[Peace-discuss] Fwd: Africa: G8 Charade on Africa

[Al Kagan]

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>From: "Africa Action" <apic at igc.org>
>Date: Fri, 28 Jun 2002 20:22:43 -0500
>Subject: Africa: G8 Charade on Africa
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>Africa: G8 Charade on Africa
>Date distributed (ymd): 020628
>Africa Action Document
>
>Africa Policy Electronic Distribution List: an information
>service provided by AFRICA ACTION (incorporating the Africa
>Policy Information Center, The Africa Fund, and the American
>Committee on Africa). Find more information for action for
>Africa at http://www.africaaction.org
>
>+++++++++++++++++++++Document Profile+++++++++++++++++++++
>
>Region: Continent-Wide
>Issue Areas: +political/rights+ +economy/development+ 
>  +US Policy Focus+
>
>SUMMARY CONTENTS:
>
>This posting contains a press release and two articles from Africa
>Action prepared before the G8 Summit concluded yesterday in Canada.
>Unfortunately, there were no surprises and the consensus of
>observers is that the results for Africa included very few, if
>any, specific new commitments. In a comment echoed by many others
>in different words, the U.S humanitarian relief organization
>Catholic Relief Services labelled the summit's "Africa action plan"
>an "inaction plan," and noted that two million more Africans will
>have died of AIDS by the time the leaders meet again next year.
>Readers can judge the plan for themselves by checking the official
>summit site at:
>http://www.g8.gc.ca/kan_docs/afraction-e.asp
>
>Also distributed today is a posting with excerpts from the new book
>from Zed Press by David Sogge, Give & Take: What's the Matter with
>Foreign Aid?, which combines a comprehensive critique of the aid
>industry with proposals for alternative perspectives for a new
>framework for international public investment. 
>
>+++++++++++++++++end profile++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>                                             
>AFRICA ACTION PRESS RELEASE
>
>July 25, 2002
>
>Contact: Ann-Louise Colgan 202-546 7961   
>
>Ahead of G8 Summit, Africa Action Deplores White House
>Announcements on Africa. Bush described as "Anti-African" and U.S.
>policies "A Charade".
>
>Tuesday, June 25, 2002 (Washington, DC) - Ahead of this week's
>meeting of rich country leaders in Kananaskis, Canada, Africa
>Action criticized the recent announcements by President Bush on
>new Africa policy initiatives.
>
>Referring to the new proposals on HIV/AIDS and education  announced
>by the White House last week, as well as President  Bush's planned
>trip to Africa next year, Africa Action's Executive  Director Salih
>Booker said, "These moves are nothing more than a  public relations
>exercise designed to stave off criticism of U.S.  indifference at
>the G8 summit. They represent a charade of "caring  for Africa"
>while actually undermining efforts to address the  continent's most
>critical needs."
>
>Africa Action noted that the White House initiative to reduce
>mother-to-child transmission of HIV/AIDS came days after  President
>Bush had intervened to derail efforts in Congress to pass  an
>additional $1 billion for the fight against AIDS. "Africa faces the
>worst public health crisis known to humanity," said Booker today,
>as  he denounced the Bush initiative as "pitifully inadequate and
>dangerously wrong-headed." According to Africa Action, the narrow
>focus on preventing mother-to-child transmission "abandons HIV-
>positive mothers to a death sentence, and can only succeed in
>exacerbating the AIDS orphans crisis that Africa already faces." 
>  Africa Action continues to deplore the failure of the Bush
>Administration to fund the United Nations Global Fund on AIDS as
>the most important vehicle for fighting the AIDS pandemic. Bush's
>proposal on education in Africa is similarly rejected as "a meager
>attempt to deflect attention from the inadequacies of U.S. policies
>on Africa's real challenges - AIDS and debt cancellation."
>
>On the New Partnership for Africa's Development, or NEPAD, a  plan
>likely to attract a good deal of attention at this week's summit,
>Booker cautioned that: "NEPAD is still an emerging initiative that
>requires broader consultation among African leaders and civil
>society. It cannot become the cornerstone for a new partnership
>between African governments and G8 governments until it has first
>become a partnership between African governments and their own
>people."
>
>According to Booker, "Bush's basic approach to Africa is to stall,
>even as 6,000 people die daily due to AIDS alone. Such an  approach
>can only be described as anti-African."   
>
>*****************************************
>
>Bush Plays Shell Game with African Lives
