[NYTr] Brown calls on Google, other mega-corps to help world's poor

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

The Guardian - Dec 10, 2007
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2007/dec/10/internationalaidanddevelopment.google

Brown calls on Google to help world's poor

Talks held with multinationals to tackle 'development emergency'

by Larry Elliott Sarah Boseley

Gordon Brown plans to harness at least 20 of the world's biggest
multinational companies, including Google and Vodafone, to tackle a
"development emergency" in the world's poorest countries and put the
international community back on course to achieve seven UN development
goals by 2015.

As a UN report released today shows limited progress in hitting goals
intended to tackle poverty, education, health and sanitation, the prime
minister has been holding talks with the internet and telecoms giants as
well as other international companies including Goldman Sachs and
Wal-Mart in an attempt to find ways of increasing growth in poor
countries.

Brown will use three set-piece events next year - a conference involving
the private sector in London in the spring, next summer's meeting of the
G8 in Japan and a UN session in New York in the autumn - to reinvigorate
the drive to hit the UN's millennium development goals, set in 2000.

Brown told the Guardian: "We are half way to the target date of 2015,
but a long way off track to our goals and face a development emergency.
2008 should be a development year and mark a call to action from
everyone - not just rich and poor governments but civil society, faith
groups, trade unions and even the private sector.

"There are 72 million children not going to primary school, in some
countries one woman in six dies in childbirth, over a billion people do
not have access to safe drinking water. The international community
needs to face up to this development emergency. We know what to do - we
need to keep our promises and act. I am therefore calling for an
millennium development goals action meeting during the UN general
assembly in September to re-examine and galvanise our efforts."

Preparations for Brown's initiative have been under way since the
summer, but the emphasis on development - a key feature of Brown's 10
years at the Treasury - is intended to show that the government can
recover from its battering this autumn.

Ministers have been holding intensive discussions with the private
sector in the hope that firms can be persuaded to use their expertise
to improve infrastructure, upgrade skills and provide capital for fresh
investment. Although the prominence given to multinationals is likely
to be controversial with parts of the development community, Brown
believes a lack of enterprise is hindering least-developed countries -
especially in sub-Saharan Africa - achieving the development goals.

While Brown intends to keep pressing Britain's G8 partners to meet the
aid pledges made at the Gleneagles summit in 2005, the emphasis on the
role of the private sector marks the start of a new phase in the
government's development strategy. The development minister, Lady
Vadera, who said recently that growth was the "single biggest factor
separating success from failure" in developing countries, has been
speaking to multinational corporations and Brown believes there is the
prospect of initiatives in financial services, mobile telephony and
agriculture over the coming year.

Kevin Watkins, editor of the UN's annual human development report, said
achieving growth without attempting to tackle inequality would not put
the global community back on course to achieve the millennium
development goals. Child death rates were two to three times higher for
the poorest 20% of people and were falling more slowly than the average.

"We are all in favour of high growth," he said, "but there has been a
failure in some high growth countries, such as India, to deliver on
human progress because of inequality. The key to achieving the
development goals is to concentrate on helping the very poor."

Peter Salama, Unicef's chief of health, said a priority was to get
proper health systems running in sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia.