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Church Reactions to the G8 Summit in Gleneagles (Scotland)

British Faith Leaders Urge Government Action On Poverty

London/United Kingdom | 29.06.2005 | APD | International



[img id=494 align=right]Religious leaders from a number of faiths in the United Kingdom have sent an open letter to Tony Blair asking him to use the G8 summit July 6-8 in Gleneagles (Scotland) to commit to helping poorer nations.

Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams, chief rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks and chair of the Council of Mosques and Imams, Sheikh Zaki Badawi, Roman Catholic archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor and Free Churches moderator David Coffey are among those put their names to the letter.

It calls for members of the world's leading industrial nations and Russia - the G8 - to halve poverty levels in developing countries and cancel the debt of many nations.

The correspondence also stressed the need to tackle the growing problem of infant mortality and asked for a commitment to reduce rates by two-thirds by 2015.

"The UK's chairing of the G8, along with its presidency of the EU, require and challenge Britain to play the fullest part now in seeking to change the structures and practices that result in suffering and deprivation," said the letter.

"We urge all the leaders at the Gleneagles summit to use their huge power and influence to meet the clear goals that have been set by the international community."

It is the first time the various British religious leaders have jointly spoken since a statement in March 2003 ahead of the Iraq war.

The Group of Eight (G8) Summit is an annual meeting between the leaders of eight major industrial nations: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and United States of America.

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Scottish Evangelical Christians Prepare For G8 Summit

London/United Kingdom | 29.06.2005 | APD | International

Evangelical Christians in the small Scottish town Gleneagles are getting ready to welcome an unprecedented number of visitors next Saturday (July 2) ahead of the G8 summit at Gleneagles Hotel, situated nearby. The local parish church in Auchterarder will host a service of prayer for the leaders of the world's most wealthy nations at 6.30pm on July 3. This will be the first of a series of events in the town to highlight the call for trade justice, debt cancellation and more and better aid for the world’s poorest countries.

Local Christians also plan to open a café to cater for visitors. Police, journalists, civil servants and protesters will find a welcome at the café in the Finlayson Hall, adjacent to the Parish Church.

A second service is planned for the Tuesday (July 5) evening at the parish church. Steve Rand, part of the Jubilee Debt Campaign, will be speaking. All of this activity will be under-girded by a round the clock prayer vigil from July 5 – 8 for the G8 leaders as they deliberate on issues of world poverty and climate change.

Mike Parker, General Secretary of the Evangelical Alliance, Scotland, said, “UK Evangelical leaders have written to President Bush; churches are now praying for both safety and a significant outcome to the G8 Summit conversations at Gleneagles. Aid, trade and poverty involve and affect us all, as do lifestyles that contribute to global warming. We urge our international leaders to take responsibility and bring lasting change."

The Group of Eight Summit is an annual meeting between the leaders of eight major industrial nations: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and United States of America

The Evangelical Alliance UK, formed in 1846, is an umbrella group representing over one million evangelical Christians in the UK and is made up of member churches, organisations and individuals. As part of a ‘movement for change’, the Alliance promotes unity and truth, acts as an evangelical voice to the state, society and the wider Church, and provides resources to help members and other evangelicals live out their faith in their communities.

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US Church Leaders to Join UK Ecumenical Forum on G8 Summit

London/United Kingdom | 29.06.2005 | APD | International

A diverse delegation of US religious leaders have arrived in London for a joint UK-US ecumenical forum on the G8 summit at Lambeth Palace, the official London residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury, in London reports the US-based Christian Communication Network (CCN).

Over 35 church leaders, including Protestants, Catholics and Orthodox, will gather at Lambeth Palace for the two-day forum. The Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams will host a discussion with the British and American leaders on June 29 (Wednesday).

The forum comes just a few days before the high-profile G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland on from July 4-6 where leaders of the eight richest nations in the world will gather. As the host of this important meeting, British Prime Minister Tony Blair has been greatly urged to press on the other world leaders to formulate policy with an aim to "Make Poverty History" in 2005.

The strong UK-based anti-poverty campaign "Make Poverty History" has organised a massive rally in Edinburgh on July 2 (Saturday) to highlight the challenge of world poverty. They will lobby the world leaders to adopt three principles: drop the debt, maintain trade justice as well as provide more and better international aid.