>by Salih Booker
>
>June 24, 2002
>
>On the eve of a meeting of rich   country leaders in Canada,
>President Bush has brought out a "new initiative" promising $500
>million to prevent transmission of HIV/AIDS from mothers to
>children. Intended to stave off the embarrassment of coming
>empty-handed to a summit trumpeted as focusing on Africa, the White
>House initiative is in fact a cynical move to derail more effective
>action against AIDS.
>
>With a bipartisan congressional coalition poised to approve an
>additional $500 million or more in AIDS funding for fiscal year
>2002, President Bush first put the squeeze on Republican senators
>to cut the total back to $200 million, half of which could go to
>the Global AIDS Fund and half for bilateral programs to cut
>mother-to-child transmission. Then he offered his plan, which
>claims the $200 million as his own while only promising to ask
>Congress for another $300 million two years from now. His plan
>would allow no additional money for the Global Fund.
>
>The administration justifies the smaller amounts and the go-slow
>timetable by the need to first show "results." But, with 8,000
>people around the world dying of AIDS daily (some 6,000 of them in
>sub-Saharan Africa), the results of Bush's stalling action are
>crystal-clear: more dead people.
>
>Demonstrably successful anti-AIDS programs run by governments,
>nongovernmental organizations, and mission hospitals are starved
>for funds. Fewer than 2% of AIDS sufferers in sub-Saharan Africa,
>including pregnant mothers, have access to anti-retroviral drugs
>that can save lives. The Global AIDS Fund, which is estimated to
>require some $10 billion a year, is already out of funds less than
>halfway through its first year, while the U.S. has supplied less
>than a tenth of the $3.5 billion a year that would be its fair
>share.
>
>When the issue is saving African lives, the administration says
>"Let's wait." In contrast, there is no hesitation in shelling out
>more than $5 billion a year in new subsidies for rich U.S. farmers,
>or more than $6 billion a year to pay for suspending the estate
>taxes on the richest Americans.
>
>President Bush has also recently announced a trip to Africa for
>next year and $20 million a year for African education (beginning
>in 2004). But public relations gestures and budget shell games do
>not save lives. The American public--and Congress--need to tell the
>President to change course.
>
>(Salih Booker <sbooker at africaaction.org> is executive director
>of Africa Action, which is based in Washington, DC, and is FPIF's
>(online at www.fpif.org) policy adviser on U.S.-Africa affairs.)
>
>********************************************************
>
>The Nation (http://www.thenation.com)
>
>COMMENT | July 8, 2002
>
>Aid--Let's Get Real
>
>By Salih Booker & William Minter
>
>The Africa trip of Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and Irish rock
>star Bono produced a bumper harvest of photo ops and articles about
>aid to Africa. Unfortunately, media coverage was mired in the
>perennial and stale aid debate: Should we give more? Does it work?
>
>If the O'Neill-Bono safari resulted in Washington finally paying
>more of its proper share for global health, education and clean
>water, that would be cause for applause. But any real change
>requires shifting the terms of debate. Indeed, the term "aid"
>itself carries the patronizing connotation of charity and a
>division of the world into "donors" and "recipients."
>
>At the late June meeting in Canada of the rich countries known as
>the G8, aid to Africa will be high on the agenda. But behind the
>rhetoric, there is little new money--as evidenced by the
>just-announced paltry sum of US funding for AIDS--and even less new
>thinking. Despite the new mantra of "partnership," the current aid
>system, in which agencies like the World Bank and the US Treasury
>decide what is good for the poor, reflects the system of global
>apartheid that is itself the problem.
>
>There is an urgent need to pay for such global public needs as the
>battles against AIDS and poverty by increasing the flow of real
>resources from rich to poor. But the old rationales and the old aid
>system will not do. Granted, some individuals and programs within
>that system make real contributions. But they are undermined by the
>negative effects of top-down aid and the policies imposed with it.
>
>For a real partnership, the concept of "aid" should be replaced by
>a common obligation to finance international public investment for
>common needs. Rich countries should pay their fair share based on
>their privileged place in the world economy. At the global level,
>just as within societies, stacked economic rules unjustly reward
