UK aid orgs seek to revive mood of Make Poverty History after 20 years

On New Year’s Day 2005, millions of Britons watched as Dawn French, star of the popular sitcom “The Vicar of Dibley,” persuaded her friends to put on strange white armbands and join a protest march after watching an internet clip of distraught African children about to be orphaned by AIDS — because of a lack of drugs easily available in high-income countries. The website was called makepovertyhistory.org and thus dawned, through a clever publicity coup by the show’s writer, anti-poverty activist Richard Curtis, a landmark year of soaring hope that it is possible to stamp out poverty, of growing confidence that politicians must and will act if put under pressure from a mass movement of ordinary people demanding to be heard. Two decades on, some of the United Kingdom’s biggest aid organizations are preparing to mark the 20th anniversary of the Make Poverty History campaign and its extraordinary impact — and to find out if such ambition is still possible in today’s more cynical, conflict-strewn world. A series of events — reported here for the first time — is planned for February, including in London’s Trafalgar Square, where Nelson Mandela delivered a famous call to action to an enormous crowd in 2005, and down the road at the Houses of Parliament, where hundreds of campaigners will lobby members of Parliament to put his cause back on their agenda, drawing on the remarkable events of 2005. The campaigners know the world has moved on, but believe it is still possible to revive the spirit of a time when it felt “nothing was impossible,” in the words of Adrian Lovett, executive director of the ONE Campaign — to “recreate some of the 2005 magic in 2025,” as Romilly Greenhill, chief executive of the Bond network of U.K. aid groups, put it. And, they tell Devex, displaying public support for humanitarian aid will once again be crucial in pushing politicians to act. So what happened in the year when global poverty moved center stage? January: Blair sets the agenda Tony Blair, the former U.K. prime minister who had previously described the condition of Africa as “a scar on the conscience of the world,” announced it would be the key priority of the U.K.’s presidency of the Group of Eight leading industrialized nations, culminating in a July summit in Gleneagles, Scotland. “If what is happening in Africa today was happening in any other part of the world, there would be such a scandal, such a clamor, governments would be falling over themselves to do something about this,” Blair told the World Economic Forum in Davos, where he shared a stage with Bono and Bill Gates. February: Mandela’s speech inspires The world’s most famous apartheid prisoner had retired from public life, but — at 86 years old and walking with a stick — reappeared in front of a packed crowd in London’s Trafalgar Square to tell world leaders that 2005 must be the year to free millions of people “trapped in the prison of poverty.” “Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is manmade, and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings,” he told a crowd of more than 20,000. A black and white Make Poverty History was wrapped around the base of Nelson’s Column alongside him. March: The Commission for Africa report Blair had set up the commission more than a year earlier, with a majority of Africans among its 17 figures from the worlds of government, business, and development, to make recommendations that became a blueprint for action by the G8. They included an immediate $25 billion increase in annual aid, the cancellation of debts owed by sub-Saharan African countries, and an end to “trade-distorting” rich nation subsidies, as well as commitments to good governance by African leaders and an International Finance Facility to raise up to a further $50 billion more for Africa on world capital markets. July 2: The Live 8 concerts A day after an international “White Band Day,” when the by-now ubiquitous campaign symbol adorned world landmarks including the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Colosseum in Rome, 10 simultaneous star-studded concerts reminiscent of the Live Aid events two decades earlier were staged around the world to pile further pressure on G8 leaders. On the same day, more than 225,000 Make Poverty History protesters demonstrated in Scotland’s capital Edinburgh to demand that the nearby G8 summit a few days later deliver on the promises made. July 6-8: The G8 Summit After the talks, Blair led fellow leaders to announce an agreement on the $25 billion annual aid increase and debt relief for 18 of the world’s poorest countries, including 14 in Africa. However, there was no deal on eliminating unfair trade subsidies, and the IFF plan was dropped after United States opposition. Kofi Annan, then-United Nations secretary-general, was upbeat about the outcome, but many aid organizations protested that the Make Poverty History campaigners had been betrayed. Blair himself said: “It isn't the end of poverty in Africa, but it is the hope that it can be ended.” 2025: The follow-up? The world today could not be more different from 2005, with the return of an “America First” president in the U.S., the European Union accused of breaching its anti-poverty legal commitments — and where a U.K. prime minister’s keynote foreign policy speech fails to even mention Africa or the Sustainable Development Goals. Nevertheless, Lovett told Devex: “Africa has more prosperity and opportunity than ever, but conflict, climate change, and the cost of living mean that far too many risk being left behind. Mandela taught us to reach across divides and find common ground. We need that spirit more than ever in 2025.” Greenhill pointed to the new causes of climate and nature and for “locally led” efforts to shift power as key differences in 2025, but argued the public can still force change from below. “We have politicians who want to go further if they feel they have the public mandate to do it and, while we know the public have mixed views about ‘aid’, they often support the things it is spent on, such as vaccines and family planning. I’m confident that we can recreate some of the 2005 magic in 2025,” she said. Indeed, the crucial sentence in the Make Poverty History video smuggled into “The Vicar of Dibley” episode argued G8 leaders had the power to change the fate of children like those soon to be orphaned in South Africa in 2005, but told viewers “they won’t unless people tell them to.” The BBC was later criticized by its own bosses for breaching impartiality guidelines by allowing its program to promote the campaign — although, as the report noted, “no complaints were received” from viewers.