Bush and G7: Turning Their Backs

Overview

The leaders of the G8 countries will meet in Alberta Canada this week to discuss and respond to global crises. The agenda for the June 26-27 summit is groundbreaking because the leaders will spend an entire day focusing on one region for the first time: Africa. The Canadian host government has made the discussion of African issues a top priority, and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has called Africa ìthe most important item on the agenda.î

The leaders of the wealthy nations, particularly Canada, should be congratulated for focusing so clearly on Africa. Yet, for all the lofty rhetoric, the G7 leaders have already failed to keep promises made at the last Summit to provide adequate resources to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria. Preliminary indications are that this yearís Summit will not produce firm commitments from the G7 leaders to rapidly provide the Fund with the resources it needs. This is a disastrous failure of leadership, with deadly consequences.

President Bush, in particular, is compounding the problem by redirecting funds that were aimed at the Global Fund to bilateral programs, thus pursuing a unilateralist approach at the expense of cooperative, multilateral initiatives. As noted in the New York Timesí editorial, June 21:

[T]he White House is taking the wrong approach. Its initiative sabotaged a Senate bill that was sure to pass...Mr. Bush pledged that the new program would not cut into contributions for the global fund to fight AIDS, but it already does...Although Mr. Bush and members of his cabinet speak as if they understand the catastrophic impact of AIDS worldwide, their willingness to help apparently stops at the point where it could cross key financial supporters or require real money.

Just as G7 leaders are meeting in Canada, the TRIPS Council is meeting in Geneva, making life and death decisions for people living with AIDS. It is doubly tragic that some G7 leaders, notably President Bush, are still acting to block access to lowcost, generically manufactured antiretroviral medication; thus, countries might not be able to use the few resources that are provided in the most cost-effective manner. The EU, for its part, is heading down precisely the same path as the US, siding with pharmaceutical companies instead of formulating a public health solution that will get lowest cost supplies of medicines to developing countries that lack efficient manufacturing capacity.

The Global AIDS Alliance is not calling for more resources out of a simplistic view that if we just throw money at the AIDS epidemic itís bound to improve the situation; on the contrary, the immediate resource needs for the fight against AIDS have been rigorously costed. The World Health Organization's Commission on Macroeconomics and Health recommends that some $8 billion per year be channeled through the Global Fund. To date, the Fund has received commitments of just $2.08 billion over a two to three year period, resulting in insufficient resources to finance the large number of quality proposals expected to arrive at the Fund later this year. At the end of 2002 the Fund is effectively bankrupt.

Compounding the resource deficit is the failure of the G7 Finance Ministers at their June 15 meeting in Halifax to mandate debt cancellation for heavily indebted poor countries that are committed to fighting AIDS and to poverty reduction. Progress was made by requiring that 100% of future World Bank loans for AIDS programs be grant resources and by increasing to 20% the grant component of other loans to the poorest countries. Yet, the Finance Ministers failed to take up calls, made by conservative US Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) and others, to make the debt relief process more effective at relieving both old and new debts. In addition, the G7 has so far failed to remove the senseless requirement that countries agree to take on new IMF loans in order to qualify for debt relief.

During 2002, approximately 3 million people will die from AIDS and at least 5 million people will be newly HIV-infectedónearly all occurring in the poor countries. AIDS is relatively more under control in wealthy countries because of large investments in prevention and treatment programs; yet, HIV transmission continues exponentially in most poor countries, despite the fact that Uganda, Thailand, and Senegal are demonstrating the ability to deliver cost-effective and accountable AIDS programs in resource-poor settings. As the New Economic Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) states, ìOne of the major impediments facing African development efforts is the widespread incidence of communicable diseases, in particular HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. Unless these epidemics are brought under control, real gains in human development will remain an impossible hopeî.

On June 6 US Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, speaking on the 55th anniversary of General George Marshall's 1947 speech setting forth a redevelopment plan for Europe after World War II, stated that a "comparable effort" to the Marshall Plan should be directed at providing clean water, improving primary education and combating HIV/AIDS in Africa. Yet, the Marshall Plan, now seen as a tremendous success, cost the United States $12.5 billion over four years (in 1947 dollars), much greater than what the US is prepared to contribute today. In todayís dollars the Marshall Plan would have cost $100.7 billion.

Public opinion polls indicate deep and broad support for assistance to help countries impacted by the AIDS crisis, so the G7 leaders have ample political cover. Unless they change course and provide real leadership to confront global AIDS, a crisis which President Bush has termed ìa genocide,î the promise of effective assistance made by the UN General Assembly Special Session on HV/AIDS and the Millennium Summit will be nothing more than a cruel mockery of the hopes of millions of people with AIDS and their family members living in impoverished countries.

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