There is a long track record of rich government commitments to increase aid and an equally long record of backsliding. The most recent substantive announcement came at the G8 Gleneagles summit in 2005 when leaders made a commitment that, including contributions from other donor countries, aid would increase by 60% (a rise of $50 billion pa) between 2004 and 2010, with annual aid for Africa doubling from its 2004 level of $25 billion. These figures were cautiously welcomed by campaigners as approaching MDG needs.

Make Poverty History © Peter Armstrong

Yet within two months of that meeting, delegates at the New York UN summit found themselves battling against US resolve to expunge from the final declaration any references either to the MDGs or to aid commitments. The Gleneagles promises were salvaged but this pattern of brinkmanship has continued at subsequent G8 summits. The lack of conviction is reflected in preliminary figures published for 2007 which show that, halfway through the commitment period, aid from OECD countries has increased by only 15% at global level and only a little more for Africa. Indeed the headline figure for total global aid has fallen for the second successive year. The depreciating dollar makes further inroads into the real value of these figures and the OECD says that donors “will need to make unprecedented increases to meet the targets they have set for 2010”. It is little surprise that international campaigners are energetic in monitoring the slippery politics of global aid. Demands to increase aid to promised levels are central to the Make Poverty History campaign and other international activism.

Contributions of individual countries towards global commitments are assessed by reference to a UN Resolution passed as long ago as 1970 - and renewed recently in the Monterrey Consensus of 2002 - in which the richest countries agreed to increase aid budgets to 0.7% of national income. So far only five countries, led by Sweden with over 1%, have exceeded this commitment, the remainder being so far behind that the average for 2007 was an embarrassing 0.28%, less than the equivalent figure for 1990. There are however some signs of greater determination - the European Union has agreed on a collective target of 0.56% by 2010, and 0.7% by 2015; with the UK issuing a fresh commitment to reach the target by 2012. By contrast the US at 0.16% props up the bottom of the table.

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