Today, the world marks exactly ten years since countries, civil society and the private sector all came together to launch The Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria – an innovative way of delivering aid that differed from other models.
Established in response to the terror and havoc caused by these once largely unchecked diseases, the unprecedented success of the Global Fund has transformed global health. Now, this unique public-private partnership stands as a clear demonstration of the scale of what is truly possible when we all work together.
As Kofi Annan – who as Secretary-General of the UN helped instigate the birth of the Global Fund – reflects:
'Many people said that the plan was unrealistic and the call for a war chest was a dream, but great achievements always start with a dream, and the progress we have made in the fight against the three diseases is proof that dreams can be realised.'
And the ‘proof’ is staggering. Since its inception in 2002, grants from the Global Fund have saved nearly 8 million lives. That’s an estimated 100,000 lives saved each month! Further, in the fight against AIDS alone, 6.6 million people in low and middle-income countries are on AIDS treatment, up from 200,000 a decade ago. Even more amazingly, access to AIDS treatment has increased over 3000% since the beginning of the Global Fund.
True, the Global Fund has not been without its challenges, as the occasional allegations of corruption illustrate. But there can be no denying that the Global Fund has – according to an independent high-level review – “made ordinary and expected what was unthinkable in dozens of nations ten years ago.”
Yet, as it celebrates its 10th birthday, the Global Fund’s live-saving work is at risk of grinding to a halt. As we reported back in November, the GF Board was recently forced to cancel its next round of grant-making and to announce that it would not be making any new grants for the next two years. This decision was made following the default by several donor countries on their payments to the Fund.
There can be no doubt that the Fund’s decision will adversely affect the progress that has been made over the last ten years. By cancelling its next round of grants, the Fund will effectively be forced to turn away new patients. This is a tragedy that must be prevented.
Key donors like the US, UK and Australia - crucial to the Fund’s success – should maintain, if not increase, their financial support now more than ever. Perhaps more importantly, they should also do everything they can to encourage new donors and ensure other existing donor countries keep their commitments.
Indeed, it would be a shame for all of humanity if, after coming so far, we let the progress made over the last decade be reversed. As Hilary Clinton said back in November: “To sit on the sidelines now would be devastating. It would cost lives, and we would miss out on this unprecedented opportunity. When so many people are suffering, and we have the means to help them, we have an obligation to do what we can.”
Two days ago saw the Global Poverty Project UK, with the aid of Bill Gates, Hans Rosling and The Co-operative, launch one of its most ambitious and exciting initiatives to date. Yet, whilst Bill was reading his Annual Letter to the captive audience, a small group of students at university campuses across the country were quietly making a stand against extreme poverty.
The centrepiece of The Global Poverty Project is 1.4 Billion Reasons, a ground-breaking presentation that powerfully communicates the challenges and opportunities around tackling extreme poverty, working as a platform to inspire and enable individuals to become actively involved in ending poverty; it is this vision that drives everything we do.
Since its UK launch in 2010, over 36,000 people in the country have seen the presentation, many of which have been university students. Its success would not have been possible without the amazing hosts who have worked tirelessly to promote the presentation as well as continuing the momentum long after by campaigning on the key issues raised in 1.4 Billion Reasons.
Wanting to find a way to repay our gracious hosts and engage them further in our fight to end extreme poverty - Lunch Below the Line was born.
Lunch Below the Line enabled hosts to have a platform to promote and raise awareness of the great work they do but also to incorporate the message of The Global Poverty Project’s upcoming campaign: Live Below the Line.
What’s 33p got to do with extreme poverty?
Most of us wouldn’t bat an eyelid at spending over £15 every day on food. But can you imagine reducing your food and drink spend to just 33p for one meal? On Wednesday hundreds of people across the UK chose to do just that - they ate Lunch Below the Line.
Wednesday’s event kicked off 4 months of campaigning for Live Below the Line, which challenges the British public to cut their spending on food and drink to just £1 a day for five days in May. The campaign aims to increase awareness of the 1.4 billion people around the world currently living in extreme poverty who must survive on less than £1 each day for all their needs.
Lunch Below the Line occurred simultaneously at 5 university campuses nationwide and saw the students serve the 33p meals, which are representative of what someone living in extreme poverty may eat. The event was a great success and caused a buzz and excitement around the campaign.
Whether it is a small team of people selling 33p meals or Bill Gates encouraging a mass audience to take action in ending extreme poverty, to see that people are so committed, passionate and determined to be part of the grassroots movement to end extreme poverty is truly inspiring.
