Transcript of press conference given by the Prime Minister, the UN Secretary General, Mr Ban Ki Moon and Mr Bill Gates in New York.
Read the transcript:
Mr Ban Ki Moon:
Good Evening Ladies and Gentlemen of the media, Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Mr Bill Gates. Thank you very much for your presence here at the conclusion of this very successful day.
Today we did something special, we brought together a broad coalition for change. We have new partners, national leaders and CEOs in these society groups, NGOs and philanthropists. Prime Minister Brown estimated this morning that today’s event has generated around $16 billion, and I think we are right, we have full commitments from many countries in pledges to help the world’s poor. Around $16 billion was announced, but for exact pledges we will have to evaluate all these announcements again. We will get back to you later.
If so, that expression of global commitment would be all the more remarkable because it comes against the background of financial crisis. … global leadership, this global partnership is the way of the future. Let me mention just a few examples. Prime Minister Brown and Bill Gates, with the World Bank and others, announced today a one billion dollar plan to save the lives of 10 million mothers and children by the year 2015. Norway pledged $1 billion to fight deforestation in the Amazon, working with FAO and UNDP.
The call to create energy incentives for local communities to preserve … China pledged to double the number of agricultural technicians … to developing countries and to train 10,000 doctors and nurses. The Gates Foundation, the Howard G Buffett Foundation and the government of Belgium will collaborate with the World Food Programme to help the poor farmers of Africa.
Under a truly innovative pilot programme … crops from local farmers under long term contracts, farmers who until now have to … arrangements will now get the money they need up front to invest in fertilisers, seeds and new technology. This is … to increase agricultural production.
Last year we have seen truly extraordinary advances on malaria, a remarkable partnership with unified funding for … management and … science has brought us within the range of containing a disease that kills a child every 30 seconds. Joining together in a global malaria action plan our partners pledged $3 billion to save the lives of more than 4 million people by 2015.
This is global leadership, global partnership in action. It is the model for how … all the other Millennium Development Goals – healthcare, education, …. We also have received $4.5 billion for the class of 2015.
Ladies and Gentlemen I think we all can agree that this is the high level event on the MDGs … have exceeded our most optimistic expectations. I thank all who joined in making it possible.
I now turn the floor to Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Thank you.
Prime Minister:
Ladies and Gentlemen, this is the broadest ever alliance assembled to fight for a common goal – the world and poverty – and we are going to make the greatest endeavours in pursuit of the boldest and noblest of causes.
What we have seen today is $16 billion pledged by countries, by charities, foundations and by business for a common goal to end the poverty emergency.
90 countries were represented at this summit, dozens of multinational Chief Executives, faith leaders and non-governmental organisations, and this is the first time that such a global coalition has been assembled under the auspices of the United Nations, but not to talk, but to make specific commitments.
Let me repeat that on malaria the world is committed to provide $3 billion to help take us towards universal coverage of bed nets and sprays by 2010, and the phenomenal milestone of ending malaria deaths by 2015, and I applaud all who are part of this initiative which can genuinely save millions of lives.
On food, the world has promised nearly $2 billion for emergency food aid to stop the immediate tragedy of starvation in the Horn of Africa, and for the rapid distribution of support, including seeds and fertilisers for 30 priority countries in time for the next planting season. And I thank Bill Gates for the work he is doing in agriculture, as well as his pioneering work in health.
On health, the world has pledged $2 billion and launched a major new financing task force that is designed to help recruit a million health workers and save millions of lives in doing so.
On education, there have been major commitments that bring us closer to the goal of every pupil, every young child in education by 2015. The commitments made today will make it possible to get 24 million children into school by 2010, and education is now at the top of the agenda for many countries.
So the additional commitments on water and in other areas have brought today’s total to $16 billion and it is a demonstration to the world that in the face of economic challenges we must do more, not less, to help the poorest of the world.
In the last few years alone we have seen 40 million children in schools, … million children getting treatment for Aids, another 3 million children saved by immunisation, more than 400 million children lifted out of poverty. These are great achievements in themselves, but from today we are able to do far more.
I look forward to continuing to work with Britain’s international partners, with foundations and trusts like those of Bill Gates, with NGOs across the universe, and with the new business partners who have joined today to deliver what we are all committed to do, and that is to achieve the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.
Mr Bill Gates:
Good Evening. I am in agreement with what the Secretary General and Prime Minister Brown said. I was thrilled to see how people came together around this milestone event. It is going to take actors of all types to make progress on these goals, the rich countries, the developing countries, the private sector, the philanthropic sector, and all of them were here in force as part of this event, looking at the progress and pledging to do more where we are not making enough progress.
I believe these goals really have been incredibly catalytic. They define for each UN organisation what role it needs to play and how their joint work will be measured.
I think by having citizens see these measures and see that there is progress, it makes it easier for political leaders to allocate resources and explain exactly why that makes sense.
We have a number of things that are challenges – the food crisis, the price of fuel, the price of fertiliser, whatever fallout there is from the financial volatility, all of those things definitely are challenges.
