G8 leaders failed to recognize the urgent situation facing the world’s poor at their summit in Heiligendamm June 6-8, and instead backtracked on previous commitments made.

Two years ago, as millions of concerned citizens mobilized around the Gleneagles G8 summit, leaders committed to increase development assistance by about $50 billion by 2010, with half of it dedicated to Africa, the region most in danger of missing the 2015 targets of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Two years later at Heiligendamm, the leaders did not acknowledge their failure to deliver. In fact, the G8’s performance has actually deteriorated. Comparing Official Development Assistance (ODA) figures between 2005 and 2006, in percentage of national income, the U.S. fell from 0.22 to 0.17, Italy from 0.29 to 0.20 and Japan from 0.28 to 0.25, while France and Germany stagnated at 0.47 and 0.36 respectively; only the U.K. increased from 0.47 to 0.52. Furthermore, a large share of aid delivered in the past two years has actually been debt relief (much of that for Iraq). The picture for sub-Saharan Africa is bleak; excluding debt relief, aid to the region is stagnant, and no poor country has seen the increase in aid that would enable it to achieve the Millennium Goals by 2015.

What the G8 should have done in Heiligendamm is re-examine their Gleneagles promises, taking a frank look at the delivery to date, renewing their resolve, and providing timetables of annual increases in aid budgets to monitor and track progress.

Instead, the G8 announced $60 billion to fight HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis, but much of this money was previously pledged and lacks timelines for delivery, and thus is actually a regression from the Gleneagles commitments. Furthermore, this approach of sectoral or thematic initiatives is extremely problematic. While the G8 rightly affirmed the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness and pledged their adherence to its targets, thematic initiatives may well be inconsistent with this aid effectiveness agenda. There is an inherent tension between genuine local priority setting in developing countries and such single-issue funds and programmes, which adds to the already increasing proliferation of aid programmes, donors and procedures, taking a devastating toll on the capacity of developing countries to manage their own development process.

The G8 could also have breathed life into the World Trade Organization’s “development” round by agreeing to a framework to cut trade distorting, agricultural subsidies that wipe out poor countries’ markets and offer better access to poor country products. Instead the G8 reaffirmed positions that led to the stalled talks.

At half-time for the MDGs, the G8 have dug themselves into a deep hole, with real aid levels falling and trade talks failing. The next time a G8 summit will take place in Germany will be 2015- the year for the MDGs to be met. It is time for the G8 to get serious and hold themselves accountable for delivering the promises they made in 2000 at the Millennium Summit and at Gleneagles just two years ago.