Even though previous media reports suggest that US President George W. Bush appeared to be conservative in launching all of these anti-poverty actions compared with the rest of the G8 countries, the joint UK-US ecumenical forum will allow British and American leaders of churches and faith-based organisations to discuss, pray and reflect on lifting global poverty as the top agenda item for the G8 Summit.

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Continue to stand with victims of injustice after the G8 and Live8 events

Coventry, United Kingdom | 04.07.2005 | APD | International

Churches must keep the attention of the world on the victims of poverty once the meetings of the G8 leaders and the Live8 concerts have concluded, says Setri Nyomi, general secretary of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches.

Nyomi was speaking Sunday at a special service on the Make Poverty History campaign during the Assembly of the United Reformed Church at Warwick University, Coventry, in the United Kingdom.

He said that many people of faith have long brought issues of poverty and injustice into the public arena with good analysis of the issues and significant action. He praised the Make Poverty History campaign for its added impact.

"This week the world's attention will be focused on the very public gestures that are being made in connection with the G8 leaders' meeting with initiatives attributed to the British government. The media will make us believe what a wonderful bunch they are. We will focus on how good the producers and artists in the Live8 concerts are.

"But let us not forget that very conscientious people of faith have been working tirelessly through churches, Christian Aid and others for a long time and that if the world had been listening we could have made poverty history decades ago," Nyomi said.

While thankful that the debts of 18 countries have been eased by recent gestures by the richer nations, the Alliance leader reminded his listeners that many more people continue to suffer under heavy burdens.

"The Live8 and G8 will come and go but it is the inspiring work of the churches and ecumenical organs that will need to remain vigilant in our standing with victims of injustice before we can see the back of poverty."

Nyomi said many in the South do not have access to clean water, decent education or good health care because of the burdens of debt and related structural adjustment programmes imposed on them by the richer nations of the North.

"We have millions consigned to prisons of poverty, joblessness, lack of access to health and education. They will remain in these jails because of the world we live in unless the analysis goes deeper."

The WARC general secretary said churches must use every possible tool to help make poverty history.

"Let us commit ourselves to exposing the distortions inherent in the unjust world in which we live and act out of faith together*and expose those who consign fellow human beings to prisons of poverty and injustice.

"Poverty will not be history unless you and I take our analysis deeper. Poverty will indeed be history if you and I dare by faith to remove the distortions in our world and help bring fullness of life to all."

WARC is a fellowship of 75 million Reformed Christians in 218 churches in 107 countries.

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Adventists Aim to Make Poverty History

St. Louis, Missouri/USA | 04.07.2005 | ANN/APD | International

Raising World Hunger Issues In Anticipation Of G8 Summit

The Seventh-day Adventist Church is playing its part in raising the issues of world hunger in anticipation of next week's G8 summit at Gleneagles, Scotland.

In Scotland itself, members of the Crieff and Edinburgh Seventh-day Adventist Churches were among the 225,000 anti-poverty campaigners who joined hands and formed a massive human white wristband around Edinburgh as part of the "Make Poverty History" demonstration.

During the morning service at Edinburgh Seventh-day Adventist Church lay preacher Mike Lewis spoke of the Israelites marching around Jericho, its walls unable to withstand the onward march of God leading His people to victory. He drew a parallel with the walls of evil, corruption, poverty and oppression that encircle people today that will ultimately fall as God finally ushers in His everlasting Kingdom of peace.

The Crieff church is the nearest Seventh-day Adventist Church to the location of the G8 Summit, just nine miles up the road at Gleneagles. Local Adventist member Steve Logan galvanized his church, along with a number of Christian groups, to coordinate locally the "Make Hunger History" protest in the run-up to the G8 summit. Included in the events will be a 12-hour Prayer Vigil on July 5 between noon and midnight. The church prepared a PowerPoint presentation in connection with the Prayer Vigil, which is available for free download from www.adventistinfo.org.uk/resources.

Speaking of yesterdays demonstration, Lewis told ANN "I was proud to be there, part of the biggest demonstration ever to be held in Scotland. The group's longer term aim is to continue with MPH after the G8 and all the protesters have gone home, giving time and effort to a long-term project that will make a difference in developing countries."

