G20

Growth is necessary but not sufficient to lift poor people out of poverty, international agency Oxfam said today as it published a briefing paper calling on the G20 to agree an historic new Seoul development consensus to help the world’s poorest.

When the G20 meets in Seoul in November 2010, it has a big choice to make.

The G20 missed a golden opportunity to tackle global poverty when it could only agree to disagree over how to make banks repay the cost of the economic crisis, said international agency Oxfam.

As the G8 Summit comes to a close, international agency Oxfam criticized the leaders for their failure to deliver on their promises and for trying to divert attention by cobbling together a small initiative for maternal and child health.

On the eve of the G8 Summit in Canada, international agency Oxfam warned that G8 aid promises due in 2010 have been missed by as much as $20 billion dollars – twice the gap admitted by world leaders. The G8 must deliver on their promises to poor people and invest in their future.

Oxfam cautioned that the maternal and child health effort announced on Friday seems yet another empty G8 promise, given that the overall aid pie is shrinking.

Joint agency release: It is a global scandal that millions of women and newborn babies die or suffer severe injury during childbirth every year – despite the fact that the vast majority of these injuries and deaths are preventable.

A global bank tax to help poor countries survive the economic crisis must be urgently agreed, Oxfam said today ahead of the G20 meeting of finance ministers in Busan, South Korea.

Jim Kerr and Martha Wainwright have re-invented the iconic 80s hit Promised You A Miracle, to call on world leaders to keep the promises they have made on overseas aid and save the lives of mothers in poor countries.

G20 finance ministers met in St. Andrews, Scotland, on 7 November 2009. Oxfam reacts to their communiqué.