It is a sorry state of affairs that even though there is enough food to feed everyone in the world, 1 in 8 continue to go to sleep hungry every night. It is equally heartbreaking that 3 million children are denied a future for this reason and die every year from hunger and malnutrition. Growth stunting is rife in infants; some 165 million infants in the developing world will grow up to lead lives which are permanently impeded by this ghoulish food deficit.
This is why on Saturday me and 45,000 of my fellow compatriots assembled in Hyde Park at the Big IF, to rally the G8 leaders meeting in Northern Ireland at the end of the week to think long and hard about issues such as these, and to come up with solutions to the problems posed by hunger.
The Big IF itself is made up of over 200 organisations, many of whom were exhibiting on the day, which lent the event a real festival-like atmosphere. As I walked around before the main event I was impressed by the range of organisations on show, from your typical development stalwarts such as Concern Worldwide, UNICEF and our own GPP, down to Fairtrade clothing brands and even the Vegan Society. What's more, everyone seemed empowered with the kind of vigour that manifests itself only at these sorts of events. You could smell passion in the air.
Once the main event started we were treated to a number of talks from Danny Boyle, Bill Gates, Natasha Kaplinsky, ex-Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and many others. Danny Boyle commended us all in carrying on a proud national tradition of “people in parks” fighting for change, all the while confident that this is “a fight that will be won”.
Bill Gates was also full of praise, commenting that “The UK is keeping its promise to the world's poor, largely because all of you remind your leaders regularly, and loudly, that this stuff matters.”
Bill Gates was on the money. After a touching segment led by Daniel Roche and Charlie McDonnell (of Outnumbered and YouTube fame respectively) and two young Tanzanians who had encountered growing up the very hunger we are all vying to end, we were then led by musician Angélique Kidjo in a mass singalong featuring a message of love and compassion she hoped would reach the spires of the Houses of Parliament.
It seems like our calls were heard. During the day's events, it broke through that at the Hunger Summit that morning, David Cameron had pledged an additional £375 million of funding towards fighting hunger. Applause erupted from the crowd. This was the icing on the cake, which certainly left me feeling vindicated that we had each accomplished something bigger than ourselves. A fantastic result.
The hard work is not over, however. There's another Big IF in Belfast this coming weekend, ahead of the G8 summit, and if anything today's event has driven into the public consciousness that we should open up the discourse around hunger. Hunger is awful, even unnecessary, and there are real solutions out there. It's just up to us to come together and speak up, to send a message to the G8 that it is not only possible to defeat hunger, but we cannot and will not abide it.
Our Aid Uncut campaign set the Government 3 tests for this year’s federal budget. How have they fared?
1: Keep Australia on track to spend 0.5% of national income on foreign aid by 2016-17.
Wayne Swan’s budget did increase the overall aid budget on paper, increasing aid from 0.35% of national income to 0.37%. This is actually the amount of aid needed to reach in 2013-14 if the Government was to stay on track to reach 0.5% by 2016-17. But the increase was coupled with a decision to postpone (for the second time in 2 years) the deadline by a further year: the new target date is 2017-18.
This second broken promise means that while the aid budget will still increase, it will increase far more slowly than the Government promised when it made its original commitment in 2007 which was re-iterated in 2010.
2: Finish the job on polio eradication.
No announcement was made in the budget but there is every reason to believe that new money for polio will be announced soon.
3: Ensure aid money is spent to help end poverty overseas.
In December 2012 the Government announced that it was ‘reprioritising’ $375 million of the aid budget – moving money from overseas anti-poverty programs to pay for onshore asylum seeker costs. This has been repeated for the 2013-14 budget and looks set to become a regular feature of the Government’s aid spend.
The Government argues that this is allowed under OECD rules governing what counts as aid. Whilst this may be true (the rules are somewhat flexible) onshore asylum costs are NOT covered by the Australian Government’s own definition of aid which it set out just one year ago and which is supposed to apply until 2015-16.
This may sound like a technical issue but changing the definition of Australian aid means that more aid money is being spent here in Australia and less aid is helping to end global poverty.
Taking the postponement of the 0.5% target by a further year ($1.9 billion) and the new refugee spending (capped at $1 billion) together means that over the next 4 years there will be $2.9 billion less real aid for overseas anti-poverty programmes compared to what was promised last year.
So people living in extreme poverty have paid the price for the collapse in Australian Government revenue that preceded this budget. That is not an outcome in which anyone should take pride.
Today marks a watershed moment in the effort to eradicate extreme poverty. 43 years since the commitment to spend 0.7% of GDP on aid was made at the 1970 UN General Assembly, the UK Government has kept its promise to the world’s poorest people. The first of the world’s richest countries to do so; the UK has set an outstanding example ahead of the G8 Summit in June.
Despite tough economic times, the UK recognises that aid works and that - both in financial and humanitarian terms - the cost of doing something is less than the cost of doing nothing. Take polio, for example. Thanks to the UK Government’s leadership in tackling this debilitating disease, millions of children have been vaccinated as a result of British aid, and only 0.1% of the disease survives, globally.
The significance of today’s announcement cannot be understated. It has signaled a seismic shift in the way the rich countries treat poorer countries. And finally we can focus not on how much money we spend but how effective the money spent can be.
