In their own words: how campaigners responded to the G8 communique

Although our hearts and minds are elsewhere, Red Pepper has been working hard to maintain our live coverage of the G8 summit and its aftermath. Below you will find a large number of links to statements and press releases issued by NGOs, social movements and other campaigning organisations to Friday 8 July’s controversial G8 communique. This page will be constantly updated over the next weeks - we are particular interested in responses from Southern civil society groups and the UK's African diaspora. SH

What the mainstream NGOs said

Make Poverty History – the coalition praises itself and the UK government but condemns other G8 governments for falling way short of its demands. In a nutshell, MPH asserts that the G8 has “not met the challenge of trade justice”, the “debt deal is a small step compared to the giant leap that was called for” and while the commitment on aid is “a step forward, it is far from the historic deal that millions around the world have been demanding”.

Global Call to Action Against Poverty – the international coalition of MPH was more scathing in its rhetoric, stating that the “people have roared but the G8 has whispered”. G-CAP was particularly upset with failure to get anything on trade and responded to the promise to deliver $50bn extra aid by 2010 as “like waiting 5 years before responding to the tsunami”.

Oxfam – regarded as the main pro-government force within both MPH and G-CAP, its statement was unsurprisingly balanced, praising the G8 for what it had achieved but expressing disappointment that more could not have been put on the table. It admitted that the summit’s outcome had “fallen short of the hopes of the millions around the world campaigning for a momentous breakthrough.”

Bono and Geldof – despite being lobbied by NGOs not to over-praise the G8 deal, the two-man Irish rock-poverty NGO could not contain their excitement. Geldof called it “without equivocation the greatest G8 summit there has ever been for Africa”. Even their friends inside MPH found this too much.

The One Campaign – the celebrity-splatted US version of Make Poverty History, which is dominated by Oxfam USA and Bono and Bill Gates DATA charity, did not raise a single word in criticism. It described the G8’s pledges as “a positive step forward in a comprehensive debt-aid-trade deal to reduce extreme poverty in the poorest countries.”

CAFOD – the Catholic development aid agency could not hide its disappointment and said the G8 had “failed to deliver”.

Stop AIDS Campaign – generally welcomed the G8’s promises on AIDS treatment but remained unconvinced that the new hopes would not be “dashed by insufficient funding”.

Tearfund – the Christian relief and development agency took the Oxfam line and praised the G8 for taking “another step towards dealing with poverty. while expressing dismay that more could not have been achieved. It remains hopeful that G8 leaders are now serious about doing more.

Jubilee Debt Campaign – the normally diplomatic body could barely contain its anger at the failure of the G8 to make any progress on June’s G7 finance ministers deal and implement the Commission for Africa's recommendations. It argued that the “G8 debt deal is not 100 per cent debt cancellation” as demanded by campaigners, “immediately benefits only 18 countries” and “reinforces the harmful economic policy conditions enforced through the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative”

Action Aid – they tend to blow with the wind but when the G8 deal was announced, they stuck to their policy guns and criticized the summit’s outcomes: "What Africa needed from the G8 was a giant leap forward, all it got was tiny steps. The deal that has been announced falls way short of our demands. We have some aid, but not enough, some debt relief but not enough and virtually nothing on trade. Once again Africa's people have been short-changed".

Other responses from conservative NGOs include:

Care International

Concern International

Voices from the left and South

Jubilee South – the radical Southern-based network of debt justice campaigns and movements predictably criticised the G8 deal on debt: “The multilateral debt cancellation being proposed is still clearly tied to compliance with conditionalities which exacerbate poverty, open our countries further for exploitation and plunder, and perpetuate the domination of the South.” Other comments can be found here and here.

Christian Aid – they have been moving increasingly to the left in recent times and their response reflected this hardening. “This will not make poverty history,” the NGO said, adding it was “a vastly disappointing result. Millions of campaigners from all over the world have been led to the top of the mountain, shown the view and now we are being frogmarched down again.”

Stamp Out Poverty – generally backed the critical voices like War on Want and WDM in condemning the small amounts of aid offered and called on governments to introduce "[n]ew sources of revenue like the currency transaction tax" to boost spending in developing countries.

Friends of the Earth – the respected international environmental NGO and critical voice inside Make Poverty History, stated that the G8’s final statement on climate change “shows that leaders are still divided and have made no real progress in the fight against climate change... While the leaders carry on talking, the world continues warming.”

War on Want – one the leading voices of dissent within Make Poverty History did not sit on the fence and instead came out fighting. The labour movement’s development NGO said that the G8 had “given less than 10% of our demand on debt cancellation and not even a fifth of what we called for on aid. On trade, the G8 has hardened its stance, forcing more countries to open their markets and threatening millions with the misery of poverty. When the moment came to act, the G8 turned their backs on the world’s poor.”

World Development Movement – they have been quiet of late, but when the communiqué came, they joined War on Want in condemnation, calling the G8 statement “an insult to the hundreds of thousands of campaigners… a disaster for the world’s poor. The agreements on trade, debt, aid and climate change are nowhere near sufficient to tackle the global poverty and environmental crisis we face.”