Meanwhile in Philadelphia, Adventists played a full part in the Live 8 concert, one of 10 concerts around the world prior to the G8 summit. The Adventist Humanitarian Resource Center of Philadelphia partnered with other Adventist entities to take charge of health care during the concert festival. Working out of a 60-foot (18 meter) trailer that had a big yellow and black banner with the words "THE SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTIST CHURCHES OF THE DELAWARE VALLEY," they passed out thousands of pieces of literature, provided health screening services, provided advice and collected names for follow-up. The team dealt in a real sense with poverty issues as many people who came to the screening could not afford medical insurance and were grateful for the advice.

Bruce Atchison, community service director of the Pennsylvania Conference, stated, "It was a golden opportunity to reach thousands of people." Gerry Weathers, a registered nurse from 1st Adventist Church of Coatesville, was delighted to promote wellness from a holistic point of view. She emphasized that the entire family benefits from disease prevention, stating that "proper diet reduces stress and plenty of water will also reduce plaques of disease."

The 58th world session of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in St. Louis, Missouri, is also taking hunger and poverty issues seriously. The Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) international is protesting global poverty at its exhibit. Tereza Byrne, bureau chief for marketing and development for ADRA, hopes that exhibit visitors will partner with ADRA in fighting poverty. Locally, sales at the ADRA booth are being donated to local charities to deal with poverty and development issues in the deprived areas of St. Louis.

Byrne states that, according to the World Bank, 2.8 billion people, about half the world's population, struggle to survive on less than U.S. $2 a day. ADRA's community development programs in food security, primary health, basic education, and economic development help address the debilitating effects of poverty. [Editors: Victor Hulbert, John Surridge and Volker Henning for ANN/APD]

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G8 Should Focus on HIV, Women's Empowerment

Washington D.C./USA | 05.07.2005 | allAfrica.com | International

GUEST COLUMN
July 1, 2005

By Janet Fleischman
Washington, DC

When the leaders of the world's largest industrial nations meet next month in Scotland, they will debate how to address the HIV/Aids crisis and whether to significantly increase assistance to Africa.

But for the summit to have a real impact on the Aids pandemic, the G8 will have to do more than increase funding; they will have to address the economic and social realities that make women and girls a special, high-risk group. Evidence from Africa shows the importance and cost-effectiveness of this strategy.

The need for such action is strikingly evident in sub-Saharan Africa, where 60 percent of those living with HIV/Aids are women and girls and where abuse and discrimination against women fuel the pandemic. On a recent trip to Africa, I visited the Chelstone Clinic, in Lusaka, Zambia, which provides free ARV treatment to women who test positive for HIV in the antenatal clinic. But the medical staff there told me about the serious challenges that women face in the fight against HIV/Aids. Upon disclosing their HIV status, women often face assault, economic abandonment and being chased from their homes. One dynamic and articulate counselor at the clinic explained the risks women take when they tell their husbands or partners about their HIV status, or try to encourage the men to be tested. "They were beaten, physically abused-with swollen eyes and bruises-and then they withdrew from the program."

The young women I talked with at a Girls High School in Zambia provided further insights into how young women live at heightened risk of HIV. As peer educators, they provide information on HIV/Aids, but, as one of them noted, "It's difficult to adhere to the information on an empty stomach." Her comment reveals how women's lack of economic empowerment puts them at risk of infection, compelling many young women to use their bodies in exchange for basic necessities. No wonder young women between the ages of 15 and 19 are infected at rates as much as seven times higher than boys their age.

Despite growing global recognition that women and girls face special risks in a world of Aids, there has been little explicit effort by the leading international donors -including the U.S. global HIV/Aids initiative, known as Pepfar -- to address the particular needs of women and girls in a systematic and comprehensive manner. "Under Pepfar," said one U.S. embassy official, "no programs are designed specifically for women. Women may benefit or participate, but the programs aren't designed for them." Comments such as these raise the important issue of why the fundamental vulnerabilities of women and girls to HIV in general are not being targeted. For their part, senior Pepfar officials have expressed concern that addressing the social and economic dimensions of women's risk are much broader than the HIV/Aids epidemic, and that addressing them would tax the limited HIV/Aids resources available through Pepfar.

