Christian Aid has accused world leaders at the United Nations World Summit in New York of not making the most of the ‘historic opportunity’ to make a real impact on the global issues of aid, debt and trade.
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The Christian humanitarian organisation also expressed its anger at leaders for not making the most of the momentum for tackling world poverty created by the euphoria of the G8 summit.

In a press release issued yesterday Christian Aid said: “The United Nations has failed the world’s poorest people by watering down pledges on key development issues.”

Charles Abugre, Christian Aid’s Head of Policy said: “There are some glimmers of progress, but overall the tone of this summit has been bleak and depressing. Instead of achieving consensus, too many leaders have been posturing and defending their own interests.”

He continued: “It is hard to believe that the cry for justice issued by anti poverty campaigners across the world earlier this year has fallen on such deaf ears. Never was there such a chance to improve the lives of millions; never was there such a mean spirited and self-interested response from the rich and powerful.”

According to Abugre, hope could be gained from the progress made on the Peace Building Commission, the Human Rights Council and the endorsement of universal access to HIV treatment by 2010.

“Apart from these, the main reason for any optimism was that 66 countries – including the UK – signed up to initiatives long championed by Christian Aid to ‘plug the leak’ of money leaving poor countries by tightening up on tax evasion,” said Abugre.

In the press release Christian Aid also outlined its view on key issues, reprinted in full below:

|TOP|Peace-building commission

While Christian Aid supports the concept of a peace-building commission, we strongly feel that it needs to have more teeth. To be effective, it must be more than just an advisory body. People directly affected by war have most to offer in promoting a solution but they and the organisations representing them are not even at the table.

Human Rights Council

It’s potentially a step forward, but we are concerned that it may be held to ransom and prevented from taking effective action by states who are themselves human rights abusers, as in the case of the present UN Human Rights Commission.
Aid

The commitment to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which are widely accepted as international benchmarks, just crept in by the skin of its teeth. The rich country commitment to 0.7 per cent of GNP (Gross National Product) as aid, first made in 1970 has failed to be renewed.

An opt out allows countries – including the USA and Japan - who have not yet formally signed up to the 0.7 per cent target, to avoid signing up to the pledge in future. This makes it less likely that the massive resource gap that exists for financing the MDGs will ever be closed.

Trade

On trade, the UN offers no hope to developing countries being forced to liberalise their economies.

While the G8 leaders at Gleneagles acknowledged that developing countries needed to have control over their own economic policies, the text simply reaffirms a ‘commitment to trade liberalisation’.

As usual, rich countries cannot take their own medicine. They have rolled back from an earlier version of the text which promised immediate duty free access into developed countries’ markets to all products from the poorest countries.

Now they are just going to ‘work towards’ this – a promise made so often over the years that it is entirely meaningless.

This is a tragic missed opportunity to send a signal to the World Trade Organisation’s ministerial conference in December that the world is ready for trade justice.
Conditionality

The document fails to go as far as the G8 in giving developing countries the space to decide, plan and sequence their development policies.

It notes that developing countries must take ‘primary responsibility’ for their policies and development strategies, but then dictates what those policies must be.

It is therefore much more ambiguous than the G8 communiqué on conditions attached to aid and debt relief.

Debt

On debt, the UN’s endorsement of the first steps taken at Gleneagles is positive but is a mere regurgitation of the G8 deal.

While it pays lip service to the need for broader debt relief, it contains no new suggestions for the way forward and is a big missed opportunity to address the systemic question of the debt crisis for developing countries, the vast majority of which do not benefit from current initiatives on debt cancellation.

HIV/AIDS

Christian Aid welcomes the endorsement of the G8 pledge to provide universal access to treatment by 2010.

However, we are extremely concerned by the absence of any mention of the need for prevention and sexual education or the role that sexual and reproductive health services play in fighting HIV/AIDS.

The recent shortfall in funds pledged for the Global Fund to Fight HIV, Tuberculosis and Malaria shows that governments need to match rhetoric with money.