As G-8 leaders prepare to meet in Canada to discuss development support for Africa, Stephen Lewis, the UN special envoy for HIV/AIDS has questioned whether the New Partnership for Africa’s Development plan (NEPAD) has any hope of success if G-8 leaders fail to take Africa’s AIDS epidemic more seriously.
In a speech at the People’s Summit last week in Calgary, Canada, Lewis said that African leaders needed to issue a challenge to G-8 leaders on AIDS, instead of addressing the issue in just one paragraph of a document that sets goals that include an annual economic growth rate of 7% for the next fifteen years and a two-thirds reduction in infant mortality over the same period. Maternal mortality will be reduced by three-quarters.
“Unless these epidemics are brought under control, real gains in human development will remain an impossible hope”, say the plan’s authors.
Development is impossible without treatment that can prolong life and prevention programmes that can prevent new infections, said Lewis, and G-8 leaders need to recognise that tackling health problems in Africa is a pre-condition for any development gains in the coming decades. Unless they provide adequate support for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria in order to reduce the burden of disease, any other development assistance is wasted.
Lewis highlighted just how far short G-8 development assistance currently falls.
In 1970, the developed countries set themselves the goal of providing 0.7% of their GDP as development assistance.
“The present official development assistance equals 0.22% or $53
billion for the entire developing world. If it were at 0.7%, it would yield
$175 billion today, and $200 billion by 2005." said Lewis. "In other words, by any
calculation, we would have enough money to staunch the fatal lacerations of
AIDS, to provide free universal primary education, and to deal with
nutrition, potable water and sanitation. The result would be the virtual
eradication of poverty by 2015; the Millenium Development Goals would be
exceeded."
“George Bush said, at Monterrey, that he would increase American foreign aid by $5 billion overall, annually, by the year 2006. The current level is $10 billion; hence
the claim of a 50% increase. The truth is that the increase in American
aid, brings them to 0.15% of GDP, or roughly to 20% of the target. The EU
said, at Monterrey, that by the year 2006, it would add, overall, annually,
another $7 billion dollars, equivalent to 0.39% of GDP, or roughly 50% of the
target.”
“But let's be clear about what's being said: the United States and
the European Union, four to five years down the road from now, will be
providing, together, an additional $12 billion is foreign aid annually.
That's not today; that's in the future. In fact, if I may put it starkly,
another ten million people will have died before we reach those levels of
assistance. Nor, by the way, does it all go to Africa. Nor by the way, does
it come without conditions."
The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has published an analysis of Global Fund contributions which uses the formula designed to assess total UN contributions to suggest fair levels for Global Fund contributions.
By this assessment, the G8 nations should be contributing the following amounts to the Fund:
- United States: $2.2 billion annually (actual contribution to date $450 million)
- Japan: $1.96 billion (actual contribution $200 million)
- Germany: $983 million (actual contribution $133 million)
- France: $650 million (actual contribution $134 million)
- United Kingdom: $557 million ($200 million)
- Italy: $509 million ($200 million)
- Canada: $257 million ($100 million)
- Russia: $120 million ($20 million)
A similar assessment was published in April on this website (click here to read the article), and also covered the contributions that should be expected from non-G8 developed nations such as Spain, Switzerland and EU nations.
The Centre for Policy Alternatives highlights another yardstick by which the G-8 summit's announcements on health and development should be measured: the extent to which new funds will be tied to further structural adjustment programmes, and whether will come in the form of loans or grants.
Loans will increase debt, and structural adjustment programmes are judged to have caused a substantial decline in the health infrastructure of many countries by development experts. The Centre for Policy Alternatives argues that such conditions are coercive.