Keep your promise, global church leaders urge G8

With the G8 summit only weeks away, several church leaders across the world, including the Pope, has urged the world's leading industrial nations to put poverty at the heart of the agenda.

Pope Benedict XVI received a delegation of cardinals, archbishops and bishops from across the globe, May 11, as part of a Catholic campaign to ensure that poverty takes center stage at the summit of world leaders scheduled for June 6–8 in Heiligendamm, Germany in June.

According to the Aid agency, Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD), the pontiff urged the delegation of church leaders to "continue campaigning for the welfare of all human beings all over the world."

In a letter to the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, on the upcoming G8 Summit, the Pope said debt cancellation "should be given the highest attention and priority, for the sake of poor and rich countries alike."

He also called for a substantial investment of resources for research and for the development of medicines to fight AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and other tropical diseases.

"I welcome the fact that the question of poverty, with specific reference to Africa, now appears on the agenda of the G8," the Pope said in his letter, dated December 16.

"The Pope urged the German Chancellor [Angela] Merkel to put poverty at the heart of the 2007 G8 summit, and we welcome this initiative," said Cardinal Oscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga from Honduras, a member of the delegation. "We cannot accept that poor people perish every day because they lack shelter, basic medicines and safe drinking water. The world does have the means to eliminate poverty."

The delegation is part of the global campaign 'Make Aid Work: the World Can't Wait,' coordinated by the international Catholic networks, CIDSE and Caritas Internationalis.

Over 50,000 citizens across the world have supported the 'Make Aid Work' campaign so far.

"We do not only face global warming caused by climate change, we also face global warming caused by the growing anger of the dispossessed. G8 leaders have to be aware that our global situation needs urgent and adequate policy responses," Paul Chitnis, president of CIDSE, said.

The delegation of church leaders has toured Europe, meeting UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, German President Horst Koehler and Chancellor Angela Merkel and Prime Minster Romano Prodi of Italy.

In a statement, the delegation expressed their disappointment by the lack of progress on the part of the G8 countries. They said that they expect world leaders to assume responsibility for promoting human development and global solidarity.

They also called for continued efforts to resolve the problem of developing countries' debt in a sustainable and just way as well as coordinated measures against corruption, and the promises to increase development aid to be kept.

The delegation included Cardinal Oscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga (Honduras), Cardinal Keith Michael Patrick O'Brien (UK), Archbishop John Olorunfemi Onaiyekan (Nigeria), Archbishop Vincent Michael Concessao (India), Archbishop Laurent Monsengwo Pasinya (DR Congo), Archbishop Werner Thissen (Germany), Bishop Frank J. Dewane (US), Bishop Arrigo Miglio (Italy) and Bishop Marc Stenger (France).

At the last G8 Summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, 2005, group members (Britain, France, Russia, Germany, United States of America, Japan, Italy and Canada) had promised to write–off debts owed by the poorest countries and to double aid to Africa, increasing it by $25 billion a year by 2010.

They also pledged to end domestic subsidies that make African exports uncompetitive, ensure universal access to HIV/AIDS and malaria treatments and provide full funding to eradicate polio from the world.

Other promises were to ensure all children had access to quality, free and compulsory primary education and to basic healthcare. The G8 also promised to boost the peacekeeping capability of the African Union.

As Germany prepares to host this year's G8 Summit, the international team of Catholic bishops are preparing to call on the new German government to get the rich nations back on track to meet their commitment to Africa.

On May 2, Catholic bishops from African and European countries came together in Berlin to declare they were "disappointed" by the "lack of progress" by G8 countries towards the development aid targets set at the G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, in 2005.

This lack of progress is most visible in official development assistance (ODA) which fell 5.1 percent in 2006, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a group of 30 rich nations.

According to the OECD report, aid to sub–Saharan Africa increased only 2 percent, excluding debt relief for Nigeria. This meager growth contrasts with the tall promises the G8 leaders made in their 2005 summit at Gleneagles of doubling aid to Africa by 2010.

The bishops called on the G8 to commit themselves again to reaching the target of 0.7 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) for development aid by 2015, one of the UN targets towards meeting the Millennium Development Goals. These goals, primarily to reduce poverty and promote health and education, were agreed by world leaders in 2000.

"We see wealth and material fortune at the same time as abject poverty," German bishops said in a joint statement. "While the number of millionaires and billionaires is growing fast in some parts of the world, the numbers of the extreme poor remain stubbornly high."

Laurent Monsengwo Pasinya, the archbishop of Kisangani, a diocese in the Democratic Republic of Congo, called on G8 leaders to "realize that there has been a globalization of economic growth and therefore that there needs to be a globalization of charity and responsibility."

Officially, G8 is taking all these subjects into consideration this year. But German officials have not concealed the fact that the G8 interest in Africa focuses also on the abundant natural resources on the continent, and the progress of emerging developing countries such as India and China in tapping such resources.

African–Chinese trade has grown fivefold since 2000 to reach $50 billion in 2006. Chinese investment has risen since 2000 to more than $5.5 billion in 43 African countries, making China Africa's third–largest economic partner, only behind the United States and France.

Such growth led German Chancellor Angela Merkel to declare that Europe "should not leave the commitment to Africa to the People's Republic of China."

"We must take a stand in Africa," Merkel told a conference on urban development in Berlin in November, less than a week after an African–Chinese business and political summit in Beijing.

"It is obvious that access to natural resources, such as oil and cobalt, makes Africa interesting for Germany and Europe," German development expert Torben Ehlers said. "And also, that the massive investment from China, India, Iran and other Asian countries puts pressure upon the West to re–establish hegemonic control upon this access."