Former Canadian AIDS Envoy to Africa Lewis Slams G8 As Morally Bankrupt

VANCOUVER (CP) – The former UN special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa accused the G-8 on Sunday of abandoning its commitments to health and social equality in Africa, calling its leaders morally bankrupt.

Canadian Stephen Lewis says the leaders of the world’s top industrialized nations have reneged on promises to have-not nations, particularly those in Africa, to help improve the health, social and equality conditions in those countries.

Last week, the G-8 announced a US $60-billion commitment to fight disease in Africa, but Lewis says that funding did not come with a timeline.

He says the leaders only committed the funds ‘over the coming years.’

Lewis made the comments to the International Health Promotion Educators conference in Vancouver.

The leaders of the world’s eight wealthiest democracies have pledged the aid money to the world’s poorest continent, but much of it consists of promises they’ve already made.

It was not the absence of new cash that most angered anti-poverty activists, but a failure to produce clear targets for the world to judge whether individual countries are keeping their aid promises.