The OECD DAC Committee released its 2010 aid figures and, unsurprisingly, they show that the international community missed the Gleneagles aid commitment to Africa by $11 billion. In 2005, the G8 and partners, agreed to double their ODA spending internationally, with an additional $25 billion for Africa, by 2010. The official figures for 2010 reveal that the global commitments were broken as governments pulled back from ODA in the past few years. Oxfam estimates that the overall commitments were short by £11 billion ($17.7 billion).
The EU advocacy group, Eurodad, commented that although the 2008 financial is considered the reason for the failure, governments were already off-track. Bodo Ellmers from BetterAid and Eurodad commented "While the financial crisis might seem like the most obvious reason why aid budgets have not been sufficiently scaled up. donors were already off track meeting their aid commitments before the crisis hit, so it is no excuse."
Oxfam GB’s head of Advocacy and Policy, Kirsty Hughes, said: “2010 was meant to be the year of celebration - when the promises made at Gleneagles G8 to Make Poverty History were to be met. Yet in five years rich nations have barely increased aid and are lining up big cuts for the next few years - cuts that will cost lives."
Now that the G8 has 'moved on' from aid and is focusing on issues such as security and the internet, the momentum gained in 2005 from Make Poverty History appears to have been fully depleted.