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World We Want Poverty Rally June 2010, New York

Activists Demand `The World We Want’

 Hundreds of Prominent and grassroots anti-poverty campaigners from Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, Latin America and North America marched to Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza outside the United Nations today to demand urgent and concrete actions to reach and exceed the Millennium Development Goals.

The activists are in New York to participate in ground-breaking hearings at the United Nations, where for the first time civil society, private sector and government delegates are meeting together on the floor of the General Assembly. The interactive meetings are being held ahead of a high-profile summit at the UN in September, where global leaders are expected to take measures to accelerate progress towards the Millennium Development Goals.

“Governments seem to be suffering from a collective infliction – memory loss,” says Lysa John, Campaign Director of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP). “They agreed on a framework and concrete targets to dramatically reduce extreme poverty by 2015. But with less than five years to go, we are way off track. We urgently need legally binding mechanisms to ensure that governments keep their promises alongside a global breakthrough plan to end extreme poverty.”

Ms. John joined international campaigners outside the UN in signing a giant letter of demands, addressed to the U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon. The letter, which was also signed by more than 120 civil society groups across the globe, calls for greater accountability, measures to increase gender equality and reduce social exclusion and concrete urgent steps to achieve MDG8, a global partnership for development focused on justice, sustainability and fair trade.

Anti-poverty campaigners are also demanding an increased focus on social exclusion and discrimination as well as legally binding accountability mechanisms.

“We are calling for the World We Want 2015 because we are not happy with the World we live in today,” says Gemma Adaba of the International Trade Union Confederation, “a world where children are denied the opportunity to go to school and neoliberal polices dictate that education is a service that must be paid for. The World We Want is a world where there is education for all, health, water, decent work, universal social protection floor and dignity for all.”

“We need Governments to be accountable to the citizens of the world and fulfill the internationally agreed commitments they have made,” adds Mr. Irungu Houghton, Oxfam’s Pan-African policy advisor. “Poverty has reached emergency proportions. Urgent action is needed. We cannot afford a business-as-usual approach.”

Leaders from 189 countries signed The Millennium Declaration in 2000, setting out eight clear cut time-bound commitments to end poverty. While some progress and significant achievements have been made, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are not on track to be achieved by the 2015 deadline, due in part to the feminization of poverty, the ever more apparent affects of climate change and the global financial and food crises. In 2009 alone, an estimated 90 million people – mostly women and girls – were pushed into poverty.

An example of extreme poverty: Slums built on swamp land near a garbage dump in East Cipinang, Jakarta Indonesia.

We’re calling for a breakthrough plan to tackle climate change

The world’s top policy makers got a powerful message from advocates for the world’s poorest people.  Promises are not enough.  The G8 is $18 billion short on its commitments to alleviate poverty in developing countries, according to the OECD.  The impact of climate change is worsening the lives of millions in Africa and Asia.   Canada needs to hold member countries to account at this June’s G8 Summit in Muskoka.

The G8 “Sherpas”  – the senior civil servants who chart the course for their political leaders – are in Vancouver to finalize the Summit agenda.  They held a “Civil G8 Dialogue” with 60 global advocates from Asia, Africa, Latin America, Canada and the US.  There was no disagreement that the G8 is behind on meeting its own commitments and achieving the UN Millennium Development Goals which come due in 2015.

“The good news is, we could show them real strides education and combating diseases like TB and malaria ,” said Gerry Barr, Chair of Make Poverty History and CEO of the Canadian Council for International Cooperation.   “But all that’s sliding back from the effects of climate change, the economic crisis and especially the failure of some G8 countries to pay what they’ve promised.”

“We tried to impress all of them with the need to get behind the Canadian initiative on Maternal and Child Health with new money for urgently needed initiatives,” said Dr. Dorothy Shaw of the Partnership on Maternal, Newborn and Child Health .  We’ve just seen promising new statistics showing that when the right combination of interventions is implemented, the maternal death rate goes down.”

The prestigious medical journal Lancet this week published a survey showing a drop in maternal mortality, especially in China and India where economic growth is rising and both governments and donors have invested more in maternal programs.

But the delegates pressing the G8 teams for an action plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help hard-hit countries adapt, had no indication their message was heard.

