For those of you not spending Sunday feigning sympathy for colleagues and friends “trapped” on holiday by volcanic ash (oh, you’re not back to work on Monday? You have to stay by the pool? Must be terrible…) you may have noticed a welcome trend in the election campaign. Sunday was ‘world poverty day’, meaning that
parties and party leaders were speaking about the issues we care about: poverty, development and aid.
So what did the parties get up to?
Conservative leader David Cameron teamed up with Jeffrey Sachs to write in the Independent on Sunday about the importance of educating girls. Their article asks “how can we put women at the heart of our vision for international development?” – an important question since over two-thirds of the world’s 776 million illiterate people are women; and worldwide, women earn on average only 84 per cent of what men earn in formal waged work. Conservative development spokesperson Andrew Mitchell also wrote an article on Conservative grass roots website ConservativeHome, urging his party to take the time, even in an election campaign, to “stand back and think big”.
Visiting a church in New Malden, Surrey, Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg spoke of the moral duty to address the issue of poverty. He stressed the need for Britain to keep its aid promises to the poor and provide the resources to meet any targets we set. Nick Clegg also focused on the issue of climate change as the biggest problem we faced – but argued that it is the poorest that are always hit hardest. Unfortunately Oxfam’s experience around the world has found that to be indeed the case. Changes in the seasons are hitting poor farmers hard and extreme weather events are on the increase – pushing poor people backwards as they strive for progress.
The Labour leader Gordon Brown also addressed a church congregation in London, and wrote to the heads of Britain’s development organisations. His letter set out his party’s policies but also praised the work of campaigners such as you, stating, “When there is no global campaign on these issues, our ability to bring change is much less”.
The letter from the Labour leader identifies 2010 as a critical year in the fight against poverty – five years after Make Poverty History and five years before we are due to deliver on the Millennium Development Goals. Add to that the need for movement this year on a global climate deal, and an international arms trade treaty, and we begin to get a sense of the international challenges any new government and parliament will face.
This is why, though World Poverty Day was a welcome focus, we need to see these issues discussed time and time again in the election campaign. We need candidates to be addressing poverty issues at local hustings, we need leaders to be talking about their commitments on aid in the next televised debate, and we need to tackle our candidates directly and ask them what they and their parties will do to meet the challenges of the future.
Email your local candidate and make this election matter.