OTTAWA -- A leaked draft report of a key plank at next week's Group of Eight summit in Alberta recommends that the leaders commit to a "significant increase" in education aid for poor countries, but it stops short of saying how much they should be willing to spend.
The report by the G8 Education Task Force, obtained by The Globe and Mail, would commit each G8 member to make public its plans to ensure that by 2015, all the world's children complete their primary educations.
The report focuses on girls in Africa and other poor areas; worldwide, 60 per cent of the 100 million children not in school are female.
"We will significantly increase the support provided by our bilateral aid agencies to basic education for countries with a strong policy and financial commitment to the sector," the draft report says. "Our response should ensure that no child is left behind."
Critics said the education initiative could fall off the international agenda, unless G8 leaders go beyond the task-force recommendations and make concrete aid commitments next Wednesday and Thursday in Kananaskis, Alta.
"Otherwise, what's the point of them getting together?" Mark Fried of Oxfam Canada asked. "It will take real action. The danger is that they just rubber-stamp it and move on, and the report is forgotten."
Ottawa sources said Prime Minister Jean Chrétien is seriously considering announcing a Canadian financial commitment to the education plan as the summit closes, or at least setting a broad target for all G8 members to meet.
The task-force report is to be made public next Wednesday, and senior G8 officials are in the midst of negotiating how far their education commitments should go, a source said. While there is little doubt the report will be accepted and endorsed, some G8 countries may urge that cost figures be attached.
Another source said the United States is extremely reluctant to commit to anything on a multilateral basis, thereby putting a kink in the negotiations. Germany is committed to supporting two poor countries put on a fast-track education list by the World Bank.
A World Bank study on ensuring that all children are completing primary school by 2015 says that would cost $10-billion to $15-billion (U.S.) a year. About $4-billion of that would have to come from rich-country donors and the rest from the developing countries.
The developing countries should ensure they have policies in place to make primary education a priority, the bank says. It sets out a list of 18 countries that have such policies but need funds to make them work.
The G8 task-force report essentially endorses the World Bank plan but calls on the World Bank and regional-development banks to provide some of the money. The report also calls on donor countries to co-ordinate their efforts so as not to create more bureaucracies with which developing countries would have to deal.
Canada is committed to quadrupling its education-aid budget to $160-million (Canadian) a year by 2005. Ottawa also has said it will put $500-million toward African development, and Mr. Chrétien has committed to increasing the official aid budget by 8 per cent a year, so some of that money could be put towards the education initiative. But the contribution would have to be substantial and rushed out the door if Canada is to meet the 2015 objective, Mr. Fried said.
The United States and Britain have made encouraging sounds about money for education, giving Mr. Fried hope that they'll join Mr. Chrétien at Kananaskis in making firm commitments.
Reforming and increasing aid and investment for Africa are to be central themes of the two-day summit, which also will focus on terrorism, the global economy and international crises such as that in the Middle East. As usual for international economic meetings, the summit likely will be greeted by protesters, this time in Calgary and in Ottawa, and will be preceded by several days of an alternative conference led by research-oriented non-governmental organizations.
Yesterday, activists were gearing up, saying the G8 plan to form a new partnership with Africa is a rehash of all the past development plans that haven't worked and that have made poverty worse.
The G8 countries, which represent the world's major industrial nations and Russia, want to support a proposal from African leaders to increase aid and investment to the continent. In return, African countries would promise to improve and police each other's policies regarding open markets, democracy and good governance.
But labour leaders from Canada, the United States and several African countries met with Mr. Chrétien yesterday to encourage the G8 to pay more attention to the African grassroots. These people, they said, were not consulted when the African leaders put together the development plan.
The G8 plan represents the neoconservative approach pushed unsuccessfully on Africa by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, said Mamoumata Cissé, a labour leader from Burkina Faso. "The philosophy of open markets does not correspond to the African approach."
At least one Bay Street investor thinks the plan is on the right track. Highly successful fund manager Eric Sprott, who heads Sprott Asset Management Inc., has donated $1-million to the Canadian Hunger Foundation to launch the Africa Freedom From Hunger Fund, which aims to raise $20-million over the next year.
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