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July 7, 2008
World Bank, UN Urge G-8 to Help Africa
Toyako (Japan)
The World Bank and the UN Monday urged the world's richest countries
to triple the amount of aid they give to Africa if they want to
stick to their promise to lift millions of people from abject
poverty.
"How we respond to this double jeopardy of soaring fuel and food
prices is a test of the global commitment to help the most
vulnerable. And it is a test we cannot afford to fail," said World
Bank president Robert Zoellick on the sidelines of a Group of Eight
(G-8) summit in Japan.
Eight years ago, heads of state and government from around the world
signed up to a series of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), to be
achieved by 2015. They include halving extreme poverty and hunger,
achieving universal primary education and drastically reducing child
mortality rates.
G-8 countries gave a total of $18.8 billion in aid to Africa in 2007
and have promised to raise this figure to $40 billion per year by
2010.
But UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon warned Monday that as much as
$62 billion per year would be needed by 2010 in order to meet the
MDGs.
"High food prices are already turning back the clock on development
gains. To avoid further suffering, we are calling on world leaders
to deliver a full range of immediate needs," Ban said.
G-8 leaders met African counterparts on the first day of their
three-day summit in Hokkaido Monday amid concerns that they were not
doing enough to counter world poverty.
Zoellick warned that a combination of bad harvests, rising food and
oil prices, the spread of biofuels and global warming were adding
pressure on the UN's humanitarian agencies.
He said the World Food Programme (WFP), which provides immediate
food relief to crisis areas, normally needed about $3 billion per
year in voluntary contributions.
"But this year it could be between $5 billion and $6 billion. And it
is likely that WFP will need a similar sum next year," Zoellick
said.
The two officials identified a series of solutions. Among them
emergency aid totalling $10 billion, the lifting of food export bans
and restrictions, an end to agricultural subsidies in the European
Union and the US and a move to a new generation of biofuels.
Global warming also needed to be urgently addressed, with Ban noting
that climate change was already having a devastating effect in
Africa.
"We tend to think of climate change as something of the future. It
is not. We see it now most of all in Africa, where drought and
changing weather patterns are compounding the challenges we face in
obtaining the MDGs," Ban said.
The UN secretary general invited G8 leaders to take an investment
approach to the world's most pressing problems.
"Every dollar, euro or yen invested today, as well as every ounce of
effort, is worth ten tomorrow and one hundred the day after," he
said.
DPA
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July 7, 2008
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