Do we really want to make poverty history? Let's kill our double-speak and cooking of the books, and stop fleecing the Third World, writes Colin Roche
This weekend is one year since the G8 met in Edinburgh, since Live8, and since 20,000 people marched the streets of Dublin to make poverty history. It is also one year since the promises made on aid, debt and a fairer trading system.
Happily on the first two, aid and debt, there is some progress to report. More aid is being delivered and 19 countries have had some of their debt cancelled. This money is important and is beginning to make a difference.
In Zambia, for instance, it has been announced that basic healthcare will be free and money is being set aside to hire 4,500 teachers.
With these resources, developing countries could, if the circumstances were right, begin to rebuild their capacities to ensure access to essential services.
This however is far short of what is needed. For a start, the G8 and other rich nations promised only half of what the UN reports is needed to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, including halving extreme poverty, by 2015.
What's more, most of the extra aid - about 80 per cent from the G8 - has been used to fund one-off debt-cancellation deals for Iraq and Nigeria. This is a classic double-accounting exercise and a practice that rich countries promised in 2002 to stop.
When this money is removed from the figures of some major donors such as Germany and France, we actually see a decrease in aid from them between 2004 and 2005.
The money lost will have real costs. With a hundred million children missing school and more than 7,000 people dying each day from HIV/Aids alone, this is no time for cooking the books.
It's in the third promise made last year though - of a fairer trading system - where the hypocrisy of the richest nations is greatest.
In 2001, a "development round" of trade talks was promised. Again last year, the G8 promised "a trade package that has the potential to lift millions out of poverty". But what is the result so far?
Under the guise of "balance", rich countries have once again sought to extract the maximum from developing countries while giving the minimum in return. Rich territories - such as the European Union and the United States - have defended their vast agricultural subsidies from efforts to ensure they do not result in dumping overseas. At the same time, they have sought increased market access to developing countries.
This double-speak was covered lightly with a thin veneer of "development speak" by rich countries. They gave little if any thought to the consequences for the development of jobs and industry in poor countries, or the need to be able to effectively regulate foreign investment to safeguard the public good.
This week in Geneva, trade ministers are meeting to make another push to conclude a trade agreement.
Minister for Trade Michael Ahern and Minister for Agriculture Mary Coughlan are also in Switzerland for the talks. Unfortunately, their presence is unlikely to bring a true "development round" any closer, for Ireland has been a strong proponent of aggressive demands for access to poor country's markets, while our stance on agriculture has neither supported developing countries nor dealt with subsidised dumping of EU surpluses overseas.
Ireland has defended the elimination of these iniquitous export refunds which have proved so harmful to the livelihoods of poor farmers in the developing world.
The Government has helped to postpone their elimination by three years (something for which it has even taken credit). At the same time, it has demanded that poor countries reduce their taxes on non-agricultural imports by a greater level than rich countries. This is a clear contravention of "Doha development" promises under which it would be the other way round.
Also disturbing is the Government's support for liberalisation by poor countries of key sectors such as energy and telecoms without a clear understanding of whether the WTO rules will allow them to successfully regulate these industries in future.
No doubt the Government will protest that it strongly supports a development round - that it supports, for instance, action on US cotton subsidies, that it is supporting allocating aid money for trade assistance and that it doesn't think the poorest countries should undertake market access commitments.
All welcome, but these issues are either ones we can do nothing about (US cotton subsidies), a rejigging of other promises (aid for trade) or only half the truth (Ireland is seeking market access from the poorest countries elsewhere).
When it comes to the crunch, Ireland is failing to deliver on its promise to support a development round. If a deal is done this week or next month without a major change of approach from rich countries, including Ireland, then we will have failed to deliver on the promise of a development round.
Ireland has had every opportunity to increase the value of the additional aid that we have promised over the coming years - by creating a fairer trading system. That we and other rich countries have manifestly failed to do this means that campaigners must, and will, redouble their work of 2005 to end global poverty.
Colin Roche is Oxfam Ireland's campaigns and advocacy executive. www.oxfamireland.org