STWR - Share The World's Resources

Rising prices for food have led the United Nations programme fighting famine in Africa and other regions to warn that it can no longer afford to feed the 90m people it has helped for each of the past five years on its budget.

11th July 07 - Ashley Seager, The Guardian (UK)

Bribery is costing the world $1 trillion a year with the burden falling disproportionately on the billion or so people living in extreme poverty, the World Bank said yesterday.

11th July 07 - Salim Lone, Information Clearing House

Early in his tenure, outgoing British Prime Minister Tony Blair made a high-profile commitment to reducing the excruciating poverty afflicting hundreds of millions in Africa, keeping it on the media’s front burner by numerous high-level initiatives. 

The best-known of these was his dedicating to the cause the 2005 G8 summit he hosted in Gleneagles.  The issue was again centre stage last month at the G8 summit in Germany last month.

10th July 07 - Rahul Kumar, OneWorld South Asia

Despite rapid economic growth, economic disparity is increasing in South Asia, according to the annual Millennium Development Goals (MDG) report by the UN, which also says that a massive 30 percent of the population still lives on a dollar a day in the Indian subcontinent.

3rd July 07 - Larry Elliott, The Guardian (UK)

The whole of sub-Saharan Africa - the poorest region of the world - will fail to meet the goals set seven years ago for eradicating global poverty by 2015 - the United Nations warned today.

18th June 07 - Paul Collier, OpenDemocracy.org

Since the 1960s countries with around a billion people have been diverging from the rest of the world at an accelerating rate, a trend which will generate unmanageable social pressures.

Most of these countries are in Africa, and so it is appropriate that the region should again have been on the Group of Eight (G8) agenda at the summit in Heiligendamm, Germany on 6-8 June 2007. Unfortunately, the debate on what the G8 should do has been entirely dominated by aid.

13th June 07 - Stephen Browne, OpenDemocracy.org

The framing of the global aid model embraced by governments, donor bodies and NGOs alike is flawed. It's time to recognise the fact and change the approach.

Another summer, another Group of Eight (G8) summit, and another opportunity for the world's richest countries to wring their hands over the plight of the poorest - it is no wonder that the gathering of world leaders and international organisations at Heiligendamm, Germany on 6-8 June 2007 can appear like the latest act in a perpetual cycle where public declarations matter more than results.