What Did Make Poverty History Achieve?
The biggest ever anti-poverty movement came together under the banner of MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY in 2005 calling for urgent action for more and better aid, debt cancellation and trade justice.
Millions of people wore white bands, 444,000 people emailed the Prime Minister about poverty and 225,000 took to the streets of Edinburgh for the Make Poverty History march and rally.
The campaign ensured that global poverty was placed higher on the national and global agenda than ever before.
Policy Impact
The 2005 G8 summit signalled an extra $48 billion a year by 2010, which included between $15 and $20 billion of new commitments.
G8 countries recognised that developing countries have the right to “decide, plan and sequence their economic policies to fit with their own development strategies.”
$1billion per year of debt was dropped for 18 of the most highly indebted poor countries.
All UK political parties committed to maintain the aid target of spending 0.7% of national income on aid. The government also committed to no longer making UK bilateral aid conditional on recipient governments making specific economic policy decisions.
Work Still To Do
Make Poverty History won great steps forward, however there remains work to do and to hold governments to account for their promises.
Sufficient finance to reach the Millennium Development Goals must be delivered on target and without damaging economic policy conditions attached. All countries’ illegitimate or un-payable debt needs to be cancelled – not just the 20% that has been cancelled so far. And the EU and US must stop their practice of maintaining harmful tariffs and subsidies whilst forcing poor countries to open up their markets.
Find out ways to keep campaigning.