The G8 leaders should tackle this head on, realizing that unless they work with national governments and civil society groups to make the gender dimension central to their approach to HIV/Aids, it will be difficult for them to reach their own goals. Further, promising models for addressing the nexus between HIV/Aids and women's social and economic empowerment already exist, and they are not cost-prohibitive.

One example is a program in Zambia called Umoyo, which in the Nyanja language means "life." It is a one-year school and training program for girls, usually orphans or otherwise vulnerable, who are chosen by their communities to take part in the program. Virtually all of them are affected by HIV/Aids and a few infected. After being given counseling, the girls enter an academic and vocational training program. More than 80 percent of the girls who graduate engage in further training, employment, or running small businesses. Girls who graduate often gain employment and become breadwinners, allowing them to provide food and school fees for their brothers and sisters. The Umoyo Training Centre program demonstrates that girls who are empowered and able to start work and venture into businesses, can better take care of themselves and their families and help reduce their risks of HIV.

The increasing attention to the Aids crisis by the G8 is significant, but the time has come for the leading industrial nations to recognize that imperatives beyond HIV/Aids or even the health sector are directly linked to women and girls' vulnerability to infection and to their ability to access and adhere to care and treatment. Ultimately, the effectiveness and sustainability of the global response to HIV/Aids requires them to meet this challenge.

Janet Fleischman is chair of the Gender Committee of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) HIV/Aids Task Force. She recently returned from Kenya and Zambia, and published "Strengthening HIV/Aids Programs for Women: Lessons for U.S. Policy from Zambia and Kenya."

Copyright © 2005 allAfrica.com. All rights reserved.

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Pope Benedict Joins Plea to G8 Nations to Alleviate World Poverty

London, SE1 8XA, United Kingdom | 05.07.2005 | Christian Today | International

Pope Benedict XVI has joined in the voices calling to the Group of Eight nations to take real steps towards alleviating the debt of some of the world’s poorest nations in the world as well as aiding the development of Africa.

In his message to the Archbishop of Saint Andrews and Edinburgh, Cardinal Keith Patrick O’Brien for the "Make Poverty History" rally, the Pope sent greetings to "all who are gathered for this event, united by their concern for the welfare of millions of our brothers and sisters afflicted by extreme poverty."

The Pope also quoted part of the Scriptures as a reminder of the moral responsibility held by those in power: "As the Second Vatican Council teaches, ‘God intended the earth and all it contains for the use of everyone and of all peoples; so that the good things of creation should be available to all."

Around 225,000 people took part in the rally in Edinburgh’s city centre on Saturday, all dressed in white.

The Pope reaffirmed this message to the crowds gathered for the midday Angelus in St. Peter’s Square today: "I wish for the total success of this important meeting, hoping that it will lead to sharing with solidarity the expenses of debt reduction, to implementing concrete measures to eradicate poverty and to promoting the genuine development of Africa."

The Pope concluded his message by calling the leaders and people of the eight most powerful nations in the world to use their political and financial clout to fulfil a moral duty to other less fortunate countries, and not to leave promises empty.

"For this reason, people from the world’s richest countries should be prepared to accept the burden of debt reduction for heavily indebted poor countries, and should urge their leaders to fulfil the pledges made to reduce world poverty, especially in Africa, by the year 2015."

"His Holiness prays for the participants in the rally and for the world leaders soon to gather at Gleneagles, that they may all play their part in ensuring a more just distribution of the world’s goods."

"In the ardent hope that the scourge of global poverty may one day be consigned to history, he cordially imparts his Apostolic Blessing."

The G8 Summit will take place Wednesday 6th July till Friday 8th July, in Gleneagles, Scotland.

Copyright © 2002 - 2005 Christian Today. All Rights Reserved.

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NGOs See Clouds Over Gleneagles

Gleneagles, Scotland/UK | 06.07.2005 | IPS | International

by Sanjay Suri, IPS

This week's summit of the Group of Eight leading industrial powers is set to fall short of the response needed to tackle global poverty, says the non-governmental organisation War on Want.

