Africans receive a pledge for 2.5 Billion Euros
Vive la France!
ROME, Italy (CNN) -- Countries and donors must spend as much as $20 billion a year if the world is to end the food crisis, the head of the United Nations. Ban Ki-moon,
French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced a 2.5 billion euro (3.8 billion dollar) initiative to finance nearly 2,000 companies and create 300,000 jobs in Africa over the next five years.
“I want France to contribute directly to the creation of African companies that will generate jobs,” he told a joint sitting of the South African parliament.
Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations, spoke to reporters in June 2008 to deal with food security -- a broad term that includes hunger, rising food prices, food production, high oil prices, and climate change.
The agency is sending $163 million of the extra funds to Somalia, where high food prices are compounding the existing problems of drought, hyper-inflation and continued conflict, the WFP said.
Some $193 million will go toward urgent food distribution in Ethiopia, which is suffering from high prices and drought, the WFP said.
G‐20 Leaders are under great domestic pressure to create employment and help local states.
It is not surprising that they feel that they have to remain vague on their commitments to the world's poorest regions. The United Nations Millennium Campaign is disappointed that the recent G‐20 meetings
ended without a concrete plan of action.
Although the global economy is starting to show signs of stability for wealthy investors, the unemployed and the poor in every country are still feeling the worst effect of the crisis. They will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
Yet expectations
that the richest members of the G‐20 would deliver on their $50 billion commitment from the last G‐20
to poor countries (of which less than 50% has materialized) were dashed. The “G‐20 leaders are focused on accountability on how the moneys they donate are spent. They are under domestic pressure to account for bonuses and compensation and not only the needs of the
1.4 billion people who are still living on less than $1.25 per day whose very lives are threatened by the economic
crisis.”
Director of the United Nations Millennium Campaign. “The G‐20’s failure to
address the needs of the world’s poorest is a worrying sign. Going forward it is critical that the G‐20
focus its attention and resources on achieving the Millennium Development Goals.” The just‐concluded G‐20 meeting in Pittsburgh, a city that is suffering from extreme unemployment, has not fulfilled the hope that somehow the G-20 would spend more on the poorest people in
the world.
AID:
Less than half of the allocated $50 billion that the G‐20 leaders pledged to poor
countries in April has been delivered. The richest members of the G‐20
have failed to address or make provisions for the predicted $33 billion aid nor have they addressed how the governments of the poorest nations should deal with the deficit through 2010
TRADE:
The G‐20 leaders made no real commitment to the eliminate of trade‐distorting agricultural subsidies in
the richest countries and continue to put protectionist measures for their own poputations first.
Governance of international financial institutions:
The G-20 has no solutions for the problems unsecured loans are creating in the poor countries and often they don't know how to deal with it in their own countries. They suggest that the poor countries should take on the issue by providing them with greater voting power. While this sound great it doesn't really address the issues create by Financial Institutions providng and poor countries accepting mercernary loan arrangements.
CLIMATE CHANGE:
In the midths of high unemployment in Western Countries and rising self-confidence in the East. Climate Change has taken on a dangerously low priority on the G-20 agenda.
ASSESSMENT:
The G-20 are in beholden to the financial institutions. They actually have no power to do anything or give anything unless the large fnancial institutions agree. Case in point:
The financial institutions paid themselve a hefty bonus for gambling the world economy into the current state. The United Nations Millennium Campaign today released an analysis showing
that since the inception of aid (overseas development assistance) almost 50 years ago, donor
countries have given some $2 trillion in aid. In 2008 and 2009 $18 trillion has been
found globally (money has been printed in the uS and or has been borrowed from the new superpower China) to bail out banks and other financial institutions.
The amount of total aid over
the past 49 years represents just eleven percent of the money the financial institutions spent on themselves in
one year. What does that mean?
On Russell Flannery, 10.29.08, reported in Forbes that Sequoia's Neil Shen, says: China's earning growth will likely outperform U.S. companies next year, making the country's stocks a good buy.
In March 2009 Investor tip explained: Debt is a tool, just like anything else, and China is buying up debt in droves. Owning debts of foreign countries allows the debt holder to dictate international trade and legislation. When foreign countries become too fixated on letting the Chinese fund their liabilities, the government that is borrowing must act in a way that is favorable to the Chinese. The impact of debt holders worldwide was seen in US when the stimulus bill was stripped of its “buy American” policy due to foreign input. So now that the financial investment opportunities are primarily in China and all the investment institutions had to liquidate their funds so they could investment them "safely" namely in China, or companies that have set a high priority in China - it is becoming clear that China is setting the global strategy on how to fight global hunger and how to treat empoverished nations. The West is beholden to China for economic stability.
In 2006 a report stated that exports from Africa to Asia tripled in the last five years, making Asia Africa's third largest trading partner (27 percent) after the European Union (32 percent) and the United States (29 percent), according to Africa's Silk Road: China and India's New Economic Frontier. China will have an ever increasing affect on African nations, their work force. China's understanding of human rights are quite different from those stated in the Western world.
The UN Millennium Campaign is urgently calling on the populations of the rich countries to gather and do something about this sad state of affairs for the world's poorest people. Perhaps dialogue between countries about the intrinsic value systems will play an ever increasing role in international and domestic affairs.
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