Brown calls for modern Marshall Plan for Africa
The Chancellor Gordon Brown has called on the developed world to show their commitment to change and draw-up a radical plan to beat world poverty.
The Marshal Plan was drawn up by America after the Second World War to help war-torn Europe recover both economically and socially.
In a speech at the BBC World Service Trust conference, Mr Brown said that world poverty is the “most important issue of our generation” and that 2005, where the UK holds the G8 and EU presidencies, would be the “most important year for our generation”.
2005 will also see the UN Millennium Summit to examine progress on tackling world poverty, a personal report from the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and a new round of world trade talks in Hong Kong.
Mr Brown said the year would be “a testing time as to whether the world can wake up to the scale of the tragedy of poverty and its implications. Whether we can come together as never before to fashion a new relationship between rich and poor countries and peoples.
“The year when also in the shadow of failed states and terrorist threats as well as global poverty we will be asked whether the richest countries can summon up a similar level of inspiration and vision as was shown fifty years ago and agree a modern equivalent of the Marshall Plan.
“Whether we can be as bold in our statesmanship as we were in 1945 with the formation of the World Bank.” 2005 could be a “make or break year” for the world community, he said.
In a passionate speech, the Chancellor said that he hoped this year would see a pledge to wipe out 100 per cent of debt and a world trade talk round specifically based on the interest of the poorest countries.
He also called on other countries to adopt the British proposals for a new International Finance Facility (IFF), referring to the “self-evident truth that we cannot be this rich and see people that poor.”
20 years on from Live Aid, which awakened an entire generation to Africa’s problems, Mr Brown pointed out that there are still 70 million people and only 2000 doctors in Ethiopia and children have an only one in ten chance of surviving until the age of one. Aid to Africa, which was $33 per person ten years ago is now only $19.
Mr Brown warned that despite the unanimity of agreement on the Millennium Goals, current progress would not see crucial targets – like universal primary education – delivered for another 100 years. The goals were being seen as a tragic promissory note, “a promise that became a commitment, a timetable and a pledge, are now at risk of being downgraded from pledge to just possibility to just words.”
“That is why in my view we need to urgently summon up the inspiration, vision and commitment in a manner akin to the Marshall Plan of the 1940s when America boldly transferred not 0.7 per cent of its national income but two per cent of its national income to war ravaged Europe and by transferring resources and stimulated world trade ushered in decades of world economic growth.”
He called for all historic debt owed to international organisations and devolved countries to be written off and a removal of western trade subsidies, action on the “scandal and waste of the Common Agricultural Policy”, whilst the poor are given resources to build trade.
The Chancellor argued that the IFF, founded on long-term binding donor commitments and then borrowing on the international capital markets, would provide the resources to fund development aid to ensure stability and invest for the future. He claimed this would lead to a doubling of the international aid available to $100 billion a year.
