British finance minister Gordon Brown Wednesday pledged over 2 billion pounds (21,5 milliarder DKR) to help eradicate poverty in the developing world and give a brighter future for millions of children.
He confirmed Britain would give 960 million pounds towards a massive UN-backed international vaccination drive, saying this would help save millions of lives.
Brown said a further 1,8 billion pounds would be given to fund education programmes in developing countries, with a focus on girls schools.
The British Chancellor of the Exchequer, fresh from a personal tour of Africa, announced the plans at a London seminar organised by the Department for International Development and the UN Development Programme.
– In this year we, the international community, can agree a plan for a new deal between developed and developing countries as bold and as generous as the Marshall Plan of the 1940s, he said, referring to the US-funded scheme to rebuild Europe after World War II.
The vaccination programme could save five million lives if other countries around the world responded in a similar way, Brown said.
The funding for schooling would help give a better life to some of the 110 million children worldwide currently denied education, he added.
The announcement underlined how Britain will use its presidency of the Group of Eight (G8) club of rich countries to push for full debt relief, trade benefits and financial assistance for the worlds poorest countries.
Britain is to spend the vaccination money over the next 15 years on the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (Gavi) – a plan backed by the Bill Gates Foundation and the Norwegian government.
On Tuesday, a foundation run by Gates, the US computer software multi-billionaire, said it was donating 750 million dollars to Gavi.
– We are talking about lives being saved, we are talking about 90 percent immunisation over the next 10 years for children, we are talking about eradicating some of the worst diseases, Brown told BBC Wednesday, adding: – It is probably the best investment we could make.
Brown – who recently became a father for the first time – said that seeing children denied education during his Africa tour had a major impact on him.
– It is probably just about the cheapest investment we can make, the most cost-effective investment, to provide help for those 100 million children who cannot go to school every day to make sure they can have the teachers and the books and the schools that will give them education, he told BBC radio.
Brown warned that more action was needed to meet the UN Millennium Declaration goals agreed in New York in 2000, an ambitious series of targets for poverty, education and disease.
The British publics response to the Asian tsunami disaster had “demonstrated to us all the willingness of the British people and other peoples to come to the aid of fellow human beings who suffer,” he told the seminar.
– Far from there being compassion fatigue, perhaps for the first time millions more people are understanding just how closely and irrevocably bound together are the fortunes of the richest persons in the richest country to the fate of the poorest persons in the poorest country of the world, he concluded.
Kilde: The Push Journal
