Churches told 2005 is Make or Break year for World Poverty

The year 2005 has been declared as the "make or break year for development" for world poverty by Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown at a Catholic aid agency’s annual Pope Paul VI Memorial lecture.

The Archbishop of Cape Town, Rev Njongonkulu Ndungane has already launched a global campaign to apply pressure to governments to half world poverty by 2015, and to mobilise millions of Christians worldwide in over 100 countries to join this mission.

The eight Millennium Development Goals have been the focus for the drive, and a coalition has been launched to fight climate changes. The coalition involves a number of aid agencies, and they have expressed their concerns that unless immediate action follows, that the development gains will go "up in smoke".

The director of CAFOD, Chris Bain said, "We are pleased that Mr Brown has recognised that 2005 is a make or break year for development and applaud his commitment to make the G8 Summit in Edinburgh next year a Summit for development."

"But he must make sure that his words become actions if 2005 is to be a make and not break year. He must keep up the pressure on finance ministers globally, particularly in the United States, to put global poverty at the top of their agendas. Only this will provide the resources that are so desperately needed if we are to reach the Millennium Development Goals."

"It's now five years since the world's leaders signed off the Goals. 2015 is the target date and all but a handful of countries are woefully off-track. If rich countries do not come up with the resources needed to meet the Millennium Development Goals, they will not just be an empty promise, because the goals are the most important promise that rich countries have ever made, failure to provide the resources will fatally undermine their credibility."

"Mr Brown is right in saying that the Government will be judged by what they achieve. Hundreds of thousands of people are watching them and are demanding that the UK Government find solutions to world poverty in 2005."

Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor saw the lecture as a great advancement in the movement, and he said that there once was a time when the Chancellor of the Exchequer would not have been seen at such a meeting organised by NGO's.

The Cardinal said, "Development was relatively low on the priority list of successive governments. That was partly a reflection of the state of our own economy. Partly a reflection of the relatively low priority which the public attached to overseas development. Development was a minority cause, not a popular one. And the job of the Treasury was to ensure that the taxpayers' money went to the principal domestic priorities. Not to overseas ones."

He continued, "How times have changed. The visible face of hunger and poverty and disease has stirred the conscience of the developed world."

O'Connor went on to praise the Chancellor as a "powerful advocate and author of the changing priorities of government. He has increased the UK's aid budget so that we have, for the first time, a clear date for meeting the UN’s development target."

The Cardinal concluded, “He has led from the front in the European Union, the Commonwealth and the G8 in the quest for a radical programme of debt relief. And he has teamed up with the Catholic Church to get some momentum behind the Millennium Development goals. He has been imaginative, persistent and persuasive.”
"“Next month, we shall launch in this country the campaign to "Make Poverty History". And we are internationalising this campaign against poverty: "The Global Call to Action". The churches and the NGOs, with CAFOD prominent among them, will be pressing governments to do more, faster. But I know that, for Gordon Brown, this is already a priority. It could and should be a momentous year. The Commission on Africa will report in March. A UN summit will review the Millennium Development goals in September. The crucial ministerial meeting of the WTO trade and development negotiations will take place in Hong Kong next December. We are confident that the government will push the poverty agenda during our presidencies of the G8 and the European Union next year."