Millennium Development Goals

Director Douglas Busby and Damascus Films recently put together a video with the cooperation of The Millennium Challenge Corporation explaining the MCC’s work, the progress they’ve made, and their hopes for the next administration.

Founded in 2004, the MCC is “based on the principle that aid is most effective when it reinforces good governance, economic freedom and investments in people.”

Be sure to take a few minutes and check it out:

-Chris Scott

Last week, we wrote about World Toilet Day. John Sauer from Water Advocates passed along this great post about raising awareness for better sanitation practices, and what we can do to help:

Public indifference to the HIVAIDS epidemic was chronicled in 1987 in And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic. As the author Randy Shilts lamented, “Everyone responded with an ordinary pace to an extraordinary situation.” Thankfully now there is attention to this deadly disease, but it wasn’t always the case.

Another pandemic—namely more than two dozen diseases associated with poor sanitation—now faces the same kind of unresponsiveness. Every 20 seconds a child dies of sanitation-related diseases, which kill five times as many children as HIVAIDS. As an article in the New England Journal of Medicine documents, pathogens that cause diarrheal diseases, tracoma, and guinea-worm are among the culprits. You didn’t think you can die of diarrhea did you? Well you probably can’t but those living where open defecation is the norm can. Human excrement: it is the last taboo.

Pushback on this topic is very real. A TIME Magazine review of Rose George’s new book on sanitation suggested that “a series of articles was plenty on this topic.” One US government official refused to release a statement on World Toilet Day because of objection to the word “toilet.” Progress towards the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target of halving the proportion of people without basic sanitation by 2015 will not be met, at current rates, until 2115. In fact, the original version of the MDGs didn’t have a sanitation target.

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Hi there, my name is Adam Phillips. I recently joined the team at ONE as Faith Relations Manager. From time to time I’ll let you know what’s going on with our faith partners in The ONE Campaign. Before I joined the team in DC I have posted here in the past as a local pastor in Chicago and as co-chair of ONE’s partner, Micah Challenge USA .

I wanted to let you know about some significant commitments that were made on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) at the recent World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) general assembly in Pattaya, Thailand. 500 evangelical church leaders, representing some 128 national evangelical alliance groups from the US and around the world, passed major resolutions, on such issues as HIV/AIDS, poverty, the environment, and the global financial crisis.

Recognizing that the MDGs “echoed the mind” of teaching in their own tradition, the WEA called on government leaders in both the Global North and Global South to “significantly scale up their efforts to achieve the MDGs” – seeing the on-going crisis of global poverty as a critical threat to peace and security. Beyond calling their elected national leaders to act, though, the church leaders called on their own faith groups, congregations, pastors and laity to join and collaborate with The Micah Challenge. This was a major conclusion of the assembly as they saw it as a response “ to Love and Justice” in a time where economic challenges abound.

This moment in Thailand by a diverse group of global church leaders is just one of many that show how, working together as ONE, we all have a role to play in making poverty history.

-Adam Phillips

In his annual foreign policy speech to the Lord Mayor’s Banquet in London, Prime Minister Gordon Brown set out the five great challenges the world faces today. One of these challenges is meeting the Millennium Development Goals.

In the speech he said:

For now more than ever it is both our duty and in our interest to help meet the Millennium Development Goals. For we cannot solve climate change without Africa; nor can we solve the food crisis without Africa. We need a fully financed ‘energy for the poor’ initiative; where commercial sources of capital dry up support from the international institutions; and we need to support agricultural development in Africa, in the past feed the world meant that we helped to feed Africa. In future, if we do things right, we will do best by enabling Africa to feed the world.

He goes on to make some interesting statements in relation to sustainability and bringing the environment and development together:

This is why as we prepare for an ambitious post 2012 climate change agreement at Copenhagen, for which I pledge our Government’s unbending commitment, the European Union must, and I believe will, agree in December its ‘2020′ programme for energy and climate and show European leadership at its best. And I want the World Bank to become a bank for environment as well as on development, helping developing countries move towards sustainable energy paths of their own.

It’s great news that the British Prime Minister has explicitly made the Millennium Development Goals one of his top foreign policy priorities. Let’s keep him to his word.

Full speech can be read here.

-Jessica Gomez-Duran

Former secretary general of the UN, Kofi Annan, yesterday published an op-ed in the International Herald Tribune with some reflections about this past weekend’s G20 Summit and how to best move forward. He notes how the financial issues discussed at the summit are particularly relevant to Africa.

Excerpts below, full piece here

Events of the past few months have again underscored that no single country or small subset of countries, even the most powerful or wealthy, can manage the forces unleashed in our globalized world. The Washington meeting potentially represents the beginning of an era of unprecedented cooperation for concerted action on other equally pressing issues, such as climate change, food security and poverty reduction.

