The DATA Report was launched today– Africa Day– in Berlin. A strong panel addressed the messages of the report. Hon. Zitto Kabwe, Member of Parliament of the United Republic of Tanzania, gave a fascinating insight to the African perspective of development cooperation. He also explained how aid has helped to bring about concrete improvements in his very own constituency.
Prof. Helmut Reisen, head of research of the OECD Development Centre, took a look at the G8 commitments altogether and alerted the audience to the so called “new donors”. Prof. Dr. Robert Kappel, President of the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA) highlighted the economic prospects and challenges of African countries.
Germany’s final report card is not outstanding, as ONE’s Germany director Tobias Kahler pointed out. Only 25% of its Gleneagles promise was kept, especially since Berlin did not direct as much of its ODA raises to Africa as committed.
We also had a DATA Report launch in Ottawa, Canada that just wrapped up. We’ll have a report from that event soon. And we’ll have lots more on the 2010 DATA Report in coming days.
The general elections in Germany on September 27 resulted in heavy losses for the Social Democrats (SPD). The market liberal Free Democrats (FDP) gained the most and will now form a coalition government with Chancellor Merkel´s Christian Democrats (CDU), which lost some voter confidence but remains by far the biggest party.
The coalition negotiations of FDP and CDU/CSU started on October 5 and are still ongoing. They will result in an agreement on ministerial appointments, as well as an agreement about the general framework of the new government policies for the next 4 years. The coalition contract will probably be signed in late October or early November. FDP leader Guido Westerwelle will possibly become foreign minister and vice chancellor and Angela Merkel will remain Chancellor.
The ONE team in Germany has launched various actions to support advocacy and awareness-raising in this critical phase while the new government team is planning for the coming years.
One good example is ‘The Article ONE’ – a summary of our demands for the next German government that was presented by Bob Geldof and others to the media earlier this year. It alludes to the first article of the German constitution which compels any form of public authority to focus on human dignity. So far, the Article ONE has been signed by several thousand ONE supporters, many high profile personalities, and by more than 110 current members of parliament from all parties.
The Article ONE petition will soon be handed over, together with handkerchiefs carrying messages from our recent trip to Tanzania. This will mark the end of ONE’s Germany election campaign – but certainly not the end of our activities. Our advocacy work with Germany’s new government will just be beginning!
What is ONE? What would you say if you had to explain it to your neighbor? We often say ONE is an advocacy group. We say ONE is lobbying politicians to fight poverty and preventable disease. And we often say ONE is a about a spirit of being a community of people around the world who strongly believe that where you live should not determine if you live.
Alright. A long explanation. And not very visual. The team of ONE Germany tried to tell about the strong community that ONE can be – a community of left and right, student and manager, housewife and movie star – in just 90 seconds. With a spot.
The story: A man and a woman are talking in a restaurant. He talks about Africa, bragging a bit about what he knows about achievements and success stories by the poorest countries. But he can’t really tell what he wants to. The lady at his table seems to know everybody in the room and they keep being interrupted. By the waiter, the newspaper man and also by really famous German actors and singers including Bono, Benno Fuermann, Michael Mittermeier, Katja Riemann, Jan Josef Liefers, Rea Garvey, Minh-Khai Phan-Thi, Cherno Jobatey, Jana Pallaske. At the end she asks him: Ok, and what are YOU actually doing about Africa?
And there it is: what ONE is about. Anybody can join to encourage policy makers around the world for more and better efforts in the fight against extreme poverty.
We shot this spot in just ONE day with such tremendous help from so many people – it is hard to thank them adequately. They contributed their skills and work just to help ONE: the extras, the technical crew, the production, Anne von Keller and Philip Mauritz who are starring in the spot, our director Benjamin Quabeck, Bono and as much as eight famous German artists. We probably had the most impressive cast of all film productions in Germany this year!
A great thank you should also go to the movie theatre group CineStar. Thanks to their support we will be able to show the spot on 437 screens across Germany. A great thanks to MTV which will also screen our spot and to the social network studiVZ/meinVZ for their continued support.
All of this comes at a crucial point in time: the parties CDU/CSU and FDP won the German elections and currently are negotiating their common policies in a government coalition. With the support from more and more Germans who support ONE we might be able to convince them to make the fight against poverty a strong part of German politics for the next four years. More and more people will join. Be ONE of us.
In Germany the budget negotiations are about to begin and we are in an election year.
Germany is still quite a big step away from fulfilling its Gleneagles commitment. So we wanted to ask the question to all major parties in this campaign: “Who will do as promised?” A question as thrilling as an action blockbuster, we thought.
Check out Germany’s leading politicians as action heroes and listen to Benno Fürmann, one of Germany’s most famous actors in our very new video “Promises” (translation below).
This is the year 2009.
Nine years ago 189 countries gave their word.
[speaker] “The Millennium Development Goals. Not to shy away from any effort to fight global poverty.”
But a threat is approaching.
The global economic crisis hits the poorest countries and threatens to cause poverty and hunger where there was just a glimpse of hope for the better.
Now courageous men and women are in demand.
Angela Merkel says [readable text / speech bubble]: “We as the Federal Government feel obliged, also now in a time of crisis and decreased tax revenue, not to scale down our ODA spending but to increase it, as this is of utmost importance for the people in the regions concerned.”
