Children want G8 to do more on poverty

As the dust settles after the Gleneagles G8 Summit in Scotland that was overshadowed by the terror bombings in London as well as massive protests by anti-poverty campaigners, the world’s children have called on the most industrialised countries to do more to eradicate poverty if the organisation is to get the reckon it so much yearns for in the annals of history.

This was said by the C8 Children’s Forum, a children’s version of the G8 summit, in a statement on July 11 in response to the G8 communiqué. The “C8 Summit” took place in the Scottish town of Dunblane, about 16 kilometres west of the G8 conference site, from July 3 to 5, ahead of the G8 Summit that ran from July 5 to 8 It comprised 17 children; nine from the wealthy G8 countries and eight from countries considered to be among the poorest in the world: Guinea, Sierra Leone, Lesotho, Yemen, Bolivia, Bhutan, Cambodia and Moldova. The children gathered to discuss poverty, armed conflict, HIV/Aids, education and other issues that affect them. They also took the opportunity to put together proposals, which they forwarded for consideration by the leaders of the world’s richest nations.

The children’s conference – sponsored by the United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (Unicef), which has no influence on the agenda — was also attended by the organisation’s executive director, David Bull. While applauding the world for uniting in the fight to eradicate poverty through the “Make Poverty History” campaign, the Forum expressed its displeasure with the cosmetic initiatives that the world’s richest nations were making to get rid of poverty. “Today, the G8 leaders have chosen not to do all that campaigners insist is necessary to free people trapped in the prison of poverty. Important steps have been taken — steps that will bring hope to millions. But more action is urgently needed if they are to play their role in bringing about real change for the world’s poorest people and consigning extreme poverty to the history books. “To secure a deserved place in history, the G8 must go a lot further and secure real change by working with other world leaders at the UN summit on the Millennium Development Goals and talks around the World Trade Organisation (WTO). The people of the world are already on the road to justice. They expect their leaders to be with them. Today’s announcement has shown that the G8 needs to run much faster to catch up,” read the statement.

Concerning trade, the Children’s Forum observed that the G8 leaders failed to meet the challenge of trade justice as clearly spelt out by Make Poverty History, noting that while there was language in the communiqué on letting African countries set their own trade policies, it was ironic that the WTO continued to force-open developing country markets. There was no consensus on the subsidies, thus the issue of trade justice remains unsolved. “G8 leaders decided not to set a date for ending the export subsidies that destroy livelihoods of poor countries around the world. By forcing free trade on poor countries, dumping agricultural products and not regulating multinational companies, they have chosen not to take the necessary decisions to make poverty history,” the Forum said. The C8 Summit further observed that rich countries were the obstacles to trade justice as long as they were not acting to urgently reform the WTO, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The Children’s Forum also joined other civic organisations throughout the world that criticised the cancelling of some of the debt owed by some countries as a piecemeal measure since major issues on debt remain unresolved, that is, the damaging economic policy conditions attached to debt relief, the many indebted countries not on the list, and debts not covered by the deal. Concerning aid, the Forum said the US$48 billion boost in aid promised by the G8 fell far too short of the historic deal that millions of campaigners from throughout the world had been demanding. “. . . this aid will still arrive five years too late and falls far short of the scale of aid that is needed to end poverty in the world’s poorest countries. In real terms, much of the pledged funds are a restatement of recent aid announcements. For most of the 50 million children who will die of poverty over the next five years, the G8 leaders have offered too little, too late. By 2010, we will still see the awful inequity whereby a child dies every 3,5 seconds just because they are poor,” the statement said.

The Forum also reiterated the need for the G8 to recognise that poor countries should be free to decide their own economic policies by putting to an end the unattainable and evidently damaging conditions that the World Bank and IMF pushed on impoverished countries. The C8 Children’s Forum praised G8 leaders for coming up with what it called “one of the summit’s successes by responding courageously to the scale of the Aids emergency” by undertaking to make available treatment to everyone who requires it by 2010. It, however, noted that the target would be undermined by inadequate new aid, hence the need for additional funds. The children also lamented the failure by the G8 leaders to make progress on climate change whose effects are mostly felt in poor countries. With US President George W. Bush emphatically refusing to honour the Kyoto Protocol, the children said they now looked to the United Kingdom’s Presidency of the EU for effective action to rectify this lack of progress.

The G8 communiqué came against the background of a number of recommendations that the C8 Children’s Summit made to the G8 leaders upon the completion of their forerunning summit in Dunblane, Scotland. Chief on their list was the need to make poverty history by completely wiping it out as it usually affected children more than any other section of the world’s population. The rest of the recommendations, which the children said will lead to a drop in the poverty that afflicts them and should be seen in connection and not in isolation, include: