The 2005 Gleneagles Summit was the first organised contact between civil society representatives of the G8, which was carried forward in 2006 with the expansive Civil G8 process under the Russia presidency. The German G8 presidency in 2007 featured the meeting of a limited group of CSO leaders with Chancellor Merkel in May, preceded by a meeting in April where global civil society representatives engaged in dialogue with Sherpas - the personal representative of the Head of State who prepares the agenda and agreements for G8 Summits - from each G8 member country.

The Global Call to Action against Poverty (GCAP), a coalition comprising many prominent development CSOs was in full force at this year’s Summit. Kumi Naidoo, Secretary-General of CIVICUS, which acts as the GCAP secretariat, was on site and had a busy agenda as one of the most visible representatives of the anti-poverty coalition. He took some time out of his busy schedule, which included a press conference with campaigning luminaries Bono and Bob Geldof, to talk to Transparency Watch about the Summit, its conclusions, and its legitimacy as an organ of global governance.

Transparency Watch (TW): You have had a look at the Summit documents now – what are your overall impressions?

Kumi Naidoo (KN): Well the summit documents are extremely vague, obscure in parts, some overlapping references, and so on. Our initial analysis is that the headline that will come out of G8 is “US $60 billion appointed to HIV/Aids.” However, in my estimation, this commitment will at best reach only one third of the people who require the necessary medical assistance. That violates the Gleneagles pledge of universal access by 2010. Moreover, most of this money is simply been restated – there is at best US $3 billion additional that’s actually been put on the table [the rest having been previously committed].

Looking at it from an African perspective, where 6,000 people die every day from HIV/Aids and another 6,000 from malaria alone, I believe what we are seeing is a passive genocide, a silent army. I would challenge the G8 leaders to look me in the eye right now and say: “If that loss of life was happening in Europe or North America would they have responded with the same humility and lack of urgency as they are now?”

More importantly, the commitment of US $50 billion – US $25 billion for Africa and US $25 billion for the rest of the world – is important, particularly for the global compact against poverty that is focussed locally. Africans recognise what poverty is and we are not only concerned about these issues, we are concerned about the extreme poverty in South Asia, the growing inequality in Latin America and other parts of the world like the Pacific, the Caribbean and the Middle East.

When we think of all the commitment made at Gleneagles and the impact they have had so far, our response is not “what a fantastic outcome, what a great achievement!” Our one-line response to Gleneagles was “the people roared and the G8 whispered.” It was disappointing especially given all of the mobilisation that we engaged on poverty.

Even the US $50 billion commitment was to be delivered by 2010. That was like committing to respond to the tsunami five years after it occurred. So considering we were not totally thrilled about Gleneagles, and there has been slippage even from those commitments, this G8 Summit is a double tragedy in terms of outcome.

TW: Is the G8 a worthwhile forum to raise these sorts of issues in?

KN: The relationship between transparency and good governance is a fundamental one, and we as civil society campaigners have been very transparent and peaceful about what we want in advancing these causes. I believe that this is not only a betrayal of the poor in developing countries, but also a betrayal of the citizens of the G8 countries themselves, because in all cases citizens wanted their governments do much more to end global poverty and fight HIV/Aids.

So what the G8 is doing is actually stripping itself of its own credibility and sending a very negative message about democracy, about governance, and about the whole issue of the role of citizens to be able to hold governments accountable and keep them transparent. In one part of the communiqué there is a statement on the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) that calls on oil rich countries to sign up. It’s easy for the G8 to say that poor countries should sign up to EITI. But what political bull is behind those statements remains to be seen.

We have said in various statements that we are committed in standing shoulder to shoulder with African governments and pushing on debt cancellation, trade justice but we are also saying to governments in developing countries: do not undermine our ability to fight those battles at world level by not coming through on good governance and transparency. At the end of the day, fighting corruption can only happen if it comes from the citizenry of the respective countries and no matter what the G8 statements on this might be, I don’t think it actually adds too much.

In fact, the former foreign minister of Greece recently said something very powerful. He said: “The Soviet Union undermined the idea and power of socialism, and now we are seeing the current US administration undermine the power and value of democracy.” I bring this up because asking what value the G8 adds in fighting corruption, needs to be evaluated in the frame where most of the corruption in the world would not be possible were it not for the active collusion and participation of multinational corporations, 75 percent of which are based in G8 countries.

TW: Is the G8 a legitimate forum for pursuing the interests of civil society? There are civil society groups on the other side of the security fence that would regard us as traitors for engaging so directly.

KN: The G8 is an uncomfortable reality. It is eight of the most powerful countries coming together, and frankly this could happen as a side meeting at the United Nations. Some would say that broadening it out to include some Southern representation, would make it more relevant.

I think the G8’s relevance has to be called into question right now. If you look at the Communiqué, it is clearly a reflection of a hodgepodge of compromise between some countries that want to go further and those that want to hold them back. For civil society, the difficulty that we have is that it is a bit of a paradox. On the one hand, you can ask, what is the point of coming here, and putting all of this energy and watching the agenda, and mobilising in the run up to it, when you get so little out of it?

That is valid point. But on the other hand, I feel quite strongly that the limited entry we have with the G8 would have been even more miniscule had it not been for the campaigning and effort and so on. The choice was, given that these are the eight most powerful leaders in the world, do we walk away from it because we are not getting what we would like to see, a lack of urgency, lack of political leadership? Is it better to have miniscule focus because we cannot get the full prize?

To be honest I am at a loss. What it does give us is a point of mobilisation, a point of focus and at least the chance to say “Shame on you, another betrayal.”