WASHINGTON CNS): Leaders from the world’s 20 largest economies face “make-or-break” decisions that can boost health care, reduce poverty and address the impact of climate change in developing nations when they meet in October in Italy, said Eric LeCompte, the executive director of Jubilee USA, of an alliance of faith-based development and debt relief advocacy organisations.
The questions facing the Group of 20 nations, or G20, range from charting a path to ease the debt burden of poor countries to ensuring more equitable distribution of vaccines in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The key to recovery from the pandemic will be ensuring that decision-makers are accountable to follow through on what they say they are going to do, LeCompte explained during an August 24 webinar titled, Poverty and COVID-19: Challenges and Solutions, sponsored by Georgetown University’s Berkley Centre for Religion, Peace and World Affairs.
LeCompte credited a United States plan to donate 500 million vaccines worldwide as a significant step toward the global economic recovery from the pandemic.
He also said action by the International Monetary Fund to create US$650 billion [$5 trillion] in emergency reserve funds, known as Special Drawing Rights, or SDRs, will help nations recover. Over $230 billion [$1.79 trillion] in emergency aid became available on August 23 for developing countries.
“Countries are going to be able to use this for health care, to prevent crisis, to get people back into jobs,” LeCompte said.
At the same time, US$280 billion [$2.18 trillion] in SDRs became available to the wealthiest nations, the Group of Seven, or G7.
In response, LeCompte called on the more than 260 religious, environmental and labour groups that his organisation pulled together in advocating for SDRs to urge the richest nations to donate “currency they don’t need” to developing countries.
Other webinar participants identified additional steps they consider necessary for developing nations to climb out of the economic morass that the Covid-19 pandemic has compounded.
‘As we build back better, there really needs to be an intentional focus in not just the specific sectoral needs, the health, nutrition, agriculture … but also real investment in accountability mechanisms that really show how power is being shifted, how leadership is being shifted’
Kirsten Laursen Muth
Kirsten Laursen Muth, chief executive officer of Washington-based Joint Learning Initiative on Faith & Local Communities, called for a greater voice for local organisations and community groups within the decision-making process of the complex global financial system.
She acknowledged that the pandemic has led to setbacks on gains in reducing global poverty, in part because local needs are not being heard or addressed.
“We’re behind in all of those commitments,” Laursen Muth said, adding, “As we build back better, there really needs to be an intentional focus in not just the specific sectoral needs, the health, nutrition, agriculture … but also real investment in accountability mechanisms that really show how power is being shifted, how leadership is being shifted.”
In attempting to understand the changes worldwide, the US Agency for International Development [USAID] has committed to hearing from faith-based organisations worldwide in efforts to help people overcome poverty, illness and inadequate education, said Adam Phillips, director of the agency’s Centre for Faith-Based and Neighbourhood Partnerships.
The pandemic has posed greater challenges to the world, including a rising income gap that has pushed more people into extreme poverty, Phillips said. An estimated 119 million to 124 million people now earn less than US$2 [$15.5] a day and Phillips said USAID is working to reduce overall poverty to seven per cent of the global population by 2030, he said.
Phillips pointed to efforts that are underway to improve child protection and strengthen families after about 1.5 million children worldwide have lost a parent or caregiver to Covid-19. “We expect this will affect families for years to come,” he said.
In response, Phillips explained that his office is crafting an interfaith engagement policy, the first of its kind for the agency, that will ensure that USAID works with individuals and local organisations to create long-term solutions.
In advance of the Rome summit, the G20 Interfaith Forum convenes from September 12 to 14 in Bologna, Italy. Phillips said it would be an opportunity for him to hear directly from local faith leaders about the key issues that will face G20 leaders six weeks later.
LeCompte acknowledged that the work facing his organisation and others is daunting, but that he has hope the world will respond to the needs of the poorest people as long as their voices are heard.
He also expects the next three to five years will be crucial to the world economy and expressed hope that the recent achievements within the G20 will carry over into October.