The current crisis comes as Africa struggles to maintain this positive momentum after a year of rising food prices and unprecedented volatility in fuel costs. Food and fertilizer are punishingly unaffordable for consumers and farmers. Recession and slowdown in high-income countries, as well as China, India and the Middle East, are resulting in plummeting commodity prices and exports, reduced remittance flows and decreases in foreign direct investment.

African leaders face an almost impossible challenge: how to protect their fragile economies and vulnerable people from global recession at a time when their revenues are decreasing. Maintaining levels of public investment is the basis for political stability and achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. Inability to do so could have profound consequences – in terms of unemployment, poverty and social and political tensions.

-Chris Scott

This past Tuesday, a group of African finance officials met in Tunis to discuss the impacts of the global financial crisis on the continent and strategize about how to address the likely consequences. The meeting was a call to action from the African financial community to the leaders attending the G20 summit to put the concerns of the developing world on the agenda for the meeting, which begins tomorrow in Washington, D.C., and to consider Africa’s dire situation when addressing the financial crisis. As we’ve outlined in previous posts, for many African countries the financial crisis could mean an increase in poverty and inflation, a decrease in economic growth, and a deepening of the food and fuel crises already gripping the continent.

ONE’s Edith Jibunoh in Nigeria has sent along a few highlights from the communiqué issued at the meeting which detail important points for this weekend’s G20 summit and the upcoming Financing for Development conference in Doha.

• Ministers said that the financial crisis is undermining Africa’s progress made in the last ten years and, along with the impact of climate change, will hamper countries’ abilities to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. They also expressed concern for the impact the crisis would have on trade and investment.
• On trade, the ministers urged a successful conclusion of the Doha Round of global trade negotiations, especially considering the spillover of the financial crisis to trade. They promised do their part by taking steps to improve the supply capacity in African countries through enhancing competitiveness, building infrastructure, and promoting greater economic integration within Africa. Ministers also promised to deepen their economic reforms and strengthen structures of governance and accountability.
• The Ministers also emphasized the importance of the international community keeping their commitments to Africa to improve aid quality, consistent with the Paris Declaration and Accra Call to Action. They asked that the F4D conference in Doha endorse these issues and reiterate their commitments.
• Finally, the participants asked South Africa to convey their views at the upcoming G20 meeting, although they stressed that one country representing the continent was not a substitute for inclusive African participation. They called for “new multilateralism” that fully reflects current realities and ensures the proper representation of all countries.

ONE will be bringing you information about the outcome of the G20 summit next week, so be sure to check back here.

-Beth Adler

I thought I should share some inside skinny on the week we spent in New York September 22-26 at the UN’s special summit on the Millennium Development Goals. We went there to try to attract some attention to – indeed celebrate – the efforts against extreme poverty in recent years, and to call for an acceleration of that progress.

Bono was frantically blogging for the Financial Times in every spare second throughout the week on his way to and from meetings with various leaders. The meetings were many: with Spanish President Zapatero to plan for their E.U. presidency in 2010; with President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf of Liberia to discuss their remaining private commercial debt (think that’s sorted now); with UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown to push on the overall Millennium Goals project; and with President Sarkozy of France and President Barroso of the EU to push Europe on delivering an extra billion euros from the EU budget to fight hunger and invest in agricultural productivity in Africa. Bob Geldof arrived a few days into the melee and participated on the opening panel of the Clinton Global Initiative, popped up on CNN, and met with Mayor Bloomberg, Bill Gates and others along the way.

One highlight was unveiling our “Celebrate Accelerate” video to a crowd of activists and leaders (including Bill Gates, Bob Geldof, Jeff Sachs) honoring the “quietest storm in town”: the UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon. Another, was dropping in on the “In My Name” launch where we regrouped with will.i.am and other activist allies.

An important part of the week was passing over ONE members’ hunger petition, with 50,000 signers, to Bob Orr, the Assistant Secretary General. The petition targets Ban Ki-moon, and all the G8 leaders, asking them to finance the current $1 billion gap in worldwide agricultural financing.

In addition to all of this, Kim Smith and a team of staff and volunteers brought the ONE Bus to town and, thanks to Mayor Bloomberg, parked it in some highly visible locations in the city.

By September 26th, it was clear it had been a decent week. In total there were $16 billion worth of commitments, some old, and some new, focused largely on building upon success to get more kids in school; eliminating malaria deaths by 2015 (yes, that’s got chutzpah – but by acting together it can be done); and renewing efforts against maternal mortality and hunger.

By investing in the fight against extreme poverty we can create new and stable markets where currently there are none; build strong global growth engines that can keep the global economy going when some of us falter; ensure strong health systems; and ensure that other’s instability doesn’t become ours. Above all – because it’s morally the right thing to do.

