Development campaigners have criticized a pledge by the leaders of the world's richest nations on Friday to give $60 billion to fight diseases such as AIDS in Africa.
G8 leaders said they would provide at least $60 billion to fight AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, global diseases that have devastated African countries and their economies. But the declaration set no specific timetable, saying the money would flow "over the coming years." It also did not make clear individual countries' contributions or how much of the sum had been previously promised.
Anti-poverty activists complain that the rich countries have failed to keep promises the G8 made to increase annual aid to poor countries at the Gleneagles summit in Scotland in 2005. Many were also unimpressed with Friday's deal, which restated those pledges.
"I am exasperated," Irish rock star and anti-poverty campaigner Bono told Reuters. "I think it is deliberately the language of obfuscation. It is deliberately misleading."
Campaigners for Africa say the promise is mainly comprised of money that was announced previously, including $30 billion from the United States.
An advocacy organization working to eradicate poverty and AIDS in Africa said that a pledge of an extra $25 billion dollars made at the Gleneagles summit was not kept. At the end of last year, only $2.3 billion of that promised amount, which is to be paid by 2010, had been delivered, said Jamie Drummond, executive director of DATA -- or Debt, AIDS, Trade, Africa. According to DATA, only Britain and Japan are meeting their promises
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