The International

Leaders of the largest national economies are preparing to meet for the G8 and G20 Leaders summits being held in Muskoka and Toronto, Canada on June 25-27. World leaders such as President Barack Obama, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and Chinese President Hu Jintao will meet to discuss a number of economic issues, with much of the focus being on how to resuscitate the global economy and prevent similar widespread market crises in the future.

The Group of Eight is a collective of the heads of government from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, The United Kingdom and The United States. The European Union also sends a representative. This year, as with recent meetings, the G8 is inviting leaders from the five largest emerging market countries — Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa — creating what is known as the G8+5.

The Group of Eight will meet first then join the rest of the G20 Summit. The G20 is a collection of the twenty largest world economies. The member nations account for 85 percent of worldwide gross national product, 80 percent of world trade and two-thirds of the world population. The G20 was formed in 1999 as a response to the Asian financial crisis. Of the twenty member countries, only one African nation (South Africa) and one nation in the Middle East (Saudi Arabia) are represented. However, this year, the summit has invited representatives from Nigeria, Egypt and Malawi, along with several other countries, as special guests.

The Toronto meeting is the sixth G20 Leaders Summit and thirty-sixth G8 Summit. The two corresponding events are by far not the first since the global economic crisis, which began most harshly in the fall of 2008, but the Toronto meetings will continue to make the state of the global economy their main focus. Following the credit fiasco in Greece and the market turmoil in Spain this spring, as well as new concerns over Hungary, the Canadian event-hosts have made “recovery and new beginnings” the primary conference themes. These themes will specifically examine financial sector reform, stimulus programs, and global trade and growth strategies. Additionally, the G8 will reexamine its stance on giving aid money to developing nations, an important reoccurring issue for the summit.

Are the G8 and G20 doing enough to affectively change the world for the better? The Canadian hosts are already worried that the two groups are more style than substance and are pushing for stronger commitments from world leaders. What will the Toronto summits prioritize? What can the G8 and G20 do to ensure that their discussions and proposals bring about concrete results?

Revisiting old promises

The G20 in Toronto is expected to be “less about new agreements than accountability for existing ones” and “less about lofty promises than real results,” according to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. The G20 has met to discuss the state of the global economy five times since 2008. In past summits, the leaders looked at macroeconomic issues from various angles. Because of recent events, the G20 tried to find ways to stimulate the world economy, such as expanding free trade agreements and creating new credit monitoring methods. The group also set goals and guidelines on providing aid to struggling and impoverished nations.

In addition to the G8+5, five African presidents will also be in attendance at the June meeting as part of an “African Outreach” session. African aid has long been a discussion point at G8 and G20 summits. Five years ago, at the 2005 G8 Summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, the Group of 8 agreed to send $25 billion to Africa by 2010. With the deadline approaching, the five African leaders — including Nigeria’s Goodluck Jonathan, Senegalese president Abdoulaye Wade, Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, Ethiopia’s Meles Zenawi and Malawi’s President Bingu wa Mutharika — are expected to address the aid situation at the Toronto event.

The non-governmental organization The Africa Network for Environment and Economic Justice (ANEEJ) is appealing to President Jonathan to push the issue of African debt cancellation at the G8. According to Nigerian paper Vanguard, ANEEJ president Reverend David Ugolor expects President Jonathan to get the G8 to follow through on promises made in 2005 to alleviate debt in poor African nations.

But Africa is not the only topic on the world’s agenda that needs economic attention. Fixing national and global markets will be one of, it not the, main priority of the G20 summit, according to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. As the host of the conference, Mr. Harper has announced that he will discuss the idea of using the G20 as a tool to monitor and influence global markets. Since the world economy is after all the reason behind the G20’s existence, Mr. Harper sees the G20 as a means to permanently improve the world economy for future generations.

In Prime Minister Harper’s plan, which reiterates ideas from the 2008 G20 Summit in Washington and the last summit in Pittsburgh, each nation would be responsible for regulating its own banks and private-sector. The national regulatory practices would then be subject to international peer review. This system, according to Mr. Harper, would increase sector transparency and reduce global economic volatility, assuring that the collapse of one nation would not cause an international domino effect.

It is also likely that the Toronto Summit will feature a discussion on international trade. Mr. Harper insists that G20 member countries adhere to the Framework for Strong, Sustainable and Balanced Growth that was established at the Pittsburgh Summit. Although the Framework is less than a year old, Mr. Harper wants to avoid foreseen problems with isolationism. The Framework emphasizes free trade and discourages protectionism, particularly through international cooperation on economic behavior, such as fixing interest rates, valuing currency and restructuring tariffs.

Missing targets

There is a concern from Africa and some international organizations that the upcoming G8 and G20 summits will actually limit African aid and that set goals will not be reached. By the end of 2010, anti-poverty group ONE estimates that the G8 will have delivered about 61 percent of the $50 billion in financial aid it pledged to Africa during the 2005 summit in Gleneagles. Additionally, the Guardian is reporting that there is no mention of the Gleneagles commitment in a drafted communiqué from the summit. So far, the United States, Canada and Japan have all exceeded their 2005 target commitments (which ONE deemed “modest” in the first place), but France and Germany are expected to reach only a quarter of their 2005 goals. Meanwhile, Italy has decreased its aid to Africa by six percent.

