G8 FUDGED FIGURES WON’T FEED HUNGRY SAYS ACTIONAID
WASHINGTON - Following the release this morning of the G8 Accountability report ahead of next week’s G8 summit in France, ActionAid, which has been tracking the $22 billion promise of aid to fight hunger made by the G8 at the L’Aquila summit in 2009, had the following reactions:
Jo Walker, Head of Advocacy at ActionAid International, said:
“Yet again the G8 has released a report glossy enough for a press conference, but unlikely to feed the billion hungry in Africa and Asia. The G8 has fudged its figures to look like it is meeting its commitments, but the truth is few nations have accurately reported on their pledges. Shamefully the EU, Germany, and Japan have not reported back on how much cash they have delivered at all – nearly 2 years after the initiative was launched.”
“With the world one failed harvest away from a food crisis, the G8 has got to start taking its hunger promises seriously.”
Neil Watkins, Director of Policy and Campaigns at ActionAid USA said:
“The United States was a star performer at the G8 summit in L’Aquila, pledging significant new resources to fight hunger. The US is leading other G8 nations by reporting transparently on its progress, and by committing to deliver all its aid behind country-led plans. But delivery has been much too slow, largely due to delays in the Congressional budget process. With a global food crisis looming, Congress now more than ever must support the Administration’s request for funds to fight global hunger so that the US can get back on track to meeting its G8 pledge.”
In its review of the report, ActionAid discovered that some G8 members had deliberately inflated aid to agriculture figures. Italy, France and Germany had included in their calculations previous aid commitments that were not part of their L’Aquila pledge. Furthermore, money used on ‘transport’, ‘land mine clearance’, ‘water supply’ and ‘sanitation’ had also been counted as aid to fight hunger.
Despite the G8’s 2009 agreement that investment in small farms in Africa was the key to avoiding a food crisis, progress has been slow, with the report indicating that only 22% of pledged funds had actually been disbursed in the first two years of the initiative.
See ActionAid’s full analysis of the Accountability report here.
ActionAid is calling on the G8 to:
· Openly publish all available data on where and who the L’Aquila pledge is helping on a country-by country basis and stop fudging figures by counting other aid commitments as L’Aquila money;
· Speed up progress to ensure delivery of the full $22billion pledged in L’Aquila in the next year.
· In light of the food crisis, scale up overall aid to agriculture beyond the L’Aquila pledge to meet needs identified by African governments through the CAADP process.
· Align its support behind country-led plans and deliver more of its assistance through the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP), a transparent, participatory and effective multilateral fund that is delivering results.
ENDS
ActionAid is a development agency working to fight hunger and poverty in 50 countries. See www.actionaidusa.org for more information.