensure aid is poverty focussed, predictable, minimises transaction costs, and allows developing countries to focus on their own priorities, within the MDG framework. In particular, we therefore favour budget support as an aid modality, where countries have a commitment to poverty reduction and to transparent financial management.

  25.  However, aid alone will not be enough to meet the MDG financing gap. There is a financing shortfall in the order to tens of billions of pounds annually, and the gap is unlikely to be met directly by donors in the current fiscal climate. ActionAid suggests two other finance sources which could make a great contribution.

  26.  First, a very small tax on financial transactions could raise in the region of $400 billion dollars a year. This would provide ample funding to fill the MDG financing gap, and have funds left over which could contribute both to financing climate adaptation and mitigation, and to domestic priorities.

  27.  Second, developing countries could raise more domestic revenue. Indeed, in the long term this is the only way both to reduce dependence on aid, and to improve governance through developing stronger social contracts between citizen and government.

  28.  A globally accepted minimum acceptable tax to GDP ratio is 15% of GDP (as a comparator, the UKs raises around 36% of GDP in tax). ActionAid estimates that, if all countries that don't yet do so were able to reach the 15% figure, an extra $200 billion would be available in domestic revenue.

  29.  Many policy changes would contribute to this goal. Two of these, to which the UK can contribute, are as follows:

  30.  Tax administration in developing countries needs to improve. Aid can support this goal. The UK invested £20 million in support of reform of the Rwandan Revenue Authority. Annual revenue increased fourfold between 1998 and 2006, from £60 million to £240 million.

  31.  Increased financial transparency would help prevent tax avoidance. The OECD estimates developing countries lose more money each year from tax dodging, than they receive in aid. Multinational companies should report country by country, which would shine a light on some of this tax avoidance activity. The International Accounting Standards Board could require this—indeed it is currently considering such a standard in the extractive sector.

  32.  On this last issue, ActionAid very much welcomes the renewed political focus on tax avoidance in recent weeks. We are keen to ensure that the benefits for developing countries, as well as domestically, are part of this picture.








2   See, Who's Really Fighting Hunger (2010): http://www.actionaid.org/assets/pdf/ActionAid-scorecard-report-2010.pdf Back

3   See, Who's Really Fighting Hunger (2010): http://www.actionaid.org/assets/pdf/ActionAid-scorecard-report-2010.pdf Back

4   See ActionAid report Fertile Ground See, Who's Really Fighting Hunger (2010): http://www.actionaid.org/assets/pdf/ActionAid-scorecard-report-2010.pdf Back


 
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