For a country like Tanzania, support for the improvement of healthcare systems and educational provision is crucial, but it is also crucial that we empower people and give them the power to build themselves a better standard of living.

Through doing this we can help to contribute towards the economic growth and social empowerment which is so vital for countries like Tanzania.

Read the whole article here.

Reminding readers that, it’s not the first time that the Tories have broken this commitment;

As Left Foot Forward reported on June 4th 2010, just weeks after the election, it’s a promise the Tories failed to immediately deliver once they’d made it to power, omitting it from their first Queen’s Speech. Back then, there was criticism the legislation wouldn’t make the statute book by theSeptember 2010 New York Millennium Development Goals summit; it now looks like it won’t even be law by the May 2012 Cape Town MDG summit.

“legislate in the first session of a new Parliament to lock in this level of spending for every year from 2013.“

And a further commitment in the Coalition agreement to;

“We will honour our commitment to spend 0.7% of GNI on overseas aid from 2013, and to enshrine this commitment in law.“

As Richard Darlington, former Special Advisor at DFID and now head of IPPR says over on the New Statesman blog;

This has been one of the longest ever Parliamentary sessions in history, running from May 2010 to May 2012. So what’s gone wrong?

There are still ten weeks left in this Parliamentary session and another three when MPs will be on holiday. DFID’s Bill is short with just a handful of clauses. It has already had pre-legislative scrutiny from the International Development Select Committee and there is cross-party consensus. There is no prospect of it being overturned in the Lords. It could probably be passed on a one line whip on a Thursday afternoon or Friday morning.

Are the government worried about the destabilising impact of another backbench rebellion so soon after their European troubles? Or are they worried that the next Parliamentary session does not have enough business? In a story in the Times today, Political Editor Roland Watson reports that the next Queen’s Speech will contain just 12 Bills because the Conservatives and Lib Dems are struggling to find enough common ground to agree a legislative programme.

Saturday was the tenth anniversary of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

There are some incredible results to celebrate: 7.7 million lives saved; 3.3 million people on AIDS treatment; more than one million pregnant women on treatment to protect their babies from HIV; more than 8.6 million cases of tuberculosis treated worldwide; and more than 230 million insecticide-treated bed nets delivered for the prevention of malaria.

British taxpayers can be proud of the contribution they have made to transforming so many lives. The last Labour government was a strong supporter, pledging over £1 billion towards the Fund. To their credit the current government has continued to support it.

Yet despite defying aid critics to become a shining example of what effective aid looks like, the Global Fund is in trouble. They are unable to fund new programs until 2014 due to a roughly $2 billion funding gap – new programmes that would save 10 million lives and prevent 140 to 180 million new infections between 2012 and 2016.

Bill Gates’ pledge of an additional $750 million to the Global Fund this week is very welcome but will not resolve the long term funding shortage: international donor countries must step up, and Britain must do all it can to pressure them to do so.

We have documented before how the Conservatives have failed to provide true leadership on the international stage on development. But with Britain now chair of the Fund board and the recent change of executive leadership, Mitchell and Cameron have a chance to prove themselves.

They must commit themselves to all the cajoling, arm-twisting and phone calls needed to get other donors to meet the shortfall.

Friday, Labour’s shadow development secretary Ivan Lewis MP wrote to Malcolm Bruce, chair of the House of Commons International Development Select Committee, to urge him to consider holding an urgent inquiry to examine its current funding shortfall, including the effect spending freeze is having on DfID’s targets for tackling HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria.

Development NGOs including ONE meanwhile are calling on the government to double the UK’s annual contribution to the Fund to £250 million for each of the next three years.

If Britain led by example in this way it could pay for over a million anti-malarial bednets and treat 400,000 malaria and TB patients, while closing the funding gap by a quarter and intensifying pressure on the US and Australia to step up their own commitments.

These cutbacks would leave millions unprotected from three of the world’s most significant killers.

As Ban Ki-moon said:

“If we lose the ground we have gained, we will be back to square one – all that effort and investment, lost.”

With almost 70 million children of primary school age not in school, a figure set to rise by 2015 and not fall to zero as promised in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), urgent action is required,Gordon Brown said this week.

In his new report, “Delivering on the promise, building opportunity: the case for a Global Fund for Education” (pdf), the former prime minister offers a blueprint for the reform of key international institutions so they deliver more effective support for education in developing countries.

