Global Policy Forum

By Gordon Brown*

In summits next month - at Cancun and then Dubai - the international community will have to confront the world's other war: the global war against poverty, a war that must be won if we are to succeed in our war against global terrorism. With signs last night of a breakthrough on the critical issue of the cost of drugs to poorer countries, the deadlock is being broken on one of the key barriers to a world trade agreement.

At meetings of the WTO in Cancun and then the IMF and World Bank in Dubai, decisions will have to be made on the four great poverty challenges facing the developing world: the proper funding of global health; reform of the world trade system to make it work better for the poor, including a deal to phase out agricultural protectionism; the completion of debt relief; and the funding of the 2015 millennium development goals on education, the environment and poverty. The next few months are such a testing time for the international community that, after Cancun and Dubai, globalisation will be seen by millions as either a route to social justice on a global scale or a rich man's camp. Only by creating a virtuous circle of debt relief, poverty reduction and economic development can Africa, in particular, have a chance of moving from underdevelopment to prosperity.

Cancun and Dubai must first resolve how we meet the 2015 commitments to the poorest countries on healthcare. Agreement on better access to life-saving medicines - and thus pharmaceutical companies cutting the cost of drugs to tackle malaria, TB and HIV/Aids - is the first step.

In Dubai this must be followed by the proper financing of healthcare delivery systems. Today, as little as 20 cents a week is spent on the healthcare of the typical African citizen. The US is to be commended for the additional $350m promised to the global health fund. Europe, which already finances 55% of the fund, must now - as the development secretary, Valerie Amos, has been rightly pressing - keep the promises it made at Evian.

The scale of resources required cannot be met either by poor countries or by traditional aid. We need new means to deliver higher levels of support. So, at Dubai, the creation of an international finance facility, which leverages in private finance to complement public funding, will be on the agenda.

In the long run, however, prosperity for the poorest countries depends on economic development. Now that poor countries have accepted that they must tackle corruption and open up their economies, the richest countries must - as the trade secretary, Patricia Hewitt, has taken the lead in pushing - finally reform their agriculture. Three-quarters of the world's poor live in rural areas and they bear the brunt of the cost of tariffs and subsidies of advanced economies. The subsidies are so grotesque that a European cow receives $2 a day in agricultural subsidies, while more than a billion of the world's poorest citizens exist on just one dollar a day. Eliminating these subsidies in agriculture could bring developing countries as much as $100bn extra a year. But access to our markets is not the whole story. Each developing country should enjoy both flexible treatment and the right targeted assistance.

Debt relief has led 27 countries to write off up to $62bn of debt and we must now move to the next stage: a plan for post-conflict countries - which could raise debt relief to $100bn in total - and for topping up, where commodity price changes have eroded the value of debt relief. Debt relief can undo many of the injustices of the past, but we cannot build education opportunities for the future or achieve our development objectives without an initiative that is far bigger, far more generous and in keeping with the spirit of the promises made. That is why the international finance facility is critical not only for supporting action on health but on education, the environment and anti-poverty programmes generally.

Our plans involve raising development assistance from $50bn a year to $100bn - the scale of the resources the World Bank will report at Dubai are the minimum needed to have a real chance of meeting the millennium development goals. For its part, the UK, with all-party support, is ready to provide the long-term commitment that is necessary.

The international finance facility would double aid to halve poverty. But we cannot make progress alone; such a facility cannot exist, let alone succeed, without the determination of the entire international community. At Cancun and then Dubai the world should seize the chance to eradicate poverty and make good our responsibilities to the poorest of the world.

About the Author: Gordon Brown is chancellor of the exchequer of the United Kingdom.

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