“We’re calling for a breakthrough plan to tackle climate change,” said Zoë Caron, of WWF-Canada.  The choice is clear for the G8 this June:  lead us forward in this transformation to a clean green economy.”  But Canada appears reluctant to take serious initiatives of its own and has decided for the first time in recent G8 history, not to host an environment ministers meeting.

AIDS campaigners outlined to the Sherpas, how progress on access to treatment is helping more than 4 million people with the HIV-virus.  “Compared to ten years ago, it’s good news, but it still falls fall well short of the G8’s own targets for universal access. “  Masaki Inaba, from GCAP Japan, says the world “needs a further scale-up if we are to meet this critical need.  We urge donor countries not to use the economic crisis as an excuse for not replenishing the resources needed.”

The G8 has promised to make better tracking of delivery on its commitments a priority.  Making rich countries accountable is welcome news to South African GCAP delegate Glenn Farred.  “But a report card on how the G8 is doing, is not enough.  We told them we need to see a plan to ensure delivery on those promises and mechanisms to ensure that recipient countries are accountable for funding they receive.”

“Discrimination and neglect are threatening women’s survival in the Asia-Pacific region where women suffer from some of the world’s lowest rates of political representation, employment and property ownership. Their lack of participation in productive sector is depressing economic growth,” says the new Asia Pacific Human Development Report on Gender.

Launching the report, Power, Voice and Rights: A Turning Point for Gender Equality in Asia and the Pacific, Hon’ble Binda Pandey, Chairperson of the Fundamental Rights and Directive Principles Committee of the Constituent Assembly said, “Nepal has already made its way towards passing the bill on domestic violence in the legislative parliament which is a big leap in the right direction. Also the 33 per cent representation of women in the Constituent Assembly is noteworthy progress. However the big challenge of turning the Laws, Acts and Policies into implementation and practice requires change in attitude of all women and men in the country”.

Speaking at the launch event, UNDP Resident Representative Mr. Robert Piper stated, “Gender equality is good economics. Keeping women off the labour market simply costs money. Increasing their participation in the labour market will boost a country’s income, more so in countries with low current participation.”

The report focuses on three major areas of analysis illustrated in terms of Economic Power, Political Voice & Human and Legal Rights.

In the context of Nepal, the gap in women and men’s average daily earnings is alarmingly wide with women earning only 60% of what men earn while doing similar kinds of job in both the agricultural and non-agricultural sector. The report states that giving women economic opportunities also has an effect on gender-based violence – a problem common to the Asia-Pacific region. When women develop a stronger position to bargain and negotiate within their homes, it reduces their dependency on male relatives and frees them to make possibly different choices — including getting out of oppressive situations —that can improve their own welfare as well as that of their children and families.

The political voice of women has improved in Nepal with the recent secured 1/3 quota in the Constituent Assembly. In comparison, only about 1/3 of countries in Asia and the Pacific have quota systems to enhance women’s participation in politics. The report argues that the public policy decisions that the Governments make have fundamental implications on gender equality outcomes as they define the extent of opportunities and entitlements for women and men along with democratic space for civil society and for representing the interests of social groups with less representation, and effective delivery of social services.

Finally, with regards to rights, Gender-based violence is pervasive with more than one-tenth of women in the Asia-Pacific region reporting assaults by their partners. Nearly half of the South Asian countries lack laws on Domestic Violence. Nepal’s positive moves towards greater legal protection and equality for women needs to be continued.

At the conclusion of the 40th World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, participants pledged to rethink, rebuild and redesign the global economy based on sustainable principles. The sense of the Meeting, echoed by Lawrence H. Summers, Director of the US National Economic Council (NEC), was that the world was experiencing “a statistical recovery and a human recession.” “We are not out of the woods yet,” said Michael Oreskes, Senior Managing Editor of the Associated Press. “The recovery is still very fragile in many developed economies.” Principled leadership is key to stabilization.

“At the end, it’s an interdependent system,” said Josef Ackermann, Chairman of the Management Board and the Group Executive Committee of Deutsche Bank; Member of the Foundation Board of the World Economic Forum; and Co-Chair of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2010. “If you lose the support of society, you are not going to achieve your corporate objectives.”