The London-based anti-poverty group released calculations on the eve of the G8 summit Tuesday showing that the money on the table at the July 6-8 meet at Scotland's Gleneagles golf resort will provide less than five percent of the debt relief and less than 20 percent of the aid needed to meet the objectives of the Make Poverty History (MPH) campaign.

"Our information is based on reports we're getting from the Treasury," John Hilary, director of campaigns and policy at War on Want, told IPS.

For aid, the total package likely to be announced is 25 billion dollars, Hilary said. "And much of that has already been pledged. (U.S. President) George Bush has said he will produce an extra 4.5 billion dollars over what was given earlier. But of that, three billion dollars has already been pledged under the Millennium Challenge Account."

Bush proposed the Millennium Challenge Account as a means to link more development aid from industrialised nations to "greater responsibility" from developing nations.

Japan too is announcing new aid, but much of that is "just a re-allocation," Hilary said. "We are not getting any sense that anything new will be done. At the most there could be a little extra here or there on particular deals."

Aid, debt and trade have been cited as the three pillars of development. "We are hearing now that the United States and the European Union will launch a savage attack on the trade regimes of developing countries. So the tiny crumbs that are given by way of aid and debt relief will be wiped out by the trade policies of the G8 countries."

In place of the 45 billion dollars which would be released by the 100-percent cancellation of the poorest countries' debts, the G8 are offering just over one billion in cancelled debt service payments -- a fraction of what is required, War on Want said in a statement.

The G8 deal announced at the finance ministers' meeting last month provides debt relief to 18 countries in a package totalling 40 billion dollars, with the possibility of more countries being included in future, War on Want says. The package translates into just over one billion dollars in saved debt repayments which these countries will no longer have to make to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and African Development Bank each year.

"Yet this is well short of the 45.7 billion dollars which would be released if the G8 included all 62 poor countries which need 100 percent debt cancellation to meet the Millennium Development Goals," the group says.

The United Nations General Assembly established eight MDGs in 2000, which include halving global poverty and hunger by 2015, as well as improving primary education, maternal health and environmental sustainability; reducing infant mortality and combating HIV/AIDS and other major diseases.

"In addition, the countries in line for debt cancellation are required to have 'qualified' by virtue of meeting harmful economic conditions under the Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) process, which includes sweeping programmes of trade liberalisation and privatisation. These programmes have in turn been shown to cause increased poverty -- undermining the positive potential of debt cancellation."

The G8 members of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) have responded to the Make Poverty History coalition's call for trade justice by hardening their positions against it, War on Want says.

"The EU and the United States have launched a new assault on the industrial and services sectors of developing countries at the WTO, attempting to force open these 'emerging markets' for the benefit of their own corporations -- even as they concede that this will lead to large-scale bankruptcies, mass unemployment and widespread poverty in the South," the group says.

At the same time, they have hardened their stance on eliminating the agricultural subsidies which undermine the livelihoods of farmers in the developing world, it says. "The UN has calculated that trade subsidies cost developing countries between 125 billion and 310 billion dollars a year in lost sales and lower prices for their goods."

By comparison, the G8 military expenditure rose dramatically last year -- the sixth year in a row to see an increase, the group says. World military spending topped one trillion dollars (1,000 billion) during 2004, with G8 countries (United States, Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia) responsible for the vast majority, according to figures released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute last month.

The U.S. military expenditure alone accounted for almost half the global total, at 455 billion dollars. These do not look like signs that the G8 countries are set to do more for the world's poor, says War on Want.

(C) 2005 Copyright Inter Press Service (IPS)

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Behind This New Interest in Africa

Gleneagles, Scotland/UK | 06.07.2005 | IPS | International

by Sanjay Suri

Powerful western nations are committed to developing Africa but more as a market for their goods, a leading agricultural economist says.

”There is talk of the need for action by way of aid, debt cancellation and trade,” Devinder Sharma, long-time campaigner for the rights of farmers in the developing world told IPS. ”An impression is given by (U.S. President) George Bush and others that of the three, trade is the real answer to Africa's problems. But actually trade is the problem.”

