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Email the Foreign Affairs Minister

New Zealand is failing on the promises it has made to give 0.7 percent of its' gross national income to overseas aid. Our governments' overseas development aid spending is currently 0.27 percent – third lowest out of all rich countries. At this rate, we will not reach our promised target until 2050. The government must help MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY by fully committing to spending 0.7% of Gross National Income on overseas aid by 2015. Last year, many other donor countries have set timetables for reaching the 0.7% target by no later than 2015. New Zealand has not. In fact, New Zealand is now one of only six developed countries that have no such timetable.

Please send this email to the Minister of Foreign Affairs to remind him that the Aotearoa New Zealand Government must commit to reaching the 0.7% target by 2015.

  • Copy the text in the box below into an email and add your name at the bottom.

  • Copy the following address into the email: wpeters@ministers.govt.nz

  • Press send!

 

Hon Mr Winston Peters
Minister of Foreign Affairs
Parliament Buildings
Wellington


Dear Minister,

New Zealand has an opportunity to take an international lead by setting a time table to make good its promise of giving 0.7 percent of national income to international aid by 2015.

New Zealand provides good quality aid but, as a country, we’re letting ourselves down because our Government is one of the least generous in the developed world when it comes to the amount of aid we give.

At just 0.27 percent of national income, we’re a long way off the 0.7 percent that we agreed to give by 2015.  It is also well short of the current average OECD level of 0.42 percent.

Not only that, our government has set no timetable to reach the goal.  This needs to be addressed urgently.

Every year ten million  children die of preventable diseases while more  than one billion people lack access to safe water, and 2.4 billion lack access to adequate sanitation.

More than 1.2 billion people live on less than US$1 per day. In sub-Saharan Africa, women are 100 times more likely to die in pregnancy and childbirth than in rich countries.

Sadly, things have been getting even worse for the poorest people on the planet. Nearly half a billion people are now worse off than they were in 1990 despite that international goal to halve extreme poverty by 2015.

Please ask the government to be more generous and to do its share to fight global poverty.

Yours sincerely,

(your name)

 

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