Save the Children has just issued a press release on the G-8 summit and its implications for reducing child hunger and malnutrition.
Here is the text of the press release:
The final communiqué of the G-8 summit delivered mixed results for the world’s poorest children and families, Save the Children said Saturday. Its conclusions marked positive action on reducing global hunger, but unfinished work on child and maternal health.
“The good news is, G-8 leaders stepped up on making their promises more accountable and setting real numbers of lives they plan to save. It is good to see the G8 is serious about saying what it means and doing what it says. The accountability report process must continue,” said Michael Klosson, Save the Children’s Vice President for Policy and Humanitarian Response. “G-8 leaders, however, shortchanged mothers and children by committing only $5 billion over the next five years to save their lives.”
The last global opportunity to dramatically reduce preventable child and maternal deaths will come at a U.N. summit in September, where all nations will gather to assess progress on the Millennium Development Goals they adopted in 2000. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has called for a global plan of action to address the goals most off-track — those related to child and maternal health. Saturday,
Save the Children welcomed the G-8 reaffirming their commitment to address global hunger, to deliver on last year’s food security investment, and to maintain a critical focus on reducing malnutrition, especially among children and mothers. “When it comes to fighting hunger, progress is being made,”
Klosson said. “Sustained delivery on the L’Aquila Food Security Initiative can help turn the corner on maternal and child malnutrition.” Every year, malnutrition is the underlying cause of one third of all deaths of children under 5. Saturday’s G-8 communiqué included details on the group’s first initiative to address the world’s annual toll of nearly 9 million child and 350,000 maternal child deaths.
To effectively save the lives of millions of poor women and children dying of preventable causes, Save the Children said the G-8 initiative had to contain three elements: robust investment, accountability, and measurable targets. The initiative’s proposed $5 billion investment over five years fell well short of the doubling of G-8 bilateral assistance to $4 billion a year, which, Save the Children and other advocates have called for. However, the G-8 came through on accountability and measurable targets.
The G-8 committed through its initiative to prevent 1.3 million deaths of children under 5 years of age; prevent 64,000 maternal deaths; and enable access to modern methods of family planning by an additional 12 million couples. These concrete targets are to be achieved cumulatively between 2010 and 2015.
“We will hold the G8 to account for these targets. But the numbers pale in comparison to the more than 26 million children who could also be saved from preventable deaths if the G-8 led the world in rapidly increasing equitable access to proven, cost-effective health interventions,” Klosson said. “It is clear that all countries need to step up their investments.”
The United States made an “initial” two-year commitment of $1.346 billion toward the Muskoka initiative, subject to Congressional approval. Save the Children welcomes President Obama’s Global Health Initiative with its emphasis on maternal, newborn and child health and a new, more accountable approach to development policy. That initiative formed the basis of the U.S. commitment in Muskoka. But dramatic change for mothers and children requires not only accountability and measurable targets but also more rapid, robust and sustained investment to the save the lives the world knows can be saved.
The action now turns to the G-20 this weekend and then the U.N. summit in September on the Millennium Development Goals. Save the Children calls on G-8 leaders to make good on their expressed commitment by shaping with other partners a truly game-changing Joint Action Plan to Improve the Health of Women and Children.
The bold political leadership that should have come through in Muskoka can still be redeemed at the U.N. summit in New York if the G-8 and other world leaders step up. Everybody can see how a focus on maternal and child health saves lives and to learn how to support the cause at http://www.goodgoes.org/.
See also G-8 summit historic chance to end child hunger