In four African countries -- Burkina Faso, Mali, Chad and Benin -- whose economies are based on cotton production, U.S. cotton is being dumped into the market and livelihoods are being lost, all in the name of trade, said Sharma.

U.S. cotton prices are cheap because 25,000 U.S. cotton farmers get four billion dollars a year in subsidies, he added. ”This is obviously depressing the market in Africa, and other countries. Then they ask farmers there to diversify and go for other crops.”

One cotton grower in the U.S. state of Arkansas received subsidies worth six million dollars, equal to the combined annual earnings of 25,000 cotton farmers in Mali, Sharma said.

U.S. subsidies on cotton are more than the gross domestic product (GDP) of several African countries, and three times the amount Washington spends on aid to half a billion Africans living in poverty, he added.

Ethiopia and Uganda have reported huge losses in export revenues, Sharma said. Earnings through agricultural exports in Uganda were about 110 million dollars in 2001, a fifth of the amount five years earlier, Sharma said. In Ethiopia, export revenues have also dropped heavily.

In January 2002, the European Union (EU) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) warned of increased food insecurity in Ethiopia without acknowledging that ”much of the fault rests with their own policies”, Sharma argued.

Talk of developing Africa is just a public relations exercise, he added. ”They know Africa is the future market for the agricultural produce of the United States and the European Union.”

Debt cancellation too has not been decided without consideration of advantages to the EU and the United States, according to Sharma. ”When you write off the debts of the poorest countries, you enable them to that extent to buy agricultural produce from the EU and the U.S.”

In the EU, the so-called reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) ensured that the level of subsidies given to farmers in 2004 became their entitlement, he said. ”That will continue until 2013, so the farmers are completely protected until then. That means they will continue to produce surplus goods.”

Among other produce, the EU will churn out 200 percent more milk than it needs. ”Where is the market for this?” Sharma asked, answering, ”the market is Africa. And if cheap milk for Africa is produced in the EU, what will African farmers do?”

Eventually farmers everywhere will lose out to corporations, Sharma predicted. ”Through the World Trade Organisation (WTO) farmers in different countries are being pitted against one another,” he said.

”Jamaicans are worried about cheap milk from Britain, the Americans are worried by cheaper apples from China -- it goes on. The more individual farmers suffer, the easier it becomes for corporations to move in.”

Just 10 companies control the global trade in agriculture, Sharma said. Cargill, the biggest among them, has almost 60 percent of the world trade in cereals, he added.

”They are taking control, and buying from big farmers, and the small farmers are disappearing, even in the West,” he said. ”The U.S. had 900,000 farmers in 2002; in 2004 their number was down to 700,000.”

The EU has about seven million farmers, but is losing them at the rate of about three a day, according to Sharma, yet more and more money is being given to more and more wealthy producers, he said.

In Britain, whose leaders today are showing so much about concern for Africa, the Duke of Westminster -- who owns about 55,000 hectares of farm estates -- receives an average subsidy of 300,000 pounds (more than half a million dollars) as direct payments, and in addition gets 350,000 pounds a year for the 1,200 dairy cows he owns, Sharma said.

”The recipients of the U.S. agricultural subsidies in 2001 also included (millionaires) Ted Turner and David Rockefeller.”

Produce grown by such farmers, bought by giant companies, is now being distributed in world markets through firms like Wal-Mart, Sharma said. ”Local farmers' marketing channels are being destroyed.”

If Africa is to emerge from poverty, it would have to be through agriculture primarily, he argued. ”If it's agriculture that is being destroyed, then where is the hope for Africa?”

(C) 2005 Copyright Inter Press Service (IPS)

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More Aid Sought for African People, Not Gov'ts

London/UK | 06.07.2005 | IPS | International

by Sanjay Suri

A leading campaign group has called for a substantial part of increased aid to Africa to be channelled directly to people, rather than governments.

While G8 leaders talk of doubling aid to Africa, "we say that at least half of the doubling should be for more local initiatives," director of the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development, Camilla Toulmin, told IPS. The IIED is a policy research institute working in the field of sustainable development, with extensive work in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Development of Africa has been made one of the two priorities for the G8 summit by host Britain. The summit of leaders of eight leading industrialised nations (the United States, Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia) will take place in the golf resort Gleneagles in Scotland July 6-8.

