Last week we heard a lot of new promises about world poverty. That’s great, but here’s a quick reminder of how far we still have to go. In 2002, and then again in 2005, world leaders committed to increase their aid to 0.7% of Gross National Income. According to OECD statistics, this is how we’re currently delivering on our targets:
Having made our promises you might assume we’d be upping our contributions to meet the target. Sadly not. Levels of aid actually fell between 2005 and 2007. (The reasons for that are complicated, and mainly because 2005 was such a good year, but it still doesn’t look good). Last week’s summit in New York hoped to reverse that and get aid back on track. Here’s a graph of total aid given since 1990, and the ground we need to cover to meet our commitments.
Given that we’ve just renewed our promises again, let’s see what the 2008 statistics show before we start making very loud noises.
- The reality of aid reports
- OECD stats summary
