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Africa: G8 Charade on Africa
Africa: G8 Charade on Africa
Date distributed (ymd): 020628
Africa Action Document
Africa Policy Electronic Distribution List: an information
service provided by AFRICA ACTION (incorporating the Africa
Policy Information Center, The Africa Fund, and the American
Committee on Africa). Find more information for action for
Africa at http://www.africaaction.org
+++++++++++++++++++++Document Profile+++++++++++++++++++++
Region: Continent-Wide
Issue Areas: +political/rights+ +economy/development+
+US Policy Focus+
SUMMARY CONTENTS:
This posting contains a press release and two articles from Africa
Action prepared before the G8 Summit concluded yesterday in Canada.
Unfortunately, there were no surprises and the consensus of
observers was that the results for Africa included very few, if
any, specific new commitments. In a comment echoed by many others
in different words, the U.S humanitarian relief organization
Catholic Relief Services labelled the summit's "Africa action plan"
an "inaction plan," and noted that two million more Africans will
have died of AIDS by the time the leaders meet again next year.
Readers can judge the plan for themselves by checking the official
summit site at:
http://www.g8.gc.ca/kan_docs/afraction-e.asp
Also distributed today is a posting with excerpts from the new book
from Zed Press by David Sogge, Give & Take: What's the Matter with
Foreign Aid?, which combines a comprehensive critique of the aid
industry with proposals for alternative perspectives for a new
framework for international public investment.
+++++++++++++++++end profile++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
AFRICA ACTION PRESS RELEASE
June 25, 2002
Contact: Ann-Louise Colgan 202-546 7961
Ahead of G8 Summit, Africa Action Deplores White House
Announcements on Africa. Bush described as "Anti-African" and U.S.
policies "A Charade".
Tuesday, June 25, 2002 (Washington, DC) - Ahead of this week's
meeting of rich country leaders in Kananaskis, Canada, Africa
Action criticized the recent announcements by President Bush on
new Africa policy initiatives.
Referring to the new proposals on HIV/AIDS and education announced
by the White House last week, as well as President Bush's planned
trip to Africa next year, Africa Action's Executive Director Salih
Booker said, "These moves are nothing more than a public relations
exercise designed to stave off criticism of U.S. indifference at
the G8 summit. They represent a charade of "caring for Africa"
while actually undermining efforts to address the continent's most
critical needs."
Africa Action noted that the White House initiative to reduce
mother-to-child transmission of HIV/AIDS came days after President
Bush had intervened to derail efforts in Congress to pass an
additional $1 billion for the fight against AIDS. "Africa faces the
worst public health crisis known to humanity," said Booker today,
as he denounced the Bush initiative as "pitifully inadequate and
dangerously wrong-headed." According to Africa Action, the narrow
focus on preventing mother-to-child transmission "abandons HIVpositive
mothers to a death sentence, and can only succeed in
exacerbating the AIDS orphans crisis that Africa already faces."
Africa Action continues to deplore the failure of the Bush
Administration to fund the United Nations Global Fund on AIDS as
the most important vehicle for fighting the AIDS pandemic. Bush's
proposal on education in Africa is similarly rejected as "a meager
attempt to deflect attention from the inadequacies of U.S. policies
on Africa's real challenges - AIDS and debt cancellation."
On the New Partnership for Africa's Development, or NEPAD, a plan
likely to attract a good deal of attention at this week's summit,
Booker cautioned that: "NEPAD is still an emerging initiative that
requires broader consultation among African leaders and civil
society. It cannot become the cornerstone for a new partnership
between African governments and G8 governments until it has first
become a partnership between African governments and their own
people."
According to Booker, "Bush's basic approach to Africa is to stall,
even as 6,000 people die daily due to AIDS alone. Such an approach
can only be described as anti-African."
Bush Plays Shell Game with African Lives
by Salih Booker
June 24, 2002
On the eve of a meeting of rich country leaders in Canada,
President Bush has brought out a "new initiative" promising $500
million to prevent transmission of HIV/AIDS from mothers to
children. Intended to stave off the embarrassment of coming
empty-handed to a summit trumpeted as focusing on Africa, the White
House initiative is in fact a cynical move to derail more effective
action against AIDS.
With a bipartisan congressional coalition poised to approve an
additional $500 million or more in AIDS funding for fiscal year
2002, President Bush first put the squeeze on Republican senators
to cut the total back to $200 million, half of which could go to
the Global AIDS Fund and half for bilateral programs to cut
mother-to-child transmission. Then he offered his plan, which
claims the $200 million as his own while only promising to ask
Congress for another $300 million two years from now. His plan
would allow no additional money for the Global Fund.
The administration justifies the smaller amounts and the go-slow
timetable by the need to first show "results." But, with 8,000
people around the world dying of AIDS daily (some 6,000 of them in
sub-Saharan Africa), the results of Bush's stalling action are
crystal-clear: more dead people.
Demonstrably successful anti-AIDS programs run by governments,
nongovernmental organizations, and mission hospitals are starved
for funds. Fewer than 2% of AIDS sufferers in sub-Saharan Africa,
including pregnant mothers, have access to anti-retroviral drugs
that can save lives. The Global AIDS Fund, which is estimated to
require some $10 billion a year, is already out of funds less than
halfway through its first year, while the U.S. has supplied less
than a tenth of the $3.5 billion a year that would be its fair
share.