The IIED says the biggest block to development is the "power deficit" that means those at the frontline, particularly women who are the majority of African small farmers, struggle to control their own lives. Direct aid, supported by "capacity-building" to boost the voice and influence of local people and organisations, would radically reduce the "power deficit" and put people in charge of building better futures, according to the institute.

IIED says it is concerned that the voices of marginalised people, such as small farmers or slum-dwellers, are sidelined in the current debate about Africa's future, and warns that the "G8 project" risks failure unless world leaders do more to listen to and act on their concerns.

"Aid going from governments to governments means that power is concentrated at the centre, and so activities at local levels find it difficult to have access to resources," Toulmin said. African governments are looking to Western governments for money, and that is disrupting the dynamics that emerge from taxation, she said.

"Taxation forces governments to listen to people. If governments rely on other countries for 80 to 90 percent of their money, then that breaks the link of political accountability with people in a damaging way. So when Western governments then ask these governments to listen to their people, it becomes a rather empty process of consultation."

Corruption is a particular problem with allocating resources only to governments, Toulmin said. "It is a serious problem if 40 percent of the wealth of Africa is exported into bank accounts and other activities in the West. South-East Asia had its rich elites but at least they re-invested the money back in their own countries."

Accountability and cleaning up corruption are an essential part of the Bush agenda, she said. "That is the one thing on which Bush is relatively sound, though the trouble is that he combines that with being fantastically mean." But all of the G8 countries need to deal with the issue of accountability, she said. "We have to find a way of shifting money from governments to the hands of people."

G8 leaders also need to get away from a projection of Africans "as victims and passive people," and Africa in terms of "crimes and disaster stories," Toulmin said. "That may be true of a few places, but Africa is full of energy and activity. A lot of Africa is growing and developing, as an ordinary everyday place." And much of this comes by way of "a 'people agenda' that is not on the map at the moment."

IIED chair and former Irish president and UN high commissioner for human rights Mary Robinson said in a statement: "Africa is not a failure, nor is it backward, but it is too often failed and held back by the unwillingness of the international community and national governments to trust local people and build on what works already, such as small-scale farming."

African women need particular attention, she said. They face "the biggest hurdles in accessing land and markets, need the greatest support over property and inheritance rights, particularly as their vulnerability is increased by the HIV/AIDS pandemic."

Robinson said: "Who knows how best to manage land and other natural resources? Is it local people with hundreds of years of experience and knowledge? Or aloof national governments and big business touting an economic model that has already failed people and the planet?"

"Are we going to help Africa to help itself, which means bottom-up thinking, removing unfair barriers to development and putting power in the hands of ordinary people, or do we simply want to open up markets ultimately for rich country gain in the vain hope that some residual benefit may trickle down to the poor?"

The real solution lies in "investing directly in the African farmer and creating a fairer marketplace by ending subsidies on rich country produce and the dumping of surpluses on poor nations," Robinson said. "The international policy lens has got to be refocused to recognise the positive things in Africa and all poor regions, and build on them rather than undermine them."

(C) 2005 Copyright Inter Press Service (IPS)

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London Forum – Church Leaders’ Statement on the G-8

London/UK | 07.07.2005 | APD | International

London Forum on G-8 – ‘action on poverty needed now’

A group of UK and US church leaders has called for decisive action and firm commitment on poverty from the world’s G8 leaders meeting this weekend.

The London Forum, meeting at Lambeth Palace and hosted by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, issued a final communiqué saying that the time for change is now:

“There is no place for apathy in a world which sees 30,000 children die each day because of poverty related conditions. The bible teaches that whatever we do to the poorest we do also for Jesus. We believe God judges nations by what they do to the poorest.”

The Forum was attended by delegations from UK Churches organised by Dr David Goodbourn of Churches Together and Britain and Ireland; US churches organised by The Revd Jim Wallis, leader of the peace and justice network Sojourners, representatives of African led churches and representatives from faith based mission and development agencies.

The communiqué calls upon G-8 leaders to, “provide courageous and costly leadership by providing the resources and making the structural changes necessary to eradicate poverty.”

Earlier some of the delegates had what they described as a ‘constructive’ meeting with UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown.

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