Part of the solution is more money. Brown’s report draws on UNESCO research showing the annual financing gap for achieving universal basic education is $13 billion (£8.3bn), compared to current aid levels of just $3bn (£1.9bn).

Not all of this would come from governments, however, with the report highlighting the recent creation of a Global Business Coalition for Education, and notes that US corporations currently give $8bn (£5bn) a year to global health causes but only $500m (£320m) to global education.

But the flagship recommendation is the creation of a new, independent Global Fund for Education. While the current major education fund, housed within the World Bank, has presided over an impressive fall in out-of-school numbers of 40 million over the past decade, progress has now stagnated or even gone into reverse.

This fund, recently renamed the Global Partnership for Education, has been unable to attract significant support from donors and has been criticised in some quarters for being slow and inflexible – and what is more, many countries with the largest numbers of out-of-school kids, including Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, are not eligible for grants.

A new Global Fund for Education would attract funding from non-traditional sources, make grants to NGOs and private companies working in remote areas (and not only governments or international agencies), and finally deliver resources commensurate with the size of the global education challenge.

The health sector again provides a template, following the huge successes of GAVI and the Global Fund for HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria.

This report sees Brown at his best: forensically focused on policy detail and driven by a deep passion for improving the lives of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people, and with Australian foreign minister Kevin Rudd publicly backing the idea, the proposals contained in the report may soon become reality.

by Gareth Thomas MP (Labour, Harrow West), shadow universities minister and minister for international development until 2010

The millennium development goals have been remarkably successful in galvanising political leaders, civil society organisations, parts of the private sector, trade unions, and donors in the pursuit of tackling global poverty. Britain has undoubtedly played a vital role in the progress being made towards achieving the MDGs.

However, as we approach the 2015 deadline for the MDGs to be achieved, there has been remarkably little sign from the government that they are working towards an agreement on a new post-2015 development framework.

To date, a number of suggestions have been made about what a post-2015 development framework should look like.

In the UK, with CAFOD, the Overseas Development Institute, the Institute for Development Studies, Christian Aid, and the Beyond 2015 coalition of NGO’s, there has been real interest amongst civil society organisations in a new global development framework.

Furthermore, many have noted that the ‘how’, in reaching an agreement, will be as significant as the ‘what’, such an agreement should contain.

Civil society interest is key in framing the debate, in involving those in developing countries and developed countries alike, but ultimately, it is governments that have to reach an agreement.

In a Westminster Hall debate yesterday, I asked ministers to set out the government’s thinking on a post-2015 agenda, and to ask what action is being taken to drive forward the debate. The response was tellingly short on detail.

Active dialogue within governments, between governments and their civil society groups, and at intergovernmental level is crucial. This is where the British government could do more.

While the G20 has become more prominent in recent years, G8 leaders’ discussions still matter hugely. Britain chairs the G8 in 2013 in the run up to the UN MDG Review Summit in September 2013, so could put a post-MDG agreement at the centre of the debate amongst the richest nations in the world.

International negotiations take considerable time and effort to make progress, and do so only when leaders and national politicians are engaged and driving progress.

Clearly a G8 driven agenda to replace the millennium development goals is likely to stir up scepticism and concern – a post-millennium development goals agreement has to be and will be UN led.

But it would be a mistake to think agreement will be reached without the richest nations on board. Britain is uniquely placed among the G8 because of its record and its coming role to support the UN more visibly in working towards a post-MDG accord.

Under Labour, Britain took a leading role in driving forward action to agree and then achieve the MDGs. However, there have already been several worrying signs that Britain is less willing to show leadership on international development under the current Tory-led government.

The clock is ticking. A new post-MDG agreement would be a huge prize in the effort to tackle global poverty and improve sustainability. Britain is once again about to occupy a pivotal place in these debates, and the government urgently needs to step up engagement on this issue.

The Conservatives are to count the cancelling the debt of countries as part of the aid target to spend 0.7 per cent of national income on foreign aid by 2014, including countries such as Sudan, Somalia and Zimbabwe.

Although governments have previously counted such cancellations as aid spending, they have not used that spending to help hit internationally-set targets. The Financial Times and the Jubilee Debt Campaign have unearthed (£) this latest fiddling of the aid target.

By counting debt cancellation – money that was never expected to be repaid – as aid they are effectively cutting the aid budget again, following on the heels of Osborne’s decision to cut the aid budget by £1.2bn because their mismanagement of the economy has seen GDP decrease.

