Recommendations for Camp David Summit

G8 leaders meeting at Camp David in May must take bold steps to encourage good governance and transparency and remove impediments for economic growth which further impoverish the world’s most vulnerable populations. This policy paper, compiled by a G8/G20 Task Force consisting of more than 40 non-governmental organizations, offers recommendations on core areas from food security and maternal health to HIV/AIDS and accountability efforts. Task force members represent NGOs, think tanks and trade unions, all with the same goal of fighting poverty and making governments more accountable and transparent. The current financial crisis has affected G8 members’ commitments to developing nations. The United States should play a leading role in encouraging the G8 to take the following steps:

Food Security, Agriculture and Nutrition

 The U.S. should lead the G8 in ensuring they:

1. Pledge not less than $30 billion for food security, agriculture and nutrition over the three-year period 2013-2015.

2. Prioritize support for investments in agriculture and food security that benefit women small-scale farmers; employ climate resilient techniques; use sustainable approaches; integrate linkages to nutrition outcomes; and address chronic malnutrition from pregnancy to age two.

3. Abide by the Rome Principles for Sustainable Global Food Security and align financing with recognized country investment plans as the default option where such plans are available.

4. Ensure robust financing for multilateral mechanisms to improve sustainable agricultural productivity, rural economic development and nutrition.

Maternal, Newborn and Child Health

The U.S. needs to:

1. Honour maternal, newborn and child health commitments to achieve Millennium Development Goals 4 and 5.

2. Strategically integrate services to maximize health outcomes and leverage financial resources.

3. Invest in frontline health workers through training and support for an additional 250,000 new frontline health workers.

4. Invest in nutrition for pregnant women, newborn babies and children.

HIV/AIDS

To spur much-needed actions by the G8, the U.S. should:

1.  Reaffirm U.S. commitments to support 6 million people on HIV/AIDS treatment (including 1.5 million HIV-positive women); prevent 12 million new infections; provide care for 12 million people by the end of 2013.

2. Fulfill the United States’ three-year, $4 billion pledge to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria for 2011 through 2013. U.S. leadership is needed to encourage other G8 countries to fulfill their pledges and to recruit new donors to put the Global Fund back on track.

3.  Assert U.S. leadership on global efforts to eliminate new pediatric HIV infection by 2015.

4. Press for language in the Camp David communiqué that commits G8 members to prioritize investments that strengthen health systems and integrate HIV/AIDS into broader health and development strategies to ensure sustained progress.

5.  Help facilitate the development and introduction of new preventive, diagnostic, and treatment technologies.

Accountability

1. Direct the Accountability Working Group (AWG) to receive input from other international organizations, recipient governments and a broad spectrum of civil society to inform their reporting.

2. Ensure the AWG publicly releases the terms of reference for each G8 expert group, and the names and affiliation of all experts when they are selected. Meeting schedules for such groups and a detailed agenda should be publicly available at least 20 days before each meeting.

3. Direct the AWG to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of all G8 commitments in order to devise performance indicators consistent with the Muskoka Accountability Report’s criteria for commitments.

4. Make public the AWG annual report 30 days before the Camp David summit and release a schedule of future reports, with provisional topics, through 2015. Institute the same advance release and report schedule publication rules for all future years.

G8_PolicyPaper_021412.pdf [1]