When the issue is saving African lives, the administration says
"Let's wait." In contrast, there is no hesitation in shelling out
more than $5 billion a year in new subsidies for rich U.S. farmers,
or more than $6 billion a year to pay for suspending the estate
taxes on the richest Americans.
President Bush has also recently announced a trip to Africa for
next year and $20 million a year for African education (beginning
in 2004). But public relations gestures and budget shell games do
not save lives. The American public--and Congress--need to tell the
President to change course.
(Salih Booker <[email protected]> is executive director of
Africa Action, which is based in Washington, DC, and is FPIF's
(online at www.fpif.org) policy adviser on U.S.-Africa affairs.)
The Nation (http://www.thenation.com)
COMMENT | July 8, 2002
Aid--Let's Get Real
By Salih Booker & William Minter
The Africa trip of Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and Irish rock
star Bono produced a bumper harvest of photo ops and articles about
aid to Africa. Unfortunately, media coverage was mired in the
perennial and stale aid debate: Should we give more? Does it work?
If the O'Neill-Bono safari resulted in Washington finally paying
more of its proper share for global health, education and clean
water, that would be cause for applause. But any real change
requires shifting the terms of debate. Indeed, the term "aid"
itself carries the patronizing connotation of charity and a
division of the world into "donors" and "recipients."
At the late June meeting in Canada of the rich countries known as
the G8, aid to Africa will be high on the agenda. But behind the
rhetoric, there is little new money--as evidenced by the
just-announced paltry sum of US funding for AIDS--and even less new
thinking. Despite the new mantra of "partnership," the current aid
system, in which agencies like the World Bank and the US Treasury
decide what is good for the poor, reflects the system of global
apartheid that is itself the problem.
There is an urgent need to pay for such global public needs as the
battles against AIDS and poverty by increasing the flow of real
resources from rich to poor. But the old rationales and the old aid
system will not do. Granted, some individuals and programs within
that system make real contributions. But they are undermined by the
negative effects of top-down aid and the policies imposed with it.
For a real partnership, the concept of "aid" should be replaced by
a common obligation to finance international public investment for
common needs. Rich countries should pay their fair share based on
their privileged place in the world economy. At the global level,
just as within societies, stacked economic rules unjustly reward
some and punish others, making compensatory public action
essential. Reparations to repair the damage from five centuries of
exploitation, racism and violence are long overdue. Even for those
who dismiss such reasoning as moralizing, the argument of
self-interest should be enough. There will be no security for the
rich unless the fruits of the global economy are shared more
equitably.
As former World Bank official Joseph Stiglitz recently remarked in
the New York Review of Books, it is "a peculiar world, in which the
poor countries are in effect subsidizing the richest country, which
happens, at the same time, to be among the stingiest in giving
assistance in the world."
One prerequisite for new thinking about questions like "Does aid
work?" is a correct definition of the term itself. Funds from US
Agency for International Development, or the World Bank often go
not for economic development but to prop up clients, dispose of
agricultural surpluses, impose right-wing economic policies
mislabeled "reform" or simply to recycle old debts. Why should
money transfers like these be counted as aid? This kind of "aid"
undermines development and promotes repression and violence in poor
countries.
Money aimed at reaching agreed development goals like health,
education and agricultural development could more accurately be
called "international public investment." Of course, such
investment should be monitored to make sure that it achieves
results and is not mismanaged or siphoned off by corrupt officials.
But mechanisms to do this must break with the vertical
donor-recipient dichotomy. Monitoring should not be monopolized by
the US Treasury or the World Bank. Instead, the primary
responsibility should be lodged with vigilant elected
representatives, civil society and media in countries where the
money is spent, aided by greater transparency among the
"development partners."
One well-established example of what is possible is the UN's
Capital Development Fund, which is highly rated for its effective
support for local public investment backed by participatory
governance. Another is the new Global Fund to Fight AIDS,
Tuberculosis & Malaria, which has already demonstrated the
potential for opening up decision-making to public scrutiny. Its
governing board includes both "donor" and "recipient" countries, as
well as representatives of affected groups. A lively online debate
among activists feeds into the official discussions.
Funding for agencies like these is now by "voluntary" donor
contributions. This must change. Transfers from rich to poor should
be institutionalized within what should ultimately be a
redistributive tax system that functions across national
boundaries, like payments within the European Union.
There is no immediate prospect for applying such a system
worldwide. Activists can make a start, however, by setting up
standards that rich countries should meet. AIDS activists, for
example, have calculated the fair contribution each country should
make to the Global AIDS Fund (see http://www.aidspan.org).
Initiatives like the Global AIDS Fund show that alternatives are
possible. Procedures for defining objectives and reviewing results
should be built from the bottom up and opened up to democratic
scrutiny. Instead of abstract debates about whether "aid" works,
rich countries should come up with the money now for real needs.
That's not "aid," it's just a common-sense public investment.
This material is distributed by Africa Action (incorporating the
Africa Policy Information Center, The Africa Fund, and the
American Committee on Africa). Africa Action's information
services provide accessible information and analysis in order to
promote U.S. and international policies toward Africa that advance
economic, political and social justice and the full spectrum of
human rights.
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