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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