Social Watch Organization:Wealthiest Countries fail to confront poverty

Social Watch, a non-governmental network, argues that the world’s wealthiest countries have made a very little progress in fulfilling their pledges in confrontation with poverty. The network of more than 400 civil society organizations in many countries launched a report on poverty and deprivation, coinciding with the G8 summit at Heiligendamm, Germany.

According to the report, most developing countries continue to receive minimal foreign aid while struggling under the burden of foreign debt and facing unfair trade conditions. Moreover, the world’s most powerful countries are said to have failed to live up to their promises. Social Watch believes the poorest countries are ever farther away from satisfying the basic minimum needs of their citizens. Jens Martens, of the coordinating committee of Social Watch says that unless the pace of progress is substantially speeded up, the average level of social development in most poor countries will decline.

Roberto Bissio, Social Watch coordinator, stressed that poor countries are also being held back by unfavorable trade conditions, as the WTO (World Trade Organization) pressures them to reduce import tariffs. Meanwhile, many poor countries continue to lose billions of dollars to serving their External debts, which mean that the funds sent as aid go back to the donor countries as dept payment

Cecilia Alemany of the Social Watch secretariat told Sudan news agency, “We are not asking the G8 to do some thing for development countries, we came here to pressure words leader of leading countries to pay attention to development countries.”