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Here's how you
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Dear Friend:
This is a big thank you to all 1.5 million of
you who joined together as ONE to do something
extraordinary.
From the 500,000
letters you sent to President Bush to Live 8 in
Philadelphia to the G8 Summit in Gleneagles, you
called on eight men to do more to fight global
AIDS and extreme poverty, and they heard your
call. In Scotland this past Friday, overcoming
the shadow of a tragic day in London, President
Bush joined G8 leaders in an
unprecedented deal to cancel debts and double
aid to Africa.
For African
nations fighting poverty and corruption, this
means a $25 billion increase in aid and wiping
out 100% of their debts. With this funding,
Africa can halve deaths from malaria, put
millions of children into school, and 10 million
people across the world will have access to
lifesaving AIDS drugs. Behind each of these
numbers is one person, one life that will be
changed forever.
For the first
time ever, everyday Americans like you joined
together to take a seat at the negotiating
table, asking the world's most powerful leaders
to do more to help the world's poorest people.
Because you signed the ONE Declaration, wore the
white band and forwarded emails to
friends about ONE, you made a huge step toward
making poverty history. We've come so far and
still have far to go.
Keep the momentum going, email 3 friends about
ONE today.
This agreement is
a real victory for Africa - but promises made of
words will only become promises for a generation
if we keep watching, asking and acting. Much
more needs to be done in Washington DC to turn
these commitments into lifesaving programs, and
the world must take new steps to make trade
fair. More meetings will take place this year in
New York and Hong Kong where a comprehensive
debt-aid-trade deal can be reached and end
global AIDS and extreme poverty in our time.
We can be that
great generation. As ONE, let's keep up the
positive pressure and make 2005 the year we
joined together to make history.
Thank you,
The ONE Team
P.S. You can
learn more about the details of the G8 deal by
checking out the
ONE.ORG G8 page.
If you would still like to get involved go to
www.one.org
or
www.data.org
to find out how you can help now!
African Aid Is Doubled By G-8
Anti-Terror Solidarity Helps Blair
Win Deal
By Jim VandeHei
and Paul Blustein
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, July 9, 2005; Page A01
GLENEAGLES,
Scotland, July 8 -- President Bush and the
leaders of seven other major industrialized
nations pledged Friday to double the amount of
aid for Africa in five years and substantially
raise it for other poor countries, capping a
summit conducted in what British Prime Minister
Tony Blair called the "shadow of terrorism."
Blair failed to
convince Bush to embrace mandatory caps on
greenhouse gas emissions, and the summit issued
instead a watered-down pledge to take other
steps to combat global warming, such as the
development of new technologies. World leaders
will meet Nov. 1 to discuss new ways to reduce
the pollutants blamed for slowly rising
temperatures, Blair announced.
President Bush
and Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo at the
summit, where leaders agreed to increase aid to
poor nations by $50 billion a year. (By Yury
Kochetkov -- Associated Press)
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The aid accord
was a victory for Blair, the summit's host, who
has made helping Africa a priority of his
government. Some activists complained that the
plan to increase aid for Africa to $50 billion a
year by 2010 was too slow, but Blair won praise
from the Irish rock star Bono and other
celebrities who staged concerts in 10 cities
around the world last weekend to pressure summit
participants on behalf of the world's poor.
The summit, which
brought together leaders of the Group of Eight
countries and other heads of government, ended
shortly before noon Friday so that Blair could
return to London, where bomb attacks killed at
least 49 people Thursday.
Before leaving,
Blair declared that the "hope" and "humanity"
behind the aid deal sent a powerful and timely
message. "The clear signal we have sent on
Africa," he said, "stands in stark contrast to
the politics of terror."
The attacks
created a spirit of solidarity among the G-8
leaders that encouraged compromise on aid for
Africa and on how to promote peace in the Middle
East.
The group, which
is made up of the United States, Britain,
Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia
promised to spend up to $3 billion a year for
the next three years to help build an
independent Palestinian state.
For completing
the Africa package, they were thanked by
Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, who
attended Friday. He hailed "their resolve not to
be diverted by these terrorist acts."