50 Years is Enough – the US economic justice network welcomed any debt cancellation but warned that the G8 did not go far enough and criticized the conditionality attached: “By retaining the HIPC structure, the G8 perpetuates the requirement that countries submit to demands for economic disarmament in favor of promoting the interests of foreign capital before they can get the consequential debt considered for cancellation.”

Sustainable Energy and Economy Network – organized a huge sign-on letter to the G8 of over 120 civil society groups from across the world criticizing the G8 action plan on climate change for entrusting the World Bank with the role of providing financing for clean energy. The letter stated that “the World Bank is one of the leading public financiers of fossil fuels and has made a miniscule commitment to renewable energy, contrary to statements by the Bank…”.

Comments

[Firoze Manji]

Short term fame for long term pain

It is interesting to see in the current issue of RedPepper that the divisions within the Make Poverty History campaign mirrors our own experiences in Africa.

When Geldof with Richard Curtis announced that Live8 was organising a concert in Johannesburg and that Madela was appearing. This news came as a demoralising blow to the Publicity organising group of the Africa coalition of GCAP since they had already planned a concert in Johannesburg in early July. This coalition, established in March 2005 at a meeting of more than 70 organisations from 26 countries, had charged a committee to take responsibility for organising concerts in Johannesburg, Accra and Nairobi, alongside a series of actions beginning with the Africa Day of the Child and culminating with mobilisations against the WTO meeting in Hong Kong later this year. We agreed to launch a campaign using SMS to mobilising people in Africa, organise meetings where the voices of the 'wretched of the earth' could give voice to their struggles on platforms that we would create over the year. The loose coalition, now estimated to involve more than 100 organisations in Africa, affirmed that it was taking ownership of the mobilisations over GCAP in Africa, and would use it to build the confidence of the movement to make its own voice heard. There was a profound resentment about the attempts by Geldof and Comic Relief to seize the agenda, promote their own paternalistic pity-based slogans on the campaign, and resentment about the frank appropriation of their own initiatives.

Plans for organising the Johannesburg concert were well underway before Geldof announced his Live8 initiative, and members of the coalition added their voices to the criticism launched at Geldof for his all white platform and for his ignoring the plans of the African coalition. The effect of his announcement about the Johannesburg concert threw the coalition into disarray, causing deep divisions amongst the organisations involved. GCAP representative, Kumi Naidoo, accompanied by a senior policy advisor from Oxfam GB, Owain James, met with Geldof in London at a meeting facilitated by Richard Curtis. What was said at that meeting is not known as no formal written report has ever been presented. But by the time Naidoo reported back to the publicity organising group, it was clear that they had a deal with Live8 that the original Johannesburg concert, planned as an event in one of the townships to encourage maximum participation of the people who suffer the greatest effects of globalisation and neoliberal policies, was to be cancelled. Instead an earlier event was planned to coincide with the Live8 jamborees. There were strong voices of dissent expressed by members of the coalition. As a compromise, it was agreed that if the concert was to be held earlier, under no condition would this be branded as a Live8 initiative, and the the African campaigns slogans should be retained. Indeed it was agreed that a press release be issued publicly denying Geldof's claim to the concert. A press release was prepared and circulated to the committee for final approval before being dispatched - but its dispatch was blocked by Oxfam GB and Civicus. A day later - on a Sunday - an emergency telephone conference was called of selected members of the committee which was packed with Oxfam staff - who had nothing to do with the committee charged by the coalition to organise the event. One can only assume that these additional Oxfam staff were brought in to ensure that the decision taken by the committee rejecting the association of the Johannesburg concert with Live8 was overturned. The following day we were informed that they were to go ahead with branding the concert as a Live8 initiative. At the next meeting of the committee, plans for the concert were presented to the committee for approval. Half of the organisations involved in the meeting refused to sign off on the plans. Oxfam GB and Kumi Naidoo's Civicus announced that the concert would go ahead as a Live8 branded event in any case as this "was what Richard Curtis and Live8 wanted". The views of the Northern agencies once again prevailed, all in the interest of being seen to chum up with the famous.

Since then, we have pressed for the concert to be used as a platform to enable those engaged in struggles around land rights, homelessness, struggles against privatisation of water etc, to speak about their struggles as the real examples of the fight against impoverishment. So far, these suggestions have been ignored, presumably because they are viewed as not being 'on message'. Instead of reflecting the genuine voice of those fighting the causes of impoverishment, we are to be treated to the razamatazz of celebrities and eulogising of St Bob, the white supposed saviour of Africa. By colluding with Geldof, the event is once again handing over the African initiative to the North. We are supposed to be grateful that by subsuming African voices and initiatives to the needs of organisations whose real interest is to use the African movement to give them greater credibility for chumming up to their friends in Downing Street. If only Mandela was aware of what has been going on and how he too, through his participation in the concert, is about to be used for the glory of the Live8s and the northern development NGOs. (I was informed by a senior Officer at Oxfam in Kenya that Mandela had originally refused Geldof's invitation to appear at Live8 criticising Geldof for the lack of Africans involved - but I can't verify this).

Latest reports received indicate that the South African concert cost some GBP 300,000, consuming almost the entire budget for the Africa mobilisation. The Accra and Nairobi events are severely threatened as a result. African voices have been subsumed by the Geldofs. But that was to be expected. Less palatable was the collusion of those who should have known better.

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