G20 Summit: World leaders promise a fairer, healthier, and greener world for children but action is needed now

Toronto, November 1, 2021 – The G20 Summit made some steps towards a fairer, healthier and greener world this weekend, but did not live up to the high expectations of a world in which millions of children face the triple crises of COVID, climate change and conflict, which threaten to reverse decades of progress in tackling poverty and inequality, Save the Children said.

World leaders at the G20 summit were meant to discuss the most pressing financial issues and ways to ensure that struggling economies across the world have sufficient resources to invest in their children but this has been confined to words with very little tangible progress.

Despite the overall lack of ambition, we do congratulate countries, including Canada, who did show up with strong commitments towards vaccine equity and economic recovery. We were pleased to see Canada commit to channel $3.7 billion, or 20% of its newly allocated Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), to support low-income  countries’ economic recovery.

The global commitment to provide annual funding of US$100 billion for countries in need is a starting point, but Save the Children has called on the G20 nations to respond to the urgency of the situation by fully providing this amount in 2021 and further funding for 2022.

All in all, financing for development issues reflected general and already agreed commitments, while concrete actions are still pending to accelerate and deepen debt relief for countries which will face an impossible decision between repaying debt and investing in crucial sectors for children.

We welcome the commitment of the G20 to the global goal of vaccinating at least the 40% of the world population by the end of 2021 and 70% by mid-2022. Canada’s commitment to donate the equivalent of at least 200 million doses to Covax by end of 2022, with an immediate donation of 10 million doses is a positive step forward.

We were also pleased to see an investment from Canada of up to $15 million to support the establishment of the South Africa Technology Transfer Hub which will help to build capacity for the development and production of vaccines and technologies.

Although Canada came to the table with new commitments, overall leaders this weekend missed