Tim Jones of the JDC told (£) the FT:

Any debt cancellation for Sudan is not aid.Most of the debt is made-up money based on ridiculously high interest rates. The debt should be cancelled because it is unjust and unpayable, not used to meet targets and massage figures.

JDC also said that the move legitimised debt that was of a highly questionable origin. In Sudan’s case, the government has admitted it does not even know what the original loans to dictator Gaafar Nimeiry were for.

The Liberal Democrats had a policy to to audit all debts, but once again they have gone AWOL on their development promises. Vince Cable has so far failed to do this.

The UK is expected to wipe £740 million off Sudan’s debt in the next few years. To put that figure into context, DFID is to spend £46 million per year in Sudan until 2015 – £230 million – that’s more than three times less than that debt.

When countries are servicing their debts by paying back the money, debt relief can make a big difference, freeing up money to be spent on public services. The debt relief achieved by Labour and the Jubilee and Make Poverty History campaigns did just that, allowing countries like Tanzania to make primary education free for all children.

But as Jonathan Glennie has pointed out for the Guardian, when the debt is not being serviced, as in the case of Sudan, cancelling it is just an accounting transaction.

The key questions development secretary Andrew Mitchell must now answer are:

1. How much money in total will be counted as debt relief and cut from the aid budget?

And, considering the decision to count Sudan’s debt alone is equivalent to a cut as much as seven per cent of the UK’s aid budget for 2013-2014, Osborne’s £1.2bn cut was disgraceful enough – the total figure for all countries’ debt could dwarf even that:

2. And – as with the £1.2bn cut – when this money is cut where the axe will fall?

3. How much more aid will be diverted?

Under Labour Britain’s overseas aid (ODA) had to be spent on poverty reduction, but as we have repeatedly reported this government has adopted the OECD’s broader and less rigorous definition of ODA – one that allows student costs refugee costs and – yes, you guessed it – debt relief to be counted as aid.

What next?

The government have still not outlined whether aid for climate change adaptation will be additional or sucked from the existing budget.

Towards a progressive foreign policy on LGBT rights

6.30pm to 8pm, Tuesday 17th January

The Thatcher Room, Portcullis House, Houses of Parliament

76 countries still prosecute people on the grounds of their sexual orientation.

In 10 of those nations, you can be sentenced to death or life behind bars.

38 of the 54 members of the Commonwealth criminalise homosexuality.

Join our panel of experts as we discuss the challenge to combat homophobic & transphobic discrimination across the world, and debate what a progressive foreign policy should look like.

Speakers:

Ivan Lewis MP, Shadow Secretary of State for International Development

Professor Robert Wintemute, Kings College London

Yemisi Ilesanmi, trade unionist and coordinator of the campaign: Nigerian LGBT in the Diaspora Against Anti Same Sex Laws

Louise Ashworth, LGBT Labour

Bisi Alimi, Trustee, The Kaleidoscope Trust

All are welcome to attend.

Please RSVP to jamie_th@yahoo.com

“The International Development Select Committee’s report highlights serious concerns regarding the Government’s approach to fragile and conflict states. It raises valid questions about the way in which aid is allocated between states, the rationale on which this is based and which activities are eligible for reporting as Official Development Assistance (ODA).

It is also important, particularly following the Independent Commission for Aid Impact 2011 report on DfID’s approach to Anti-Corruption, that DfID is upfront regarding the corruption risks involved when operating in fragile and conflict states. Specifically the Select Committee report also highlights the level of violence against women and girls in the DRC. Major-General Cammaert, former commander of UN peacekeeping forces in the eastern Congo, has previously said that “It has probably become more dangerous to be a woman than a soldier in armed conflict.” This is a horrifying reflection on the situation for women and girls and any credible DfID results framework would specifically address this.”

“We fully support the decision to prioritise UK aid spending in fragile and conflict-affected states but with the UK spending 30% of its ODA in these states by 2015, it is crucial that this expenditure is delivered with a coordinated and strategic approach and maximum transparency.

I hope that Andrew Mitchell will use this opportunity to address the questions raised in the report and clarify his Department’s policy towards conflict and fragile states. It is important that UK aid is targeted towards those that need it the most and are the hardest to reach, but in these difficult financial times we also have a particular responsibility to strengthen public confidence and support.”

Over on Left Foot Forward, Marta Foresti from the ODI suggests that ‘In practice political aid conditionality often does not work‘ arguing that ‘there is simply no way to enforce a one-size-fits-all mechanism that establishes minimum standards or thresholds for acceptable human rights performance’.