UK charity Oxfam has joined a number of relief and aid organisations in declaring that the aid increases made by the world’s richest G8 countries are not enough to meet the promises they made at the Gleneagles meeting last year.
The outburst has come as the G8 finance ministers commence a meeting, 9th June 2006, in St Petersburg for a pre-summit meeting.During the corresponding pre-summit meeting in 2005 the decision was made for the G8 nations to extend debt cancellation to many more poorer countries.
Earlier this year, Christian Aid welcomed British Chancellor Gordon Brown’s pledge of £8.5 billion to help fund primary education in developing countries.
The British Chancellor promised to spend the money over the next ten years. The funding is more than four times the amount the UK government spent in the previous decade.
Christian Aid director Dr Daleep Mukarji said at that time: “We are delighted – this is great news for children in the developing world and we welcome this bold step. This will go a long way to deliver the United Nations’ goal of education for all by 2015.”
Mr Brown challenged other wealthy countries, particularly part of the G8 - to make similar contributions and meet the estimated 100 billion US dollars cost of global primary education.
“In 2005, Make Poverty History forced governments to make promises on aid,” the chancellor said. “Now, in 2006 it is time for us to keep our promises. None is more important than the Millennium Development Goal that by 2015 every one of the world’s children is able to go to school.”
At the G8 summit in Gleneagles last year, the leaders of the world’s eight richest nations promised a doubling of aid to Africa by 2010.Christian Aid’s Dr Mukarji urged the chancellor and the other G8 finance ministers to keep all the promises made at the summit.
However, this week Oxfam has criticised the G8 nations for adding debt write-off into the total development figure to make it look better.
The G8 countries made the commitment to increase development spending by £27 billion a year by 2010. The raw data, showing a £11.4 billion increase in development spending in 2005 over 2004, look as if they show some progress towards that target, report the BBC.
