Please read our detailed G8 policy report using the links below:
What is the G8?
The Group of Eight (G8) is an international forum for the governments of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. These eight countries represent 14% of the world population, but they account for 65% of the world's economic output.
The presidency of the group changes every year. The holder of the presidency sets the G8 annual agenda and hosts the summit for that year. Japan assumed presidency on 1 January 2008 and the summit is set to take place on 7-9 July, in Hokkaido-Toyako, Japan.
What are the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)?
At the Millennium Summit in September 2000 the largest gathering of world leaders in history, the G8 countries adopted the UN Millennium Declaration. They committed their nations to a new global partnership to reduce extreme poverty and set out a series of time-bound targets, with a deadline of 2015 that have become known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
- Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
- Achieve universal primary education
- Promote gender equality and empower women
- Reduce child mortality
- Improve maternal health
- Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
- Ensure environmental sustainability
- Develop a global partnership for development
For more on the MDGs visit the UN Millennium Project website.
Why call on the G8 for change?
The annual G8 summit is attended by eight of the world's most powerful heads of government and represents an important opportunity to influence political direction on key global issues. World Vision sees the G8 summit as an opportunity to challenge the eight richest nations to change the lives of millions of children around the world, because 26,000 children, below the age of five, die every day due to preventable poverty, disease and hunger.
In 2005, to coincide with the 31st G8 summit in United Kingdom millions of people around the world joined together to encourage the G8 leaders to make poverty history. It became an unprecedented movement of passion, energy and solidarity. Never before have so many people in the world come together, fully united in a demand for an end to poverty which was impossible to ignore. This also sparked the formation of the world's largest civil society movement called the Global Call to Action Against Poverty or GCAP that continues today.
This year, World Vision is not asking the G8 for more money. Instead, we are calling for the leaders of G8 countries to be crystal clear about how and when they are going to improve children's healthcare. We are asking them to hold themselves accountable for commitments they have already made and to make sure that the committed funds are spent in the most effective way.
World leaders can make decisions that can change the lives of millions of children. The G8 itself has acknowledged that it has the power to immeasurably improve the lives of the world's poorest people. Over the past decade it has made a range of funding promises that would, if kept, save millions of lives.
Despite courageous funding promises at the 2005 G8 summit in Scotland, the G8 has fallen far behind on delivering them. It is up to those of us who are able to speak out on behalf of those living in poverty to keep reminding world leaders that we have not forgotten their pledges and that their complacency is not acceptable.
That's why we need you to be involved. The more noise we make together, the more the G8 leaders will have to listen to what we have to say.
Why child health?
There is a global epidemic that every year leaves millions dead. It reaches across country borders regardless of culture, language or gender. Despite efforts by the international community to stop it, the annual death count is so high that you can only make sense of the numbers by comparing it to country population figures.
This international killer is poor health. And in 2006, it claimed the lives of 9.7 million children under the age of five. These children died from preventable and treatable diseases. Of the world's children who survived this modern-day epidemic, 15 million lost one or both parents due to AIDS.
There are 136 countries in the world that have populations lower than 9.7 million. That many children dying every year is the equivalent of the entire population of Senegal, or Sweden, or Hong Kong or Israel. And this happens every year.
That many deaths are almost too large a number to comprehend, but each death is the death of a child, and the loss of a precious son or daughter.