But there is more to do. We need to ensure that multi-national corporations pay their fair share, so that the developing world doesn’t lose three times what it receives in aid to tax-dodging each year. In poorer countries we need to stop land the size of London being grabbed by foreign investors every six days. And we must protect farmers and give them the chance to live off the food they grow, rather than fueling cars in rich countries.
We must do all these things. But today, on this rare and historic occasion, we must make the time for something else. We must take the time to say ‘thank you’. Decisions like the one the UK took today are brave enough in buoyant financial times, so the fact that it was taken in relatively stormy waters makes it all the more worthy of recognition.
Today we recognise that millions of people across the world will have their lives changed by this decision. Today, we should take the time to thank the UK Government for this historic step and thank the millions of people and organisations who over the last 43 years tirelessly campaigned for this moment, because tomorrow, the work towards the next step forward begins anew.
Today George Osborne will rise and deliver one of the most anticipated Budgets in British history. It’s historic for a number of reasons, not least because of the economic challenges domestically, but he will also have the opportunity to fulfil a 43-year commitment – spending 0.7% of the UK’s income on international aid.
We’ve been arguing for this for so long that almost everyone assumes we already have it… we don’t. It’s taken hundreds of meetings, thousands of marchers, millions of petition signatures to carry through a 1970 UN resolution, and the UK will be the first G8 country to do so. Campaigning alongside the UK’s Enough Food for Everyone (IF) campaign and nearly 100 leading charities to demand an end to hunger– we know aid works.
As a result, we can now focus not on how much we spend but how the money is spent. At the Global Poverty Project, we want to use this opportunity as a springboard to eradicate one of the oldest and most tragic diseases – polio. We have a unique window of opportunity to end this disease, and alongside the UK, we’re asking countries globally to help fund a new plan that has been put together to ensure a polio-free world by 2018.
Increased aid has accelerated vaccination programmes and decreased the prevalence of polio. Polio has now been eradicated by 99.9% and remains endemic only in three countries – Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria. The Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), comprising of the World Health Organization, Rotary International, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and UNICEF, and supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has long campaigned for funding that will see an end to polio – and they’ve almost succeeded. With the end of polio within reach, the GPEI has worked closely with the governments of polio-affected countries to put together the plan to finally wipe out this disease – the Polio Eradication and Endgame Strategic Plan 2013-2018.
The UK has a lot to be proud of; we’ve been a global leader committing around £100m to polio eradication efforts over the past five years. But this funding ends next month. Recommit this funding and the legacy of 0.7% could be the eradication of the second-ever human disease in history.
April’s Global Vaccine Summit in Abu Dhabi, hosted by the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Bill Gates, is the chance for the British government to announce its new funding commitment. We’re campaigning for the Department for International Development to make another three-year commitment to help us rid the world of polio. The GPEI’s new Strategic Plan sets out a clear strategy to end this disease – secure the necessary support and say goodbye polio.
Today we hope George Osborne will confirm 0.7% of our income on international aid. This is our opportunity to prove what’s achievable through well-directed international aid. And by continuing to take the lead on this issue, we can help convince other countries to do the same. Together, we can end polio.
The image below delivers a pretty standard message from the social justice / international development community, and it makes me so furious that I choke on food that I successfully swallowed hours ago. It doesn’t even make sense that I could choke on such items, but such a rage defies physics.
Why does my food besiege me for a second time? Because pictures like this assume that the proverbial short guy is always disadvantaged through no fault of his own. That if someone or something is undersized, that we should pull out our wallets and buy them as many wooden boxes as they need to be just tall as lanky over on the left. Worse, the big fella has actually even lost his own box in the pursuit of this... this... “justice”.
There’s a tougher question to ask. “Is something behind the eight ball as a result of its own bad behaviour, and to what extent should we help it if it refuses to change?”
An example is a small, developing, island nation which spends 80% of its tax revenue on salaries for government workers. Thousands of these government workers are relatives of village elders and other government officials, parachuted into jobs because of who they know. It is not rare in numerous ministries to see workers asleep at their desks, if indeed they decided to go to work that day. These horrible inefficiencies are a key reason why the government can’t balance its budget, and is receiving “Budget Support” from numerous foreign government donors. This involves the foreign governments writing multimillion dollar cheques to the island nation, and the money being used as overpriced, corrupt welfare for the friends and family of powerful people. So is the budget support actually helping the recipient country? Yes and no... the cheques allow the salary scam to survive for another year.
So, tell me again. How many free wooden boxes should we give the short guy?
It’s often politically awkward for donor governments to impose reform requirements on recipient governments in return for aid money. The donor governments are variously accused of neo-colonialism, exporting political ideologies via blackmail, ulterior motives, or a lack of cultural sensitivity. But, where there’s a good argument for it, I want them to do it. A culture of laziness and nepotism isn’t a culture, it’s a bunch of people making excuses, and trying to hide behind an emotional concept that donors are reluctant to closely examine. Yet the recipients still want stuff for free. Not only do they want their dessert before their vegetables, they want to have their free cake and eat it. Cake contains as many as five of the six food groups, but in ratios that make it an irresponsible breakfast option.
If we’re serious about aid effectiveness, the blank cheques have to stop, and the tough conversations about governance have to increase. Why should a nation that became tall as a result of discipline and efficiency indefinitely subsidise a nation that refuses to make similar sacrifices (Germany says hi, Greece)? Is this seriously our best attempt at defining justice?
This is a guest blog by economist Michael Jayfox. All views expressed are his own.
