Global Issues: July 2008

We’re calling on the Government to keep its promise.

In 2000, 189 nations came together and made a promise to halve extreme poverty by 2015 – and established a concrete list of targets called the Millennium Development Goals.

To help achieve these goals, developed countries, including New Zealand, agreed to give 0.7 per cent of their respective Gross National Incomes (GNI) to foreign aid.

It was a promise – an international declaration, which recognised the urgent need of developed countries to help billions of people living below the UN’s ‘poverty line’.

But so far, New Zealand is not doing its fair share. Our nation currently gives only 0.3 per cent of its national income to foreign aid.

The Government has announced plans to increase our level of aid to 0.35 per cent by 2010, but there is still no evidence of a plan for how we will reach the promised 0.7 per cent target.

At our current rate of increase, by 2016 the international community will be able to call our Government liars.

This positions us as one of the least generous developed countries in the OECD – despite more than 75 per cent of New Zealanders being in favour of our Government giving to foreign aid (UMR Research, Overseas Aid: A Qualitative and Quantitative Study, July 2007).

We may be a small nation, but we have a big heart – and New Zealand has the resources to tackle poverty here while also helping nations in significantly greater need than ours.

Every day the process is drawn out people continue to suffer needlessly. The New Zealand Government needs to keep its promise and commit to a timetable for reaching the 0.7 per cent target.

The Milliennium Development Goals are absolutely achievable, but only if New Zealand and other countries in the developed world put their money where their mouths are to ensure real change takes place.

The following article, from the Mail&Guardian online, discusses the Millennium Development Goals and what needs to be done to achieve them. View Story >