Rich countries came up short on fund-raising promises for poor nations and were to meet yesterday to figure out how to direct aid resources at a time when their own budgets are squeezed.
The G8 nations were to meet in Huntsville, Ontario, north of Toronto yesterday, having fallen an estimated US$18 billion short of a 2005 pledge to raise their combined aid to the poorest countries by at least US$50 billion.
The G8’s meeting in the sleepy lakeside community provided a respite from Toronto’s hectic urban pace and the difficult tasks that await the larger G20 summit today and tomorrow.
The US, Britain, Canada, Japan, Italy, France, Germany and Russia make up the club of G8 members.
Although the G8 cannot avoid talking about its own economic troubles — namely the strength of the global recovery and the state of public finances — the smaller group wanted to carve out some time to discuss problems facing poor countries, G8 officials said.
Canada, host of the G8 and G20 meetings, wants to ensure that donor countries follow through on their commitments.
The hosts also want mother-and-child health and the rebuilding of Haiti from a devastating earthquake to be the focus, officials said. Haiti was invited to attend the G8 meeting along with Jamaica and some African countries.
The US is pushing for more agricultural investment in Africa and has created a fund to boost food production in poorer countries.
The G8 will discuss progress toward meeting the eight UN Millennium Development Goals, or MDGs, on poverty by 2015. The group will also review the US$18 billion shortfall in reaching the US$50 billion total pledged in 2005 at the G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland.
The Gleneagles meeting also promised to provide an extra US$25 billion a year for Africa as part of the overall US$50 billion increase in financial assistance by this year. Citing figures from the Paris-based OECD, the World Bank said the G8 had provided just US$11 billion of the US$25 billion for Africa.
In a report prepared before the summits, the World Bank urged rich countries to make good on their aid pledges, warning that poor countries were vulnerable to any setbacks in the global economic recovery.
It urged rich countries to secure the economic recovery, arguing that the resources of poor states were already overstrained by the last two years of economic crisis, which has hit exports and worker remittances.
Development groups called on industrialized countries to renew their aid commitments from Gleneagles, arguing that rich countries should not be let off the hook when many African governments had kept their pledges to follow policies that promoted growth and tackled corruption.
“We’re asking them to make good on those pledges over the next two years,” said Mark Fried, policy coordinator for international development group Oxfam. “They need to set clear targets to come up with the money they missed,” he added.
Fried said that African countries had lost an estimated US$63 billion since the global financial crisis began in 2008 because of lower export earnings from a collapse in demand and declines in foreign aid.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of