This page is background information, last updated in May 2002 and still available for reference. For the latest on the Special Session on Children, please go to the Special Session index.

UK calls for new investment pact for children

NEW YORK, 10 May 2002 - Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, the most senior financial spokesperson for the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, today called for a new development compact to ensure funding for programmes helping children in any developing country committed to good governance, poverty reduction and economic development.

"This will be a new deal for the world's children," said Mr. Brown. "In return for developing countries pursuing corruption-free policies for stability, for opening up trade and for creating a favourable environment for investment, developed countries should be prepared to open up trade to developing countries for everything but arms and to increase vitally needed funds to achieve the agreed millennium development goals."

The goals to which he referred were set during the UN Millennium Summit in 2000. They include a 50 per cent reduction in poverty, which disproportionately affects children; a two thirds reduction in the mortality of children under five; and the full implementation of universal primary school education for boys and girls by 2015. The Summit called for an additional $50 billion in development funding per year.

Mr. Brown, who was speaking at a Special Session breakfast on financing a world fit for children, said, "When we have in our hands the means to enable every child to be fed … the [knowledge] to cure many of their diseases, the means to abolish their poverty … how can we fail to act?"

He outlined four key areas of investment in children's well-being: food for all children; universal primary education; quality healthcare for all children; and debt relief for developing countries, poverty eradication and sustainable development.

He announced that the United Kingdom will take immediate action to help African countries affected by the current food shortages, and that industrialized countries need to open their agricultural markets to developing countries.

"We must recognize that, in the longer term, the liberalization of trade by all countries -- rich and poor -- is critical to the elimination of hunger," he said.

He called on the donor community to increase funding for education in the poorest countries. Currently less than 5 per cent of Official Development Assistance goes to basic education, a sum that is "inadequate," he said.

The UN-led Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has so far raised $1.9 billion for the prevention and treatment of these diseases. The United Kingdom has also created new tax incentives to accelerate research, in the UK and other countries, on these and other diseases that take a severe toll in developing countries. Mr. Brown urged pharmaceutical companies to match this commitment by creating drugs and vaccines that can help the poor.

He called for "faster and deeper" debt relief, accompanied by aid that is focused on poverty reduction and assistance for debtor countries targeted by commercial creditors. He urged that the next meeting of the 'G8' industrialised countries, which will be hosted by Canada in June, drive the process forward.

"If we can lift not just one child, but millions of children, and then all children, out of poverty and hopelessness, we will have achieved a momentous victory for the cause of social justice on a global scale," Mr. Brown said. "Whether we help the world's children should be the true litmus test of globalization."