Instead of traditional financial aid, such as funding for health and development projects, the G20 is likely to move toward a more business-focused approach, which would attempt to support local and private businesses in order to improve the national economies of underdeveloped areas. According to The Globe and Mail, this would include increases to the budgets of the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank and the African Development Bank. The banks could then give out additional loans to help stimulate developing nations.

“We should now move away from the previous aid-oriented focus and more toward expanding the private-sector’s capacity,” said Dr. Sakong Il, chairman of the presidential committee for the G20, at a meeting in Busan, South Korea.

ONE is a proponent of expanding the African Development Bank, but does not want to see G20 countries ignoring their commitment to debt cancellation. Moreover, ONE feels it is necessary to create accountability measures, so that in the future, countries will not be able to renege on their pledges as easily as they are currently able to.

Despite falling short of original expectations, however, ONE still views the past five years as a relative success. The amount of aid delivered to Africa has greatly increased between 2005 and 2010, is the highest it has ever been over a five-year span, and is almost three times higher than it was in the past decade. However, at the current rate, the UN Millennium Goals regarding poverty will not be reached unless the proposals expected to take place at the 2010 summits will have a significant effect between now and 2015.

"2010 is not the finish line," said David Lane, President and CEO of ONE. "Our lessons learned from the past five years mean that with political will, we can accelerate progress in the next five years.”

Beyond economics

Absent topics can speak just as loud as present ones. Amnesty International is criticizing the G20 for the pertinent and persistent human rights issues that are being ignored by the summit. Specifically, this international nonprofit organization is aggravated by President Obama’s failure to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center. Mr. Obama gave himself a January 2010 deadline to close the prison, which is “using military commissions that don’t meet international standards,” according to Amnesty. Mr. Obama did not meet his deadline and has yet to propose a new timeframe.

Additionally, Amnesty International rebuked a number of G20 countries for refusing to participate in the International Criminal Court: "China, India, Indonesia, Russia, Turkey and the USA have stood aside from — if not deliberately undermined — international justice efforts," interim Secretary-General Claudio Cordone told The Associated Press.

The United States, as well as Russia and China, has declined to ratify the International Criminal Court, claiming a stance of noninterference. Amnesty International insists that all G20 member countries subscribe to the court, which could cement the court’s authority and effectiveness.

However, Canadian G20 Sherpa (the term used for summit coordinators) Leonard Edwards indirectly responded to Amnesty International’s complaints during a March address in Toronto: “There may be a strong role for the G20 on some or all of these issues going forward, as the institution develops and as events dictate.”

Mr. Edwards argued, however, that the G20 is not yet ready to address topics beyond the economy, asserting that the group needs to deliver on its current economic commitments before it can begin looking at social issues.

The G8, on the other hand, has the luxury of not being grouped by economic qualifiers. As the host nation, Canada has created a maternal and child-health initiative, which will focus on healthcare for mothers and infants, especially in developing countries. Prime Minister Harper is supporting and prioritizing the agenda, which he thinks can reinvigorate the G8 as an agent in global well-being.

But Mr. Harper and the Canadian government are already seeing harsh backlash against the maternal health initiative, both domestically and abroad. Organizations such as Toronto’s Women’s College Hospital(WCH) are attacking Prime Minister Harper for side-stepping abortion funding. There is no mention of abortions in the proposed project budget, instead only mention of "voluntary family planning," and contraception. However, in the developing world approximately 70,000 women die annually from unsafe abortions, as noted by WCH’s Dr. Jim Ruderman.

Echoing Mr. Edwards’ opinion regarding the G20 and social issues, Prime Minister Harper said in a parliamentary debate that saving the lives of mothers and infants through basic healthcare methods needs to be attended to first, before abortion funding can be considered.

“We [the G8] are clear what initiatives we are funding and, believe me, there is more than enough to do in those areas to save the lives of women and children,” Mr. Harper said in April in the Canadian House of Commons.

Strengthening sovereignty

But without improved accountability measures, the initiatives discussed and decided upon at the G8 and G20 summits hold little significance, argues Summit Sherpa Edwards. If countries are allowed to break promises, it challenges the authority and undermines the purpose of both organizations. Even now, according to Mr. Edwards, there is a sense among African nations that G8 countries do not live up to expectations or their promises and that the G8 may become irrelevant in the near future. As the hosts, Canadian leadership is pushing for a new accountability process to be established at the both summits this summer.

Additionally, the G20 and G8 need to be more representative of the poorer nations of the world, since the world’s largest economies are far removed from the smallest and poorest nations, according to Mr. Edwards. For “effective international cooperation,” he argues, the right countries need to have a seat at the round table. The invitation of African leaders to the Toronto Summit is a good start and could lead to a productive policy.

Furthermore, Mr. Edwards thinks that by looking at different issues, the G8 and G20 can work together to address global challenges. The G20, he posits, should continue its macroeconomic agenda, letting the G8 think about broader issues of development and security. Moreover, both groups need to make sure that past promises and goals are fulfilled before making new ones.

For Mr. Edwards, the success of the Pittsburgh Framework “could be the litmus test for the G20’s future success.” Leaders must set aside nationalism and protectionism for the global, communal good. The G8 and G20 were formed with a collaborative and communal spirit, which cannot be forgotten if progress and change is to take place.