G8 Canada 2010

For the very first time, this year's G8 and G20 Summits took place back to back with G8 leaders meeting in Muskoka, Canada, on 25 June and the G20 meeting in Toronto on June 26-27.

While G20 discussions and their communiqué focused primarily on economic affairs including trade, banking and fiscal policies, discussions within the G8 focused on aid and development.

Both of these meetings presented an important opportunity for world leaders to reaffirm their commitment to promises made to people living in poverty around the world.

Yet, G8 leaders failed to step up efforts on previous G8 commitments particularly the Gleneagles commitments to increase aid by $50billion and double aid to Africa while the G20 could not agree any progressive policies on banking reform such as a proposed Financial Transaction Tax.

Outcomes of the G8 Summit

The G8 announced a new initiative focused on Maternal Health, the "Muskoka Initiative". The initiative aims to mobilise up to $10billion to support health care systems in developing countries over the next five years, with additional contributions from The Bill and Melinda Gates and UN bodies.

Many Bond members welcomed this focus on infant and maternal health yet criticised that there is no indication of where the pledged finance will come from. Given that overall G8 aid levels have been frozen, funding already allocated to essential services such as education, water and sanitation could be recycled or double-counted to pay for this new initiative. This renewed commitment should be additional to, not instead of, existing aid pledges.

Ahead of the Muskoka Summit, the G8 also published its very first "Muskoka Accountability Report" as mandated by the 2009 L'Aquila G8 Summit - documenting progress made on G8 aid commitments.

In particular, the report outlines progress made towards the 2005 G8 Gleneagles commitments to increase aid by $50billion and double aid to Africa by 2010. The report notes that progress has been made but that the G8 has failed to reach the Gleneagles commitments, with development NGOs estimating the shortfall to be between $10billion and $20billion.

Even though the report clearly states that targets have been clearly missed in the year they were due to be met, the G8 communiqué failed to mention them. This indicates a worrying retreat from these critical aid targets at a time when 1 billion people in the world go hungry every day and 77 million children of school-going age are missing out on the opportunity of education.