Thank you to Amnesty International at the University of Hertfordshire?, Engineers Without Borders at the University of Birmingham, Friends of MSF at Oxford University and the University of Sussex, and Medsin at Newcastle University for your amazing work running Lunch Below the Line and helping to raise awareness about extreme poverty.
To sign up for the Live Below the Line challenge or to receive more information about the campaign, please visit www.livebelowtheline.org.uk.
I’m sitting in a lecture theatre at the London School of Economics, having just finished live-tweeting from the launch of the Global Poverty Ambassador initiative with Bill Gates and Hans Rosling.
You can check out the conversation stream from the event on our Twitter account at www.twitter.com/thegpp
Both are men I deeply respect, and they’ve just been having a fascinating discussion here with the audience about Bill’s Annual Letter – you can read the letter and see the discussion at www.globalpovertyproject.com/pages/launch
Released earlier today, the Annual Letter is an open letter that Bill Gates writes once a year about what he and his Foundation will do to fight extreme poverty in the year ahead. Focusing on innovation this year, he sets out a bold and challenging vision of how even in tough economic times, we can make huge progress in the fight against extreme poverty.
Agriculture is a central theme of the letter, and Gates urges governments to focus on agricultural innovation to ensure food security. He picks up on some of the themes we’ve been writing about in our series on the Never Again famine charter, and includes the challenging graph you see below around disparity in how much the extreme poor spend on food.
His proposed solution, and the area into which his Foundation are putting billions of dollars is scientific research to increase productivity, through things like improved seeds.
On global health, Gates focuses on vaccines and polio. He reminds us that polio eradication is the Foundation’s top priority – a commitment we’re proud to hear given our campaigning on The End of Polio. And, he congratulates donors and vaccine manufacturers for their efforts, calling the success of the GAVI pledging conference in June 2011 an “historic day for global health equity.”
On the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria, Bill Gates is positive about progress that has been made.
At the same time, he expresses strong concern about donors falling short of their commitments. In his words, “Every $300 that’s not forthcoming will represent a person taken off treatment. That’s a very clear choice. I believe that if people understood the choice, they would ask their government to save more lives.” It’s a sentiment that we share at the Global Poverty Project, and is one of the reasons our UK team are working with Malaria No More to call on the government to Fund the Fund.
In closing, Gates recounts why it is that he remains so optimistic about our ability to fight extreme poverty:
“Whether it’s fighting plant disease, treating people with AIDS, or getting a measles vaccine to a child in a remote area—modest investments in the poorest make a huge difference.
Unfortunately, many people believe the opposite—that money spent on development is wasted, or that it doesn’t get lasting results. Melinda and I will spend a lot of time in the coming year explaining why they’re mistaken. The relatively small amount of money invested in development has changed the future prospects of billions of people—and it can do the same for billions more—if we make the choice to continue investing in innovation.“
Tell us what you think about Bill Gates’ Annual Letter by joining the conversation on Twitter with the #billsletter hashtag.
Before living abroad in the developing world I had struggled to understand what it meant not to be able to afford enough food.
I knew of the the World Bank’s extreme poverty line, which is defined as living with an average daily consumption under $1.25. I’d assumed that $1.25 would go much further in a developing country than it would here, but I learnt quickly that it doesn’t.
The World Bank’s extreme poverty statistics are calculated using purchasing power parity. This means that economists consider a basket of goods such as rice and beans that are consumed by people everywhere and then compare the costs of such goods around the world. This method allows the World Bank to account for the differences in costs of goods and services in different parts of the world.
I was shocked to discover in my first trip to a developing country, $1.25 is enough to buy only about two bowls of rice with a few vegetables. The limited food options available to those in extreme poverty make them more vulnerable to increased food prices and instability.
On 24 September 2011 several world leaders met to discuss strategies that could be developed to address the recent famine in the Horn of Africa. Discussions led to the emergence of The Charter to End Extreme Hunger, which provides a succinct list of strategies that, if implemented, will bring real solutions.
This charter has been endorsed by Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga, UN OCHA head Valerie Amos, Norweigan Minister of the Environment and International Development Erik Solheim, UNISDR head Margareta Wahlstrom, and UK Secretary of State for International Development Andrew Mitchell.
One area of focus in the charter is to ensure that everyone can afford to buy food. To achieve this goal the Charter commits to “scaling up strategic and emergency food reserves at local, national and regional level, ensuring the governance of these reserves is accountable to the people they are intended to serve.”
Out of fear of corruption and market distortions, food reserves were eliminated or scaled back at the beginning of the millennium. But, it backfired in a big way.
Food prices rose 83% during the food crisis in 2007-08 and the lack of food reserves left millions of people in extreme poverty without enough food. Having emergency food reserves protects against shocks like droughts, fires, and natural disasters. ActionAid explains that maintaining food reserves can prevent famines and that such preventive measures are more cost effective then addressing the outcomes of widespread hunger.
Countries like Bangladesh, Indonesia, China, and India have used their food reserves to prevent famine. For example, Bangladesh increased its public food stock in 2008 to spur domestic production, and has occasionally released some of its public stocks at rates below market value to check back against inflated prices and increasing malnutrition.
The Charter to End Extreme Hunger also commits to “tackle the causes of high and volatile food prices by taking action to end biofuel mandates and limiting governments’ use of food export bans.” Taking food export bans as an example, they’re under fire because they cause instability in markets, and drive pries up. In 2010 Russia experienced a heat wave that had dramatic effects on Russian grain production. Russian exporters recognised that the heat wave would increase the price of grain internationally and imposed an export ban that reserved Russian grain for local consumption. Oxfam explains that export bans did not decrease food prices in Russia and that it led to price spikes and food instability.
The Charter to End Extreme Hunger is an ambitious and important call to action. Establishing food reserves and eliminating export bans, two components of the section of the Charter, will help developing countries to protect themselves against dangerous price fluctuations, and ensure that we never again are confronted by a famine of the sort we’re seeing in East Africa at the moment.
Bill, who is co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, will share his vision for tackling extreme poverty by discussing his Annual Letter with an audience of students, international development experts, and Global Poverty Ambassadors.
We are thrilled that Bill Gates has chosen the launch of the Global Poverty Ambassadors to deliver his annual letter. His vision and commitment is an inspiration for these Ambassadors who will mobilise their own communities in the fight to end extreme poverty.
Since the beginning of 2010, we have been taking the story of progress fighting extreme poverty to schools, conferences, communities and universities around the UK.
It's an inspiring story and 2012, we will identify, train and mobilise more than 100 Global Poverty Ambassadors to take this story even further across the UK.
These remarkable individuals are leaders in their communities – from universities, schools, businesses, faith group and communities. We’ve been searching high and low across the UK to identify these leaders to be selected as an Ambassador. They are an incredible, passionate and diverse group of people who will be champions in the movement against extreme poverty in 2012; school teachers, faith leaders, students, businesspeople and many more.
They will be trained to tell the story of success and raise awareness of the reality of extreme poverty through delivering a series of 1.4 Billion Reasons presentations and campaigning actions.
We’ve already had more than 200 applications, and the first 75 selected Ambassadors will be seeing Bill Gates and Hans Rosling on Wednesday.
Becoming a Global Poverty Ambassador is a fantastic opportunity for people from all walks of life to get involved in raising awareness for the 1.4 billion people living in extreme poverty. If you’re in the UK and you would like to become an Ambassador, recommend an Ambassador or book an Ambassador to come and speak at your business, group or school, you can do so here. Applications will be closing on 10 February 2012.
We’re thrilled to have partnered with The Co-operative in making the Global Poverty Ambassador initiative possible, especially during the UN International Year of Co-operatives. We’ve been working with the team at The Co-operative in developing the program, and it’s great to see that they are doing more than ever to help tackle global poverty, through co-operative support, ethical trade, ethical finance and campaigning.
Already their work has benefited millions of people across the developing world. The Co-operative believes that together, their members can help ensure lasting change. You can find out more about the work of The Co-operative in celebrating the International Year of Co-operatives 2012 at http://www.co-operative.coop/2012
Wherever you are in the world, I encourage you to watch the live-stream on Wednesday, join the conversation on Twitter with the #billsletter hashtag, and if you’re in the UK, I hope you apply to become one of our Global Poverty Ambassadors.
Lunch Below the Line enabled hosts to have a platform to promote and raise awareness of the great work they do but also to incorporate the message of The Global Poverty Project’s upcoming campaign: .png)
campaigning for Live Below the Line, which challenges the British public to cut their spending on food and drink to just £1 a day for five days in May. The campaign aims to increase awareness of the 1.4 billion people around the world currently living in extreme poverty who must survive on less than £1 each day for all their needs.
