Musician and humanitarian Bono offers “three near-term tests” of the world’s commitment to achieving the Millennium Development Goals.
- Expand on measures that work.Bono cited the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria as an example of measures that yield results. He called for financial support for the fund, which he said saves 4,000 lives each day.
- Foster good governance.Bono welcomed the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill in the U.S. as a boost to transparency of governance. Through this bill, energy firms traded on American exchanges will need to reveal every payment they make to government officials. “If money changes hands, it will happen in the open. This is the kind of daylight that makes the cockroaches scurry,” Bono writes in an opinion piece for The New York Times. “The British government should institute the same requirement for companies trading in Britain, as should the rest of the European Union and ultimately all the G-20 nations.”
- Monitor who’s giving how much to do what.Bono suggested “an independent unit - made up of people from governments, the private sector and civil society” - that will track pledges and progress, not just development aid, but also on trade, governance and investment.“Right now it’s near impossible to keep track. Walk (if you dare) into M.D.G. World and you will encounter a dizzying array of vague financing and policy commitments on critical issues, from maternal mortality to agricultural development. You come across a load of bureau-babble that too often is used to hide double counting, or mask double standards. This is the stuff that feeds the cynics,” he argues.