Job creation is critical to sustainable recovery. There is a role for all to play in job creation, underscored Patricia A. Woertz, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), and Co-Chair of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2010. “And retaining jobs is as important as creating new ones.” The recession also demonstrated that the world must hear better the voices outside of the G8. “The self-confidence of emerging nations is completely different,” said Azim H. Premji, Chairman of Wipro, and Co-Chair of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2010. He warned that in India and China “if services are put under severe, unreasonable restrictions, you will get tariffs overnight.”

“If you have lost the trust of societies, you cannot just respond technically, you have to respond morally,” said Ackermann. Rowan D. Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, United Kingdom, urged participants to take collective responsibility for the future by being individually responsible now. Living responsibly in the present means living within ecological limits to ensure the security of work and food. “Responsibility for the future means being responsible for a vision of humanity which excites and enlarges us,” he added.

Key Achievements:

• At the 40th World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2010, participants found that the global recovery is fragile, and now is the moment to rethink values as the world rebuilds prosperity
• All countries in the G20 and beyond should find new pathways to sustainable growth and job creation
• Concretely, Bill and Melinda Gates, Co-Chairs of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which is a founding partner of the GAVI Alliance, pledged US$ 10 billion to vaccinate over 8 million children in the next decade
• Former US President William J. Clinton announced a joint initiative between the World Economic Forum, the Clinton Global Initiative and the UN to support Haiti’s long-term reconstruction
• Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak, Mexican President Felipe de Jesús Calderón Hinojosa and French President Nicolas Sarkozy all set forth agendas for global engagement to prevent future crises and to promote sustainability and principled growth
• Since its launch 10 years ago, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI) has saved over 4 million lives and has immunized an additional 256 million children in the world’s poorest countries

If long-term global problems are ignored, the economic crisis could lead to a social crisis

In his opening address at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France said that it will not be possible to emerge from the global economic crisis and protect against future crises if the economic imbalances that are at the root of the problem are not addressed. “Countries with trade surpluses must consume more and improve the living standards and social protection of their citizens,” he remarked. “Countries with deficits must make an effort to consume a little less and repay their debts.” The world’s currency regime is central to the issue, Sarkozy argued. Exchange rate instability and the under-valuation of certain currencies lead to unfair trade and competition, he said. “The prosperity of the post-war era owed a great deal to Bretton Woods, to its rules and its institutions. That is exactly what we need today; we need a new Bretton Woods.” Sarkozy said that France would place the reform of the international monetary system on the agenda when it chairs the G8 and G20 next year.

In his address, Sarkozy also called for an examination of the nature of globalization and capitalism. “This is not a crisis in globalization; this is a crisis of globalization,” he said. “Finance, free trade and competition are only means and not ends in themselves.” Sarkozy added that banks should stick to analysing credit risk, assessing the capacity of borrowers to repay loans and finance economic growth. “The role of the bank is not to speculate.” He also questioned the rewarding of high compensation and bonuses for CEOs whose companies lose money. Capitalism should not be replaced but it has to be changed, the French president declared. “We will only save capitalism by reforming it, by making it more moral.”

Speaking before Sarkozy, Doris Leuthard, President of the Swiss Confederation and Federal Councillor of Economic Affairs, told participants that the international community has to bridge the gap between rhetoric and reality as it tackles major challenges such as the global economic crisis, climate change and the Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations. “We must all sit down together in a responsible manner, bring our part of the solution to the table and allow a conclusion to be reached that benefits us all.” While “rhetoric and reality all too often diverge by large margins,” Leuthard said, the bottom line is that “people need jobs and a salary.” She concluded: “We have talked enough. It is now time to get moving.”

Earlier, World Economic Forum Founder and Executive Chairman Klaus Schwab warned of the consequences if countries are too preoccupied by domestic problems and ignore long-term challenges such as global warming. “We hope that governments don’t become overwhelmed by internal issues and constraints to the detriment of exercising the necessary global stewardship.” Added Schwab: “We run the risk that 2010 becomes the year of the social crisis following the financial crisis of 2008 and the economic crisis of 2009.” He noted that one of the top priorities for this Annual Meeting is to encourage entrepreneurship and job creation.