So now this piece of the campaign goes on to upcoming votes in Brussels on agriculture funding, and a key meeting about financing for development that is happening in Doha, Qatar, in the Middle East, at the end of November. We’ll keep you updated on both.

-Jamie Drummond

Government ministers and global health advocates from across the world are making their way to Almaty, Kazakhstan this week to focus on primary health care. The summit marks the 30th anniversary of the Alma-Ata Conference, which took place in the Kazakhstani city before the collapse of the USSR.

In the years since 1978, Alma-Ata has become somewhat of a hallmark and source of nostalgia in global health circles. The conference was the first of its kind to put the concept of health equity on the international agenda. Aiming to launch a campaign for health for all, attendees laid out their vision of primary health care. Identifying health as a fundamental human right, they argued that health care should not only be universal and affordable, but should be delivered in collaboration with local citizens in a way that is appropriate to the context.

These tenets were laid out in the Alma-Ata Declaration, which gave countries and international organizations a target date of 2000 for implementation.

Thirty years later the ideals of Alma Ata are far from being realized. Here at ONE, we know the stats on the global health deficit all too well: over 9 million children die before their fifth birthday every year from preventable, treatable causes; half a million mothers die every year during childbirth. While many at the time branded Alma-Ata and utopian, in retrospect its failure was more a result of unforeseen social and economic challenges that shaped the global health landscape of the 1980s and 1990s. WHO Director-General, Dr. Margaret Chan, speaks to this in a recent article featured in the Lancet:

Nor could the visionary thinkers in 1978 have foreseen world events: an oil crisis, a global recession, and the introduction, by development banks, of structural adjustment programs that shifted national budgets away from the social services, including health…The emergence of HIV/AIDS, the associated resurgence of tuberculosis, and an increase in malaria cases moved the focus of international public health away from broad-based programs and towards the urgent management of high-mortality emergencies.

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Last year, many ONE blog readers participated in the Stand Up and Take Action event. Anita Sharma of the UN Millennium Campaign wrote up this great summary of the event, and how you can get involved (If you’re a college student, click here):

I admit I was a little nervous about U.S. participation in the global Stand Up and Take Action mobilization. With just a week to go, the annual effort to join millions worldwide in the fight against global poverty and for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is happening in the shadow of the biggest financial melt-down of my lifetime. But instead of withdrawing, people are coming together to show that we care about combating global poverty. At times like this it’s all the more important that we live up to our commitments and work harder to support those in need. In poor countries around the world, 50,000 children die each day of poverty-related causes, yet this crisis has not received the urgency or attention it demands. The economic crisis is having a dramatic impact on people who already struggle to survive grinding poverty and are the least able to cope with issues like high food and fuel prices.

But we know we can be the first generation to end extreme poverty. In 2000 world leaders got together at the United Nations and pledged to achieve the Millennium Development goals and outlined the shared responsibility to end poverty, disease and illiteracy and to protect our environment. We are more than half-way to 2015 and while tremendous achievements have been made, we still have a way to go. Challenges like the food and energy crisis, climate change and now the financial emergency, mean it’s more important than ever that we keep our promises.

From the smallest villages to city streets, to sports events and political lobbies, the sheer diversity of actions is staggering. In the U.S., groups have organized dances, teach-ins, film screenings and prayer circles to raise awareness and urge people to take action. Last year, the event set a Guinness World Record, with nearly 44 million people from 127 countries standing up. Our goal is to top that number this year, mobilizing 1% of the world’s population, or 67 million people. People have asked how to get involved and take action. It’s really important to join an event or plan your own during the three days of action. You can register online and download the “event in a box,” materials to spread the word, print materials, and learn more. On the day of your event:

1. Take a moment to explain STAND UP and ways for people to TAKE ACTION
2. Everyone comes together and (if able) sits or kneels down.
3. People in the crowd STAND UP in unison and take an action in unison. Some ideas include signing the ONE pledge, living in on $2 for a day, writing a letter to you local paper, and reading the STAND UP pledge.
4. Take videos, photos, and audio from your event and load it on the website.
5. Make sure to count the number of people participating (you can estimate for big groups) and load it on the website by COB October 19, 2008 and we’ll report it to the Guinness Book of World Records!

If you haven’t registered to be counted there’s still time! We can show our friends world-wide that we are joining them in the fight against global poverty.

-Anita Sharma, North American Coordinator, UN Millennium Campaign

At September’s special United Nation’s Summit, we had a chance to show a short video to a group of world leaders at the Secretary General’s reception. The film – “Celebrate, Accelerate” – marks the progress on the Millennium Development Goals to date and encourages further, faster commitments going forward.

Hope you enjoy it!

-Weldon Kennedy