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G8’s £12bn in food aid for the poor is ‘scraps at table’
Nicholas Cecil, Chief Political Correspondent10.07.09
Gordon Brown today hailed a £12 billion aid deal agreed at the G8 to boost food security in poor nations.
He revealed that the world's wealthiest countries had agreed to give $20 billion over three years — $5 billion more than expected.
“No one should go hungry in a planet as fertile as ours,” said the prime minister. “We want to make sure that in the modern world no one goes hungry any more.”
But aid charities cast doubt on its effectiveness and poured scorn on the summit leaders for enjoying gourmet feasts during the three days of talks in Italy.
Oxfam's Gawain Kripke said: “While the G8 digest last night's feast, 16,000 children die each day because they are hungry. This figure over three years is mostly recycled money and isn't enough to help one billion hungry people. We can count, even if they won't.”
Meredith Alexander, of ActionAid UK, said: “It amounts to scraps at the table for the world's poor. It is time for world leaders to stop cooking the books; they must put real money into food and agriculture.”
The aid deal was intended to end the summit on a high note after disagreements over measures to combat climate change and gloomy forecasts on the global economy.
Earlier Mr Brown met Libya's Muammar Gaddafi for the first time and asked him to intervene in the case of a British child abducted by her Libyan father. Col Gaddafi, who came with a Bedouin tent and an entourage of female bodyguards, agreed to look int the case of six-year-old Nadia Fawzi, who was taken from her mother Sarah Taylor, of Wigan, in 2007.
Mr Brown also raised the case of London WPC Yvonne Fletcher, who was shot outside the Libyan Embassy in 1984 and whose killers have not been brought to justice.
The leaders of the G8 nations — Britain, , America, Germany, France, Italy, Canada, Japan and Russia — were being joined today in L'Aquila by African presidents and prime ministers as they assess the impact of the global recession on the poorest countries. The numbers of chronically hungry is estimated to be growing at a rate of around 275,000 a day throughout 2008.
The food for the world's leaders was of the highest quality. The dinner on Wednesday night was overseen by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's personal chef Michele Persechini and included hand-made miniature macaroni, roast lamb and sweet pizza dessert.
“Communities we work with in Kenya have to eat poisonous loma berries when rains and harvests fail,” said Meredith Alexander, the head of G8 policy at ActionAid UK. “The dish' takes two days to prepare as the berries must be boiled for 12 hours to remove the poison.
“This is just one example of the desperate measures the billion people with chronic hunger are driven to every day,” he added
Reader views (2)
There are plenty of poor people in Britain outside of Parliament and the headquarters of all the companies operating in London. Someone should tell Brown that he was elected to serve the British peoples interest. I have lived in West Africa and seen foreign aid spent on fleets of Mercedes.
- Fred, Horsham
Perhaps the PM and his wife could start by eating a bit less!
- Steve, London