The leaders
portrayed their pledges of new aid as both
humanitarian and anti-terrorist, because the
assistance would help prevent the rise of groups
like al Qaeda in impoverished nations. They
promised that by 2010, overall aid to poor
nations, now about $80 billion a year, would
rise by $50 billion a year, with half of the
increase going to Africa.
Although much of
that increase consisted of pledges made in
earlier initiatives, it got an unexpected boost
from Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi,
who promised $10 billion in new funding over
five years.
In addition, the
leaders endorsed a deal struck by their finance
ministers last month to forgive the debts owed
to the International Monetary Fund and the World
Bank by 18 poor countries, 14 of them African.
They also pledged
to set a date for ending the billions in
subsidies for agricultural exports, reiterating
a commitment previously made at World Trade
Organization meetings. Such subsidies are widely
blamed for lowering the prices of products sold
by poor countries on world markets.
"It is in the
nature of politics that you do not achieve
absolutely everything you want to achieve," said
Blair, who acknowledged that he had wanted the
G-8 to set a date for ending farm subsidies
rather than just promising to do so. "We do not
simply by this communique make poverty history,"
he said. "But we do show how it can be done. And
we do signify the political will to do it."
Blair noted that
the rich countries now had to ensure that the
money pledged was actually disbursed, and that
Africans had to use the funds wisely: "In the
end it is only vibrant African leadership,
capable of giving good governance to its people,
that will ultimately make the difference."
President Bush
and Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo at the
summit, where leaders agreed to increase aid to
poor nations by $50 billion a year. (By Yury
Kochetkov -- Associated Press)
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Some aid
advocates criticized the accords as too modest.
"If the $50 billion increase had kicked in
immediately, it could have lifted 300 million
people out of poverty in the next five years,"
said Jo Leadbeater, of Oxfam. Kumi Naidoo of
Global Call to Action Against Poverty agreed:
"The promise to deliver by 2010 is like waiting
five years before responding to the tsunami."
But such
criticism was rejected by Bono and fellow Irish
activist musician, Bob Geldof, the organizer of
the "Live 8" concerts.
"Doubling aid to
Africa has not been easy. I'm very proud to
report that these figures are extremely
meaningful," Bono told reporters. Thanks to
additional funding for malaria prevention, he
said, "six hundred thousand Africans, mostly
children, will remember this summit at
Gleneagles -- because they'll be around to
remember it."
"Today,
celebrate," Geldof said, noting that as many as
8 million lives may be saved by the G-8's
additional commitment to provide funding for
treating all HIV/AIDS victims by 2010.
The U.S. share of
the increases promised Friday was about $4.5
billion. Although the Bush administration has
also pledged to double aid to Africa, most of
that money represents commitments previously
made.
Washington did
not add new money at Gleneagles. The U.S.
contribution comes to about 20 percent of the
pledged increase in aid for Africa and a smaller
proportion of total aid for the continent.
Global warming
emerged as the most contentious issue of the
three-day talks. Bush made it clear before,
during and after the summit that the United
States was opposed to the caps on greenhouse gas
emissions contained in the Kyoto Protocol of
1997, which was ratified by all G-8 countries
except the United States.
That forced Blair
and others to fight instead for agreement that
the earth is warming, humans are partly to blame
and that the United States must cooperate with
the rest of the world to reduce the pollution
believed to contribute to global warming.
While the final
climate statement was much more tentative than
earlier drafts, American and European officials
hailed the fact the leaders agreed on the need
for action. James L. Connaughton, Bush's top
environment adviser, said the joint communique
showed that the major industrialized nations had
"agreed to the basic portfolio of what we need
to do . . . . We have found a way to strike
common ground."
A British
official who spoke on condition of anonymity
said that as recently as June the Europeans
despaired of reaching an agreement with the
Americans. "We think we advanced our objective
of getting the Americans and the Europeans back
on the same page in terms of climate," the
official said, adding that coming months would
show whether cuts in gas emissions actually
occurred .
Nicole St. Clair,
a spokeswoman for the Natural Resources Defense
Council, described the communique as "a
stalemate" on climate change. But she said it
established an important baseline for future
negotiations. "It's clear that the
administration can no longer turn back the clock
on the science or slow the desire for real
action to stop the pollution," she said.
Staff writer
Juliet Eilperin in Washington contributed to
this report.
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