NEW CAMPAIGN UNVEILED TO DISTRIBUTE SMALL WATER PURIFICATION PACKETS TO CHILDREN AROUND THE WORLD

1 October 2008 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: This week, Proctor and Gamble unveiled a campaign that will distribute its PUR water purification product to children around the world. PUR comes in small, easily distributable packets and makes water safe for drinking. One packet purifies ten liters of water. The company’s announcement came during a week that made evident the dismal record of progress towards achieving water and sanitation for all. Figures released by the United Nations at its high-level summit on the Millennium Development Goals reveal progress in all areas of development to be significantly off-track. Many say the lack of access to water and sanitation is destabilizing other efforts, especially in the fields of gender equality, health, poverty eradication, and reducing child mortality. While overall development aid has increased in the past several years, aid to water and sanitation is declining. Juanita During of WaterAid told MediaGlobal the progress towards gender equality can not be achieved without access to clean water and sanitation. “Women bear the literal burden of carrying water, often from very long distances to their homes for domestic use,” she said. “Women are unable to focus on economic and other poverty alleviation activities, because so many hours a day are spent seeking and retrieving water. Girls are unable to attend or finish school, because they have to stay home and help their mothers with domestic chores, which include fetching water.” Proctor and Gamble will invest roughly 20 million dollars in PUR distribution and awareness campaigns.

GIRL CHILD MUST BE INCLUDED IN GENDER EQUALITY INITIATIVES FOR SUCCESS OF DEVELOPMENT GOALS

26 September 2008 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: The third Millennium Development Goal (MDG), the promotion of gender equality, is considered vital to the achievement of all eight Millennium Goals, yet “research shows that only a half cent of every dollar of aid currently goes to a girl,” said the President of the Nike Foundation Maria Eitel at the Clinton Global Initiative this week. The girl child is considered the most invisible entity in society and the lowest beneficiary of human development, and this invisibility weighs heavily on the progress of all development goals. “The empowerment of women and girls is inseparable. There will be no empowerment for women if girls are not empowered,” Anne-Marie Goetz, lead author of the United Nations Development Fund for Women’s (UNIFEM) Progress of the World’s Women 2008/2009 Report, told MediaGlobal. Discrimination for girls starts early and stems from the same root of discrimination targeting grown women. While culturally specific, it is most important to overcome family-based discrimination, says Goetz. She noted the example of Bangladesh, where families who send their female children to school are rewarded with food subsides and other incentives. Advocates of the girl child note that continued education can benefit the entire family as well as the whole community, as educated girls will grow up to lead more economically productive lives and raise healthier children. In fact, when a girl in the developing world stays in school for seven years or more, she will marry four years later and have 2.2 fewer children, reports the Nike Foundation. Eitel states that the first step in making girls more respected in a global society, researchers must count them. “We must count girls, we must invest in girls and we must advocate for girls,” she said, while adding that obtaining research and data on the girl child gives them value and the research needed to support investments. “Investing in girls creates a ripple effect,” said Eitel, “Educated girls become educated women.”

MATERNAL MORTALITY RATE NOT IMPROVING

26 September 2008 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: This week at the United Nations headquarters, world leaders pledged to address high maternal mortality rates in an attempt to put the fifth Millennium Development Goal (MDG) on track for achievement by 2015. Currently, reducing maternal mortality is considered the least successful of all the Millennium Development Goals, and there is concern over its lack of progress. During a press conference, United Kingdom Prime Minister Gordon Brown pledged nearly 1 billion dollars over the next three years to support national health plans in eight different countries. Brown stated that this plan could save the lives of over 10 million mothers and infants. The need for such aid is made apparent by current figures, such as those reported in a joint statement by several UN agencies, indicating that, worldwise, a woman dies in childbirth or pregnancy every minute. “If a woman is dying every minute the impact on poverty is devastating, the impact on whole families is devastating,” Anne-Marie Goetz, lead author of Progress of the World’s Women 2008/2009 report, told MediaGlobal. Goetz’s report notes that the current decrease in maternal deaths is less than 0.4 percent a year, and an annual reduction of 5.5 percent is needed to achieve MDG 5 by 2015.

PROGRAM ANNOUNCED TO REDUCE DEFORESTATION

24 September 2008 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Norway Prime Minster Jens Stoltenberg announced Wednesday a new initiative called the UN Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (UN-REDD) Programme in an effort to combat global climate change. At the unveiling of the program, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said, “According to the intergovernmental panel on climate change, the IPCC, tropical deforestation produces nearly 20 per cent of all carbon emissions caused by humans.” The new program urges sustainable management of forests and hopes to offer incentives to counter forces driving deforestation. Stoltenberg explained, “The UN-REDD initiative is a quick-start action program that aims to demonstrate that early results are possible in some of the major forests of the world.” The initial project is setting the stage for negotiations that will be held in Copenhagen in 2009, and its supporters hope that it will demonstrate the importance of forests as part of the post-2012 climate regime that will be negotiated. In the initial project, countries will receive assistance in establishing systems to monitor, assess, report and verify forest cover and carbon stocks, and in subsequent phases pilot projects will be used to test ways of managing existing forests. United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) Spokesperson Nick Nuttall told MediaGlobal, “REDD hopes to become an established program for dealing with reduced emissions,” and it hopes to be included in the post-2012 climate change arrangements. The program will be carried out by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), and is funded by a $35 million grant from the Norwegian Government.

ANTI-POVERTY PROGRESS NOT EQUALLY WON GLOBALLY

24 September 2008 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: By the year 2015, the level of poverty may be half of what it was in 1990, which would achieve the first Millennium Development Goal. That’s because “the world is on track to halve globally poverty by 2015,” authors of a European Union (EU) Report wrote. ‘Millennium Development Goals at Midpoint: Where do we stand and where do we need to go?’ was launched at the United Nations today, and it clearly implies that we ‘stand’ on some basis of success. “Midway to the horizon and from 2000 and 2005, more than 120 million people have escaped poverty,” authors of the Report noted. But being on track to halve poverty by 2015 does not mean that anti-poverty victories have been evenly won across the globe. “Global poverty has been reduced, largely thanks to rapid growth in the countries of Asia, including China, India, Indonesia and Vietnam,” the authors commented. The failure to produce such rapid growth in other countries has contributed to their lack of success towards eradicating poverty. “In many more countries, poverty reduction has been slow, or poverty even increased, mostly because of stagnation, slow growth and/or rising inequality,” the authors observed. Increasing the anti-poverty momentum in these countries require policy coherence, which includes progress on trade agreements that further open markets of rich countries to products from poor countries and greater financial, logistical and military support to the international community for the purpose of peacekeeping. “Policy coherence would result in increased stability, so that crisis does not occur,” Stephan Klasen, one of the authors of the Report, told MediaGlobal. But another thing that is needed in order to avert crisis is predictable financing. Care International recently announced that during periods of non-crisis, such financing is not forthcoming. The need for predictable funds was raised by Douglas Alexander, United Kingdom Secretary of State for International Development during the launch of the EU Report. “We need financial resources, we need intellectual resources, but we also need political will,” he told the audience.

SAFARICOM’S INITIATIVE IN MOBILE BANKING RECOGNIZED AT WORLD BUSINESS AND DEVELOPMENT AWARDS

24 September 2008 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: According to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), out of 33 million Kenyans, only 3 million have access to bank accounts. But Safaricom, the company that revolutionized the mobile phone industry in Kenya, is now providing a new service which may change that. Known as M-PESA, the service allows any subscribing customer to use their mobile phone to transfer money and access other mobile banking services. Today M-PESA has 2.7 million subscribers and adds 200,000 new customers per month. When Safaricom provided its application to the World Business and Development Awards (WBDA), judges recognized the company’s impressive record and consequently Safaricom became one of ten to receive the award despite stiff competition. “There were 104 applications from 44 different countries,” Dawn Chardonnal, Communications Manager at the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), told MediaGlobal. The WBDA was founded by the ICC in 2000 for the purpose of acknowledging the important role the private sector plays in implementing the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). At the awards ceremony, Douglas Alexander, United Kingdom Secretary of State for International Development, injected a note of urgency on the issue of furthering progress towards the realization of the MDGs. “This is a crucial year for businesses, governments, non-governmental organizations, faith groups and citizens. The time has come to step up activity to meet the MDGs and ensure a safer, developed and more prosperous world,” he said.