Make poverty history: while G8 nations are basking in glory over their generosity, critics point out that the 'conditionalities' for debt relief are just part of the 'same old, same old.'

Catholic New Times, July 3, 2005

Bob Geldof is no stranger to the fight against poverty. The Irish-born rocker, who dropped out of a Holy Ghost Fathers school in Dublin 25 years ago to fight domestic poverty, organized Live Aid twenty years ago. The rock extravaganza which took place simultaneously in London and Philadelphia (July 13, 1985) was designed to raise money for the Ethiopian famine. The audience was global, approximately 1.5 billion people worldwide.

In an interview with France's Agence Presse, Geldof said that this year's music gig was not to raise funds but to pressure leaders of the Group of Eight (G8) the most powerful countries in the world to confront the misery of the world's poorest people in Africa. The 53-year-old activist maintained that he really did not want to do this. "I would like to be somewhere else. There is no part of this I like, but maybe we can change things. I cannot live with the fact that I did not do everything humanly possible to make poverty history." During a Canadian press conference for Live 8 on June-21, Geldof scolded Prime Minister Paul Martin for failing to commit to inter national development goals. "You are not welcome (in Scotland) unless you're prepared to do something finally and irrevocably on behalf of the poor of this world," he said in a pr e-taped video message.

Geldof has lined up stars like Madonna, Bono and others to per form on July 2 in London, Paris, Rome, Berlin, Philadelphia and Barrie, Ont.

First indications from the world's richest nation, the United States, added to Geldof's pessimism. In a June 7 press conference in Washington, Bush shocked European observers by offering US$674 million in emergency aid that congress had already approved for needy countries. The New York Times was underwhelmed. In an editorial June 8, it slammed Bush's penny-pinching response: "Not a penny more to buy treated mosquito nets to help save the thousands of children in Sierra Leone who die every year of preventable malaria. Nothing more to train and pay teachers so that 11-year-old girls in Kenya may go to school ..."

The paper expressed incredulity that according to a poll, most Americans believe the U.S. spends 24 per cent of its budget on aid to poor countries. It actually spends one quarter of one per cent. As Jeffrey Sachs, the Columbia economist said, "A flood of American aid going to Africa is one of our great national myths. The U.S. spends 0.16 per cent of its national income to help poor countries. The Bush administration is showing itself to be completely out-of-touch by offering such a miserly drop in the bucket."

After the initial euphoria of the G8 finance ministers' June announcement, the Africa Jubilee Partners (AJP) gave a more realistic analysis of what had just transpired. Acknowledging that some of the multilateral debts had been cancelled, they said that G8 ministers had still strengthened control over the same economies by the implementation of budget cuts, privatization and trade liberalization, all of which will eliminate impediments to private investment.