12th June, 2007

DAVID ADAMS

Humanitarian groups and anti-poverty advocates have described last week’s G8 summit in Germany as a “missed opportunity” in the global fight against AIDS.

In a communique issued last week, the G8 nations - US, Russia, Germany, Japan, Italy, France, Britain and Canada - pledged $US60 billion towards fighting AIDS. The money will also be used to fight other diseases - such as tuberculosis and malaria - and to be put toward the cost of strengthening Africa’s health systems in an unspecified timeframe.

The pledge, made at the Baltic town of Heiligendamm, comes in the wake of a pledge made by the G8 nations at their meeting in Gleneagles, Scotland, to raise annual aid levels to Africa by $50 billion by 2010, half of which is for Africa.

While high profile anti-poverty Sir Bob Geldof denounced the summit as a "farce" and U2 frontman Bono accused G8 leaders of "obfuscation", World Vision, which had expected the G8 to contribute $US16 billion of the $US23 billion the United Nations estimates will be needed annually to tackle AIDS by 2010, has described the response of G8 governments to the AIDS pandemic as “lukewarm”.

Marwin Meier, the organisation’s HIV and AIDS specialist in Germany, says in a statement that that the G8 leaders have “tragically failed those living with HIV”, missing an opportunity to stem the “tidal wave of this virus that is threatening the developing world”.

“The eight leading nations failed to provide the funds needed to meet the universal access to treatment targets and did not provide a clear plan for implementing its funding commitments,” he says.

“The rhetoric in the final communique is just that, rhetoric. If these governments fail to lay out the details of their strategies for success, then how can they hope to achieve their 2010 and 2015 targets?”

Geoff Tunnicliffe, international director of the World Evangelical Alliance, describes the pledge of $US60 billion as “potentially a betrayal” of promises made at the G8 gathering at Gleneagles in 2005.

“Millions of people living with HIV and AIDS will suffer as a result of this piecemeal response to calls for long-term funding,” he says.

Mr Tunnicliffe, meanwhile, also criticises the G8’s communique on Darfur. He says that while the alliance appreciated comments that human rights violators in Darfur be held responsible and that they would support “appropriate action” in the UN Security Council if the Sudanese Government or rebels continue to fail to meet their obligations, “the leaders simply did not go far enough”.

“No deadlines were given to Sudan in ending the genocide,” he says in a statement. “If we are going to see an end to the killing, we must act now. I expected the G8 leaders to do more.”

Other communiques released by G8 leaders addressed issues such as climate change, with participants stating that a global goal for greenhouse gas emissions reduction now needed to be agreed to. The same communique also states that the G8 leaders will seriously consider decisions made by the European Union, Canada and Japan which included reducing global emissions by at least half by 2050.

Andy Atkins, the World Evangelical Alliance’s global spokesman on environmental issues, says that while the communique represented a “significant achievement”, there was a long way yet to go.

“It is disappointing that they have not yet made any concrete new commitments to help developing countries adapt to the ravages of climate change,” he says.

Attention on that issue is now expected to shift to UN negotiations which start in Bali in December.