In Africa the struggle that matters is the struggle for survival. With 14-million people in sub-Saharan Africa facing famine — and with only half of the urgently needed food aid available — today’s crisis threatens to become tomorrow’s calamity.
The African famine underscores an even more momentous challenge: whether the international community can join together to conquer the illiteracy, disease and poverty that are endemic in the developing world. A world where some live in plenty while half the human race lives on less than $2 a day cannot be either just or stable.
Two years ago, the world agreed to the United Nations millennium development goals — targets to ensure that by 2015 every child has schooling; infant and maternal mortality is reduced; and poverty halved. But already we are in danger of falling short. Consider the first of those goals: universal primary education. Today, more than 115-million children do not go to school.
Globally, 88 countries are projected to fail to meet our goal. Without new money and a new plan the world will have set goals in principle and then, in practice, have failed to meet them.
On February 13, [United Kingdom International Development Minister] Clare Short and I launched our detailed proposals for an international finance facility — a mechanism to raise the money needed to address these injustices. Its central principle is straightforward and reciprocal: in return for anti-corruption measures and stable conditions for equitable and sustainable economic growth in developing countries, the developed world will raise aid from $50-billion a year to $100-billion — the sum needed if we are to meet the millennium development goals.
To halve poverty, we must double aid.
To place all school-aged children in school will require a fifth of the additional $50-billion. To begin to win the battle for global health demands at least an additional $12-billion. The proposed facility is the best means of putting this funding on a stable footing for 2015 — leveraging long-term commitments from donor countries to secure additional finance from international capital markets.
For poor countries the aid will be available when it is needed: now, in advance of 2015. Rich countries will have more than double that time — 30 years — to repay their pledges. Funds from the facility will be committed by the rich countries, so poor countries will not accumulate new debt. Indeed, most of the additional aid raised by the facility should be in the form of grants — making disbursements through existing mechanisms.
Our proposed facility cannot exist, let alone succeed, if churches, faith groups, NGOs and business — as well as governments and international institutions — do not demand its creation. And to achieve that we must not only convince governments to fund the facility, but also persuade a sceptical world that finance for development will not be wasted.
By insisting on tough conditionality — on corruption-free regimes that pursue stable, equitable and sustainable economic growth, and agree to international monitoring of their poverty reduction plans — the success of aid will be measured in the rates of growth and poverty reduction achieved by recipients.
Providing aid is in all our interest. The poorest and most populous continents represent the world’s next engine of economic growth — future consumers and producers.
So now is the time for an unprecedented act of statesmanship by the world’s richest countries. We stand to gain in a world more united, more just and more prosperous — a world that grows together, rather than apart. — Â