TRADE JUSTICE - DROP THE DEBT - MORE & BETTER AID

The gap between the world's rich and poor is wider than ever. Global injustices such as poverty, AIDS, malnutrition, conflict and illiteracy remain rife. Despite the promises of world leaders, at our present sluggish rate of progress the world will fail dismally to reach the so-called Millennium Development Goals - internationally agreed targets to halve global poverty by 2015.

World poverty is sustained not by chance or nature, but by a combination of factors: injustice in global trade; the huge burden of debt; insufficient and ineffective aid. Each of these is exacerbated by inappropriate economic policies imposed by rich countries.

But it doesn't have to be this way. These factors are determined by human decisions. And Governments play a central role in shaping those decisions.

By mobilising popular support across a unique string of events and actions, we will press our government to put pressure on rich countries to fulfil their obligations and promises to help eradicate poverty, and to rethink some long-held assumptions.

MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY urges the government and international decision-makers to rise to the challenge of 2005. We are calling for urgent and meaningful policy change on three critical and inextricably linked areas: trade, debt and aid.

1. Trade justice

• Fight for rules that ensure governments, particularly in poor countries, can choose the best solutions to end poverty and protect the environment. These will not always be free trade policies.
  
  
• End export subsidies that damage the livelihoods of poor rural communities around the world.
  
  
• Make laws that stop big business profiting at the expense of people and the environment.

The rules of international trade are stacked in favour of the most powerful countries and their businesses. On the one hand these rules allow rich countries to pay their farmers and companies subsidies to export food - destroying the livelihoods of poor farmers. On the other, poverty eradication, human rights and environmental protection come a poor second to the goal of 'eliminating trade barriers'.

We need trade justice not free trade. This means the EU single-handedly putting an end to its damaging agricultural export subsidies now; it means ensuring poor countries can feed their people by protecting their own farmers and staple crops; it means ensuring governments can effectively regulate water companies by keeping water out of world trade rules; and it means ensuring trade rules do not undermine core labour standards.

We need to stop the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) forcing poor countries to open their markets to trade with rich countries, which has proved so disastrous over the past 20 years; the EU must drop its demand that former European colonies open their markets and give more rights to big companies; we need to regulate companies - making them accountable for their social and environmental impact both here and abroad; and we must ensure that countries are able to regulate foreign investment in a way that best suits their own needs.

2. Drop the debt

• Unpayable debts of poor countries should be cancelled in full, by fair and transparent means.

Despite grand statements from world leaders in l999, the debt crisis is far from over. Rich countries have failed to deliver even the inadequate amount of debt cancellation they promised. As a result, many countries still have to spend more on debt than on meeting the needs of their people.

Rich countries and the institutions they control must act now to cancel all the unpayable debts of the poorest countries. They should not do this by depriving poor countries of new aid, but by digging into their pockets and providing new money.

International institutions like the IMF and World Bank must stop asking poor countries to jump through hoops in order to qualify for debt reduction. Poor countries should no longer have to privatise basic services or liberalise economies as a condition for getting the debt reduction they so desperately need.

The task of calculating how much debt should be cancelled must no longer be left to creditors who act as judge and plaintiff in their own case. Instead we need a fair and transparent international process to make sure that human needs take priority over debt repayments.

To avoid another debt crisis hard on the heel of the first, poor countries need to be given more grants, rather than seeing their debt burden piled even higher with more loans.

3. More and better aid

• Donors must now deliver at least $50 billion more in aid and set a binding
  timetable for spending 0.7% of national income on aid. Aid must also be made
  to work more effectively for poor people.

Poverty will not be eradicated without an immediate and major increase in international aid. Rich countries have promised to provide the extra money needed to meet internationally agreed poverty reduction targets. This amounts to at least $50 billion per year, according to official estimates,
and must be delivered now.

Rich countries have also promised to provide 0.7% of their national income in aid and they must now make good on their commitment by setting a binding timetable to reach this target. In 2000, Ireland promised to achieve this target by the year 2007. Last year, the Government reneged on this promise, stating that it remained committed to achieving the 0.7% target, but that the 2007 time-frame was unrealistic.

To honour its promise, the Government must publicly set a new date for the achievement of the 0.7% target, accompanied by a clear multi-annual growth plan that allows for annual stock taking of progress made. It is imperative that Ireland does not fall behind again on its commitments.

Ireland also needs to ensure that its overseas aid continues to be focused on poor people's needs. Ireland must ensure other rich countries also spend their aid money on areas such as basic healthcare and education, and stop tying their aid to goods and services from the donor. And the World Bank and the IMF must become fully democratic in order for poor people's concerns to be heard.

Aid should support poor countries and communities' own plans and paths out of poverty. Aid should therefore no longer be conditional on recipients promising economic change like privatising or deregulating their services, cutting health and education spending, or opening up their markets: these are unfair practices that have never been proven to reduce poverty. And aid needs to be made predictable, so that poor countries can plan effectively and take control of their own budgets in the fight against poverty.

MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY - IRISH CAMPAIGN is a campaign by development organisations, trade unions and campaigning groups who are mobilising around key opportunities in 2005 to drive forward the struggle against poverty and injustice. The campaign is part of the Global Call To Action Against Poverty.

The following organisations have thus far signed on to the campaign:

• Aidlink
  
• Christian Aid
  
• Comhlámh
  
• Concern
  
• CORI
  
• Debt & Development Coalition Ireland
  
• Dóchas
  
• EAPN
  
• ICTU
  
• IFPA
  
• IMU
  
• Oxfam Ireland
  
• Trócaire.
  
• KADE
  
• Skillshare Ireland
  
  
  www.MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY.ie