On the other hand we have some things that really do push us forward – the scientific advances which are now being applied properly to look at the diseases of the poor, the … of the poor, the … needs of the poor, the ways that cell phones, the internet, which initially were for rich consumers, are now thinking about how those are employed in pursuit of these Millennium Development Goals.
A lot of this good news of innovation happens a small step at a time, so it doesn’t grab the headlines the same way the challenges do, but I think it was very illustrative when we sat down for the Malaria Conference that people could hear the various countries that started early on the intervention and see the progress. And it was quite amazing that we have gone from a few years ago when malaria didn’t get much visibility, to having an event where realists have a hard time letting everybody who had good news and good pledges get a chance to talk about the things they were doing.
That is amazing. You know diseases don’t get that kind of event, and so that is real progress for the world. There are more diseases, I would love to go to an event like that for pneumonia, or …, or Aids or TB, but I suspect that with the kind of success … we have, people will have the same interest in being involved in those things.
But the Gates Foundation in particular, we made the World Food programme commitment to provide markets for small farmers, we made a commitment to malaria vaccine research, and so we are pleased to have a chance to play a role, and I certainly was honoured to have the chance to address the Assembly and see the level of interest. You know this is bringing together all sorts of different actors with things that we can measure, we are measuring, and so it was great to have … There is plenty of homework that comes out of the findings of these days.
Thank you.
Chairwoman:
I have been informed that we only have time for one question for each member of the panel. The first question for the Secretary General.
Question:
There is one thing I would like to tell you on behalf of Mauritanian civil society, to which I belong, and I am also a journalist. We are a poor country and we know what poverty means. 3 women die in childbirth every day and children don’t go to school, we have tremendous difficulties that you, Secretary General are well aware of. But what is most important is your attitude, the … the UN when you wave around the weapon of aid when there is turbulence and unrest in the country when we have political problems. What we want is for you to support us and to help us reach our goals, but how can we attain them in a country like Mauritania. My question is how can we reach MDGs when aid is used as a political weapon?
Mr Ban Ki Moon:
First of all, to make economic and social development possible there should be political stability, that is what the United Nations and all international communities are working together to ensure, peace and stability in the countries. We have seen many difficult and different situations according to where you are coming from. Mauritania may be one of such examples. Recently there has been political instability because of this military … It is very important that the people should be able to have free freedom of expression and free political associations, at the same time they should be able to engage in economic and social activities. For that … there should be peace and security, that is what we are doing. Therefore there are three pillars: peace and security, development, human rights. Those three pillars should always be … and should go hand in hand. The United Nations will continue to encourage democratisation, at the same time economic and social development through the realisation of MDGs. Today I think we made great success. All the leaders of the international community, to first of all demonstrate their political leadership and mobilise the necessary resources. We have $16 billion announcement of credit. This is very encouraging and I hope we will be able to first of all raise and galvanise political will and mobilise more resources until we will be able to claim that we have achieved the targets of the MDG by 2015.
Question:
Mr Brown with regard to the financial bailout, working on the basis that a deal will be done tonight, is that good news?
Prime Minister:
I have been talking to international leaders all day and I had a meeting with people from every continent last night, to Presidents or Prime Ministers of countries, and I believe there is a general view that to achieve the financial stabilisation that is necessary, the proposed resolution trust fund, whatever the details that are still to be hammered out between the different parties in Congress, the idea of the resolution trust fund is the right one. We want to achieve stability in the markets first, we then want to make sure that these problems never happen again, and I will talk to President Bush tomorrow in Washington about some of these issues. But I think the general view is, from talking to the leaders that I have met, that whatever differences there are between the parties in Congress it is right to move ahead with the principle of a resolution trust fund that can make it possible for us to achieve the stability we want.
Question:
Mr Gates, transparency … corruption index earlier this week showed that the problem of corruption is still big, especially in Africa. Don’t you think that corruption and the lack of accountability could upset the commitment made today?
Mr Bill Gates:
Are you talking about corruption in general, or in Tanzania in particular? I think whenever aid is given, and people don’t see that it is successful, it makes them … likely to do that, and certainly corruption is a major factor that makes people even sometimes cynical about the goals that we are pursuing. Fortunately as time has gone on, although corruption remains a problem, there has been less about, and in particular in some areas if you design the programmes properly you can make sure it is not a huge problem. For example when you buy vaccines, it is not like some political leader wants to stockpile hundreds of thousands of vaccines, there is no particular value to it, and your ability to go in and check to see was it really delivered is very, very strong. So monitoring that from outside works very well. There are other areas that have to do with infrastructure that you know I think the world institutions, including the World Bank, have gotten a lot smarter about those things. And certainly in terms of corruption I think things like the US Foreign Corrupt Practice Act, which created a level of behaviour for a US corporation, that was adopted in European countries and we can see some cases where the practices of the past of some companies are now being revealed, which just clears that the bar is being raised, that none of these multinationals can go even close to something that isn’t a straightforward procurement. So speaking for the Foundation we are careful to avoid corruption being a problem and I am very pleased that all the aid agencies are better about corruption because it allows us to say that the effectiveness of the aid dollar is better than in the days when we were more naïve about those issues.
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