G8 summit focuses on accountability, but where is it?

“The G8’s failure to deliver on promises it made at Gleneagles has made the world wonder whether the G8 is still credible,” Zambia native Henry Malumo, spokesperson of the anti-poverty group ActionAid, said in a statement. “How can poor countries believe it will deliver or be accountable on the maternal health commitments it trumpeted [Friday] given it has just wiped the Gleneagles pledges off its records books?”

International aid group Oxfam called it a “summit of shame” and the group Make Poverty History said the summit had ended “with little to justify its existence.”

Both British Prime Minister David Cameron – whose government has remarkably maintained overseas development spending in its domestic budget despite severe cuts – and US President Barack Obama recognized any lack of accountability as a problem.

"The president believes that the credibility of the G8 rests on the willingness of its members to honor their commitments by reporting transparently on progress and identifying areas where additional effort is required," the White House said in a statement.

But those crunching the numbers said the G8 deserved some credit.

The University of Toronto G8 Research Group, a network of global thinkers on G8 issues, found that of 406 developed-related commitments made by the G8 since 1975, 72 percent have been fulfilled. While compliance on development issues is generally lower than on other issues, it is still “pretty good”, says the group’s director of compliance studies, Adrienne Davidson.

The advocacy organization ONE, co-founded by BONO, says disappointment over the inability to fulfill the Gleneagles pledge is no reason to discount all the progress that has been made by the G8.

“The past five years have resulted in historic increases in development assistance and debt cancellation for Africa,” says a report by the group which calculated that by the end of 2010, the G8 will have delivered 61 percent of their promised increases in development funding (the US, the UK, and Canada have already entirely met their Gleneagles pledges). If you take Italy, the most non-compliant country, out of the equation, that percentage rises to 75.

The group points to some of the results of that aid: malaria-related deaths have been cut in half and the number of Africans with access to live-saving AIDS medication has jumped from 60,000 to 3 million.

“We need to reflect on what’s working,” in an effort to apply those successful models to unfulfilled pledges, says Erin Thornton, ONE’s global policy director.

The group has developed so-called TRACK principles to help countries make commitments they will keep. For fulfillment to have a chance, the group says, the commitment must be transparent and results-oriented, and there must be a way of measuring whether it’s been kept.

Previous

1 | 2