>some and punish others, making compensatory public action
>essential. Reparations to repair the damage from five centuries of
>exploitation, racism and violence are long overdue. Even for those
>who dismiss such reasoning as moralizing, the argument of
>self-interest should be enough. There will be no security for the
>rich unless the fruits of the global economy are shared more
>equitably.
>
>As former World Bank official Joseph Stiglitz recently remarked in
>the New York Review of Books, it is "a peculiar world, in which the
>poor countries are in effect subsidizing the richest country, which
>happens, at the same time, to be among the stingiest in giving
>assistance in the world."
>
>One prerequisite for new thinking about questions like "Does aid
>work?" is a correct definition of the term itself. Funds from US
>Agency for International Development, or the World Bank often go
>not for economic development but to prop up clients, dispose of
>agricultural surpluses, impose right-wing economic policies
>mislabeled "reform" or simply to recycle old debts. Why should
>money transfers like these be counted as aid? This kind of "aid"
>undermines development and promotes repression and violence in poor
>countries.
>
>Money aimed at reaching agreed development goals like health,
>education and agricultural development could more accurately be
>called "international public investment." Of course, such
>investment should be monitored to make sure that it achieves
>results and is not mismanaged or siphoned off by corrupt officials.
>But mechanisms to do this must break with the vertical
>donor-recipient dichotomy. Monitoring should not be monopolized by
>the US Treasury or the World Bank. Instead, the primary
>responsibility should be lodged with vigilant elected
>representatives, civil society and media in countries where the
>money is spent, aided by greater transparency among the
>"development partners."
>
>One well-established example of what is possible is the UN's
>Capital Development Fund, which is highly rated for its effective
>support for local public investment backed by participatory
>governance. Another is the new Global Fund to Fight AIDS,
>Tuberculosis & Malaria, which has already demonstrated the
>potential for opening up decision-making to public scrutiny. Its
>governing board includes both "donor" and "recipient" countries, as
>well as representatives of affected groups. A lively online debate
>among activists feeds into the official discussions.
>
>Funding for agencies like these is now by "voluntary" donor
>contributions. This must change. Transfers from rich to poor should
>be institutionalized within what should ultimately be a
>redistributive tax system that functions across national
>boundaries, like payments within the European Union.
>
>There is no immediate prospect for applying such a system
>worldwide. Activists can make a start, however, by setting up
>standards that rich countries should meet. AIDS activists, for
>example, have calculated the fair contribution each country should
>make to the Global AIDS Fund (see www.aidspan.org).
>
>Initiatives like the Global AIDS Fund show that alternatives are
>possible. Procedures for defining objectives and reviewing results
>should be built from the bottom up and opened up to democratic
>scrutiny. Instead of abstract debates about whether "aid" works,
>rich countries should come up with the money now for real needs.
>That's not "aid," it's just a common-sense public investment.
>
>************************************************************
>This material is distributed by Africa Action (incorporating the
>Africa Policy Information Center, The Africa Fund, and the
>American Committee on Africa).  Africa Action's information
>services provide accessible information and analysis in order to
>promote U.S. and international policies toward Africa that advance
>economic, political and social justice and the full spectrum of
>human rights.
>
>Documents previously distributed, as well as a wide range of
>additional information, are also available on the Web at:
>http://www.africaaction.org
>
>To be added to or dropped from the distribution list write to
>apic at igc.org. For more information about reposted material,
>please contact directly the source mentioned in the posting.
>
>Africa Action
>110 Maryland Ave. NE, #508, Washington, DC 20002.
>Phone: 202-546-7961. Fax: 202-546-1545.
>E-mail: africaaction at igc.org.
>************************************************************

-- 


Al Kagan
African Studies Bibliographer and Professor of Library Administration
Africana Unit, Room 328
University of Illinois Library
1408 W. Gregory Drive
Urbana, IL 61801, USA

tel. 217-333-6519
fax. 217-333-2214
e-mail. akagan at uiuc.edu