There are two initiatives focusing in particular on debt relief:
The UK Government is committed to achieving the International Development Targets, such as halving by 2015 the proportion of people living in extreme poverty and providing universal access to primary education.
The UK Government hosted in February an international conference, which focused on what participants such as the IMF, World Bank, UNICEF, UNDP, NGOs and faiths, governments and business needed to do to accept, share and fulfil their responsibilities for meeting these targets. The conference was addressed by Nelson Mandela, Kofi Annan, and the heads of the IMF and World Bank.
At the Conference, the Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced a new fund aimed at delivering primary education to those without it in the commonwealth, and proposed new tax measures to encourage research and development into the world’s killer diseases. He also announced the UK’s support for a new Global Health Fund, to address the devastation caused by HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria – in particular by delivering more affordable drugs and vaccines. Since then, international commitment to the Fund has been demonstrated by the G8, and by the UN General Assembly Special Session on AIDS. Clare Short, the Minister for Overseas Development, has said that the UK is prepared to commit $200m to a successful fund. On the same day as the conference the EU announced its proposals to remove tariffs on ‘Everything But Arms’ as a step to improving the access of the world’s poorest countries to trade.
For more information on the conference, see the press notices below:
At the 1999 Annual Meetings, the World Bank and IMF agreed to a new approach to development, with country-owned, community driven Poverty Reduction Strategies.
Governments in HIPC countries are now leading national processes to develop a poverty reduction strategy paper (PRSP), involving civil society and the international community. These strategies will set out the policy action governments propose to take to reduce poverty. They provide a budgetary framework, not only for spending the savings from debt relief, but also for allocating other government revenue and support from the World Bank, IMF and donor countries. The experience of many countries has shown that growth is not sustainable if large sections of the population feel excluded from making decisions about their destiny, hence the emphasis on civil ownership.
For more detail on the PRSPs, see: