Reponse to World Vision Campaign - Aids: If Not You, Who?

From Linda Gilroy MP

I agree we should do all we can to meet the goal of universal access to AIDS and HIV services by 2010. World Vision’s suggestion are apt.

I know that International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander is determined that we will make a difference and is looking at all options to ensure that take action to support the world’s poorest people in fighting this terrible disease.

I was the UK delegate to the Africa Regional Conference for African MPs last year, whilst there I met a remarkable woman from Tanzania called Lediana Mngango. She told me how she came to be an MP, having taken on family aids orphans. She then found herself helping others to support the hundreds of orphans in her community.

She now represents the area to be a voice in the Tanzania Parliament for a constituency with one of the highest rates of orphanhood through aids - one in four young people are orphans. I find this unimaginable and am personally committed to this battle.

From the office of Douglas Alexander MP, Secretary of State for International Development:

• This Government has taken the lead in international efforts to tackle global poverty, rooted in our belief in social justice and equality for all
• The Comprehensive Spending Review settlement demonstrates the Government is delivering on its overseas aid promises
• We are on course to deliver the UN gold standard of 0.7% of Gross National Income (GNI) to be spent on overseas development assistance by 2013
• By 2010 the Government will have trebled the aid budget in real terms since 1997
• Our global leadership has led to real results such as the historic aid package agreed at Gleneagles, and the setting up of the International Finance Facility for Immunisation (which could help save 10 million lives by 2015)

Key achievements:

• DfID is internationally recognised as the world’s leading development organisation
• Increased aid from £2.1 billion in 1997 to £7.93 billion in 2010
• Written off 100% of debt owed by the world’s most Heavily Indebted Countries
• 90% of UK bilateral assistance goes to low income countries
• It has played a key role in progress on the Millennium Development Goals
• DfID’s programmes and international leadership have contributed to significant results on the ground:
- lifting 3 million people permanently out of poverty each year
- In Bangladesh DfID’s aid contributes to over 1,300 people escaping poverty every day
• helping to abolish school fees in many countries, for example:
- in Uganda, resulting in 2 million additional children enrolled
in Kenya, 1 million additional children enrolled
• supporting education in Afghanistan since 2002 leading to an additional 3.5 million children enrolled, half of them girls; £100 million to Bangladesh Primary Education Programme which will give 17 million children a year a good quality primary schooling
• committing to £1.2 billion of health spending in developing countries by 2010
- DfID is financing over 20% (£100m) of the India National Polio Vaccination Campaign
• providing clean water, for example to 7.5 million people in Bangladesh and almost 2 million people in India
• DfID is leading the fight against international corruption

• Through the pioneering £800 million Environmental Transformation Fund (for investment in low carbon technology in developing countries) the UK is helping to secure low carbon economic development in developing countries

Through its global leadership role, the UK has put the issue of Africa centre stage

• Under the UK’s Presidency, the G8 agreed an historic package including:
- To increase aid by billion a year by 2010
- 100% debt cancellation
- Free education for all
- Kofi Annan described the Summit as “the greatest summit for Africa ever”

• Despite such progress, significant challenges remain in Africa and it is off-track on meeting the Millennium Development Goals

• The UK has now prioritised Africa in our development aid. DfID’s aid to Africa is significant and growing, spending £1.13 billion in 2006/07, a real terms increase of 161% since 1997

• This is delivering real improvements on the ground, for example:
- Education: the UK has committed £8.5 billion for education over the next 10 years to help 22 African countries

- Our support for free primary education has brought millions of children into schools, including girls. In Mozambique, for example, enrolment grew from 1.3 million to 3.5 million between 1993 and 2005; in Zambia net enrolment for girls increased from 65.9% to 81.5% between 2000 and 2004

- Debt cancellation and aid increases have helped put nearly 40 million more African children into school between 2000 and 2007

Autumn 2007