Let's hope he can sort something out. This is disgraceful.

Gleneagles money for Africa goes to Iraq

    September 11 2005 at 04:11PM

By Caroline Hooper-Box

Barely two months since the G8 summit at Gleneagles in Scotland, it has emerged that part of the much-heralded foreign aid money promised for Africa is in fact earmarked for debt relief in Iraqi.

This is according to Stephen Lewis, UN special envoy for HIV/Aids in Africa, who told Sunday Argus: "Gleneagles may well turn out to be one of the greatest public relations exercises in G8 history."

The G8 (Group of 8) countries are the United States, Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Canada and Russia.

At the July summit they committed to replenish the Global Fund to fight Aids, TB and malaria and to ensure "universal access" to HIV treatment by 2010.




The Global Fund replenishment conference hosted by the British government in London this week, and chaired by UN secretary general Kofi Annan, was the first test of the promises made at Gleneagles, Lewis said, speaking from Toronto this week, but it was "an abject failure".

Governments at the conference came up with $3,7-billion (about R23,3-billion) for the fund, just over half of what was needed.

"At the the first test to show their honourable intent, they default." The Global Fund is $3,4-billion short of replenishment, he said, and was a failure to honour the Gleneagles promise of full funding of the Global Fund. "This shortfall is calamitous."

The lack of commitment shown by world leaders to the Global Fund on HIV/Aids will mean the Millennium Development Goals "cannot possibly be met in Africa," said Lewis.

The UN meets this week to discuss how close countries are to achieving Millennium Development Goals, which are meant to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, achieve universal primary education, reduce child mortality, ensure environmental sustainability, and to combat HIV/Aids, malaria and other diseases.

International anti-poverty agency ActionAid said the shortfall sent a "worrying signal" to the hardest-hit sub-Saharan countries. Global Aids activist coalition Make Aids History, said that in terms of the death toll, Aids, TB and malaria equal the effect of last year's Asian tsunami every two weeks.

South Africa has pledged R36-million to the Global Fund over the next three years, health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang announced at the conference on Tuesday.

The most significant outcome of the Gleneagles Summit was widely acknowledged as the promise of doubling of aid to Africa - an extra $25-billion by 2010. Japan has now admitted that part of the money it had pledged at Gleneagles would almost certainly be used to reduce debt in Iraq, Lewis said, a development which he said "took my breath away".

The money promised at Gleneagles to Africa was not expected to "suddenly be siphoned off to pay debts, and certainly not Iraqi debt". The new Iraq regime has a $200-billion debt burden.

Making matters worse, Germany and Italy have announced they might not meet the commitments they made at Gleneagles due to "budgetary constraints", and British finance minister Gordon Brown, 11 days after the summit, admitted that the extra money for aid promised by the G8 leaders included the extra money promised for debt relief.

The UN this week said under-funded African countries were facing disaster, and that their appeals for funds to ward off famine were being ignored.

UN humanitarian chief Jan Egeland that it had launched an appeal for $88-million to help Malawi deal with a food crisis threatening a third of its population. However 10 days later not a single cent has been donated. He warned that 10 million lives were at stake in Lesotho, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia, Malawi and Zimbabwe.

? This article was originally published on page 8 of Cape Argus on September 11, 2005