Table 2.
‘Promises kept (✓), promises broken (×)
| Commitment | Assessment | |
|---|---|---|
| Support for international development goals, “including the overarching objective of reducing the share of the world's population living in extreme poverty to half its 1990 level by 2015” | × | Many IDG targets for 2015 will almost certainly not be achieved |
| Provision of debt relief under Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative | ✓ | Debt relief now being provided, but amount is often inadequate; Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper process seriously flawed; many heavily indebted countries not covered |
| Create the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria | ✓ | Current financial pledges far below need identified by Commission on Macroeconomics and Health |
| By 2010: reducing the number of HIV/AIDS-infected young people by 25 percent, reducing TB deaths and prevalence of the disease by 50 percent, and reducing the burden of disease associated with malaria by 50 percent | × | Resources almost certainly inadequate |
| Non-specific commitment to strong national health systems | × | Official development assistance (ODA) for health from all industrialized countries: $6 billion/year (less than one-quarter the needed amount as identified by Commission on Macroeconomics and Health); during three Summit years of study, ODA from G7 countries actually declined slightly |
| Recognize need for “flexibility” with respect to intellectual property protection in order to ensure availability of essential drugs | ✓ | Agreement now reached on interpretation of intellectual property provisions of WTO Agreement, but its significance remains uncertain |
| Non-specific commitments to supporting agriculture through ODA as an element of poverty reduction, to “target the most food-insecure regions, particularly Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia” | × | Few specifics, and no clear commitment to IDG of reducing underweight among children; recent slow progress in reducing undernutrition now reversed |
| Heavy emphasis on promoting biotechnology to increase agricultural productivity | ✓ | Appropriateness of such ‘solutions’ questionable |
| Clear support for Dakar Framework goals re: improving access to education by 2015 | × | Strong evidence that these goals will not be achieved |