Frank-Walter Steinmeier says [readable text / speech bubble]: “If we want to prevent the crisis we have to take care of the structural causes for conflicts. Part of this is the fight against hunger and poverty and the facilitation of economic development.”
They know: This is about 0,2%. An important step between now and the promise to invest 0,51% of economic power in development by 2010. Will Germany keep her promise and support the poorest in their efforts, for more trade, good governance, education, infrastructure, agriculture, health systems and sanitation?.
Millions of Germans are looking at the men and women who hold this in their hands.
[as text underneath the picture]For 67 percent of Germans the credibility of politics also depends on keeping the promises to the World’s poorest. (emnid – famous polling institute)
Time is running out. Promises have been made. But who will act as they promised?
You can obligate them. With your name. For the article ONE.
There is a final document! We don’t have to reschedule our flights. And there seem to be quite some people who think that this is a good outcome.
We are not too overwhelmed by the results. Clearly: this was a difficult environment for such a conference with one of the biggest financial crisis since decades going on and the US as most important player in-between two administrations.
In the final communiqué donors gave a weak reaffirmation of existing commitments. Interesting is the language on timetables encouraging all donors to present by the end of 2010 timetables how they want to reach their aid commitments. This is particularly relevant for the EU countries. They will have to tell their population and development partnershow to reach the famous 0,7% by 2015, the fraction of GNI which is supposed to go to development. It also includes detailed language on aid effectiveness, without explicitly endorsing the Paris declaration.
What we think is positive is that it is acknowledged that adaptation to climate change in the developing countries will demand additional funds – but not specifying who has to contribute those additional resources (which is not so positive). The climate change conference in Poznan will have to confirm that it is the polluter (i.e. developed countries) that should pay.
The main thrust in the area to tackle corruption came through a number of side events. This topic was clearly on the top of the list of many NGOs and was muched talked about in the hallways. The document mentions “effectively combating tax evasion” but unfortunately does not name measures against tax havens explicitly. It also urges all states to “consider ratifying” UNCAC.
It is quite a success for the developing countries that they managed to have a UN-conference in 2009 on the highest level about the impact of the financial crisis on development. This was something they and many NGOs fought for very hard because the concern was that the poorest countries would not have a say in the new financial architecture if it would be only discussed among the G20. Other language on trade and debt relief were rather general.
These were interesting days, talking to delegations and journalists and following the negotiation process. The special envoys of the Secretary General, the German Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul and the South African Minister Trevor Manuel did a good job in pushing for more and better aid and encouraging progress on innovative financing for development. The story will continue next year in London at the G20 conference. Until then we say “over and out” from Doha! Thanks for following us through these days!
“It’s down to only the last three issues.”
“It is starting all anew.”
“We will have a final document within the next hours.”
“There won’t be a solution before Tuesday.”
Rumors are flying back and forth in the hallways of the Sheraton hotel at the 3rd day of the Doha conference. While the side events at the conference continue and stir useful discussions about new and innovative financing or Africa’s reaction to the financial crisis (check out Miki only steps away from Tanzania’s president Kikwete) the delegations are wrestling behind closed doors about the final outcome document.
And while we are busy finding out if the new agreement would be a good or not so good outcome we are struck by the news that the delegations are renegotiating large parts of the document again.
After several hours and a repeatedly postponed press briefing of the US delegation the heads of the US, German, Japanese and other industrialized countries took an unusual break: Obviously tired from endless negotiations in closed hotel lobbies they decided to meet for a quick chat among themselves at the terrace of the hotel – attracting quite some attention by the participants.
But obviously this airy meeting under the starry skies of Doha did not lead to the final breakthrough. Right now the negotiations are still ongoing, particularly about how to reflect the financial crisis. The poor countries want to have more influence on the global financial framework reforms.
The UN Doha Conference kicked off Saturday. As expected, there were many world leaders present, including UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, Emir Sheikh Hamad of Qatar, President Sarkozy of France (also the president of EU), President of the EU Commission Manuel Barroso, and many African leaders, including President Kikwete of Tanzania (also the president of AU) and President Kibaki of Kenya. President Sarkozy called for the Bretton Woods Institutions (World Bank and the IMF) to be more inclusive and for better African representation within the UN Security Council.
In a very frank statement Emir Sheikh Hamad al-Thani said that oil-producing states, like Qatar, often “have the feeling that there are some attempts to put the whole burden of development” on them, and cautioned against excess of expectations, above and beyond their capabilities. Alongside the plenary sessions we often listen to a long line of leaders and heads of delegations who read out their speeches … a-always very, um, interesting..!
The contents of the Conference outcome document is negotiated in a different room at the working level. Most of these meetings are not open to the civil society, so we weren’t able to listen to the actual negotiations, but we hear that tough negotiations are going on between the member states, and we, the NGOs are working hard to make sure that the aid commitments that were reiterated in G8 Toyako Communique are not toned down. One thing really stirred the participants up: At noon there was the news that EU and the G7 already agreed on a final text for the outcome. The excitement was soon over as it turned out that Japan, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and particularly the US still had a number of reservations on the text. So negotiations will go on for a while. There are still some issues in the areas of reforming trading systems, timetables on ODA, debt, the consequences of climate change and of course about the consequences of the current financial crisis.
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