This year Gordon Brown has failed to live up to the promises he and Tony Blair made to Africa in response to 2005's Make Poverty History campaign.
The government has announced record levels of funding to the World Bank despite evidence that the Bank is continuing to use loans and debt relief to poor countries as a means of forcing governments to accept damaging economic policies that are making poverty worse.
This extra funding comes at a time when many of those countries affected by World Bank conditions are under increasing pressure by the EU to sign up to unfair trade deals that threaten to further damage their economies.
In March 2005 the then department of trade and industry said: ‘We will not force trade liberalisation on developing countries either through trade negotiations or aid conditionality.’
In 2007 we’ve been asking the government to live up to that promise by:
Witholding money from the World Bank in order to force the Bank to end its practice of attaching conditions to loans and aid to poor countries
Ensuring that poor countries were not being forced to accept trade deals from the EU that opened their markets to unfair competition from European goods and undermined the future development of local industries.
How the government has failed to match its promises with action:
Increasing its funding of the World Bank has given a ringing endorsement of the Bank's policies and practices – even though many countries still have conditions requiring economic policy reforms.
And this is despite plenty of evidence of the continued harm being done by conditions on poor communities around the world.
The Norwegian government, also concerned about the use of conditions, has announced that it will withhold funding.
An opportunity to increase the pressure on the Bank by supporting the move of the Norwegians has been missed by the British government. By increasing its funding to the Bank, the UK has sent the opposite signal to campaigners and poor countries.
The support Britain has shown the EU Commission in pressuring poor countries to sign up to unfair trade deals known as Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs).
The deals that many poor countries have signed in the last couple of weeks, with British encouragement, are far removed from what the UK set out in 2005 as its view of how the deals would tackle poverty. And we’re appalled by the extent of the anti-development content of the trade deals.
The rapid opening of poor countries’ markets to European products could lead to widespread job losses, threatening people’s livelihoods and current and future industries.
It will leave the governments of poor countries even less able to introduce economic policies to protect the poorest and most vulnerable.
However, it was still worth it - what your campaigning has achieved:
In 2006, your campaigning persuaded then international development secretary Hilary Benn to withhold some funding to the World Bank. Campaigners in other European countries then took this demand to their governments – with the Norwegians now using the same tactic to get the Bank to reform.
By making the decision to increase funding, the British government will have to show campaigners how it is using its greater influence within the Bank to champion reforms that will help poor countries.
You’ve put the issue of conditionality on the map. While there is still much more that the World Bank can do, it is under greater scrutiny from donors
While we have serious concerns about the impact of EPAs on the economies of poor countries, the deals could have been worse.
The EU Commission wanted governments to accept foreign company ownership of basic services like health and water. The opposition to this by poor country governments has been strengthen by the level of campaigning across the EU and in their own countries.
There are now stronger campaigns across Europe and in many poor countries as a result of the huge opposition to the EU’s trade deals.
What you can do now
Please write to the Prime Minister expressing your disappointment at the actions of the government and ask him to:
Confirm that his government wants to see an end to harmful economic conditions being attached to loans by the World Bank, and to demonstrate to campaigners how the government will use its position of greater influence to bring about reform at the Bank.
Call for the new EU trade agreements to be closely monitored so that they can be reviewed if they are found to be damaging poor countries economies.
Email him at the No 10 website, send a fax to 020 7925 0918, or post a letter to Prime Minister Gordon Brown, 10 Downing St, London, SW1A 2AA.