Britain’s Treasury chief called on Monday for extra funding to tackle poverty and disease in developing countries, ahead of a globalisation conference to be addressed by the president of the World Bank and the rock star Bono.
Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown said Britain was trying to build support for an International Finance Facility to boost funding for poorer countries from 50-billion pounds ($83,5-billion) to 100-billion pounds ($167-billion) a year by allowing them to borrow against future aid pledges.
”Four people a minute die of Aids. Eleven-million children are orphaned in Africa alone. Another 20-million are expected to lose one or both parents in the next six years. We want to make the rest of the developed world act on the scourge of poverty and disease,” Brown wrote in an article published by The Sun newspaper on Monday.
The daylong conference in London is scheduled to be addressed by Jim Wolfensohn, president of the World Bank, and, via video link, by U2 front man Bono and President Luis Inca Lull da Silver of Brazil.
A Treasury spokesperson said the conference would take stock of the Millennium Development Goals set by the United Nations, which cover establishing universal primary education, promoting gender equality and ensuring environmental sustainability.
It will also look ahead to Britain’s chairmanship of the G8 in 2005, which Brown and Prime Minister Tony Blair have said they will use to push forward debt relief and improve aid for developing countries. – Sapa-AP