G8

More details have emerged in the past couple weeks on the G8’s commitment to improve maternal, newborn and child health through the “Muskoka Initiative,” but not enough to deliver on the G8’s other critical commitment at the 2010 summit – to enhance their own accountability.

Somewhat buried in the flow of announcements and press releases surrounding the G8/G20 meetings last weekend, the White House issued a statement Friday that President Obama had outlined his vision for a new US policy on global development. This is especially welcome news as it suggests that we’ll soon see the results of a delayed Presidential Study Directive (PSD) on Global Development, an effort the President launched last September.

Wondering what the NGO community thought of the G8 and G20 Summits in Canada? Here’s a great round-up of responses from a host of our partners and friends from the online news source The Sherpa.
The G8:
http://www.sherpatimes.com/g8/179-g8-summit-ngo-responses.html
The G20:

As ONE’s Kimberley Hunter reported from Toronto this weekend, on Friday, Canadian Prime Minister and G8 host Stephen Harper announced that the G8 would be contributing an additional $5 billion towards maternal, newborn and child health in developing countries over the next five years. Other donors – like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Norway, New Zealand, the Republic of Korea, Spain and Switzerland – pledged $2.3 billion, bringing the total up to $7.3 billion.

During the last eight weeks, while I’ve been in Niger, I’ve often been overwhelmed by the scale of the problems people face here. It’s not just the current food crisis and the number of people who are going hungry now but also the future and what this has in store.

The G8 summit has now drawn to a close and the Deerhurst resort in Muskoka will be getting back to normal. The world leaders flew back to Toronto by helicopter with Obama and Cameron flying together to start their bilateral meeting. Apparently Cameron and Merkel will be watching the England v Germany World Cup match together tomorrow and the press are invited can't imagine he'll look anything other than awkward!

Every year, approximately 350,000 mothers die from complications during child birth and 8.8 million children die before their fifth birthday. We are desperately off track to achieving the Millennium Development Goals on child and maternal health and expectations were high for the G8 summit to deliver results.

Celebrity Bill Nighy travelled to Huntsville, Ontario to ask the G8 leaders hard hitting questions about what they plan on delivering a this year’s Summit. The interviews took place at the Secluded Bed and Breakfast just on the outskirts of town, which provided an intimate setting and a unique chance to get up close and personal with the world leaders.

Sheila Nix, our U.S. Executive Director, was featured on CBC’s The National, the Canadian equivalent of NBC Nightly News, as part of segment on maternal and child health. Sheila talked about her trip to Ghana and Sierra Leone, and how simple interventions can prevent the mother-to-child transmission of HIV/AIDs giving children a whole new lease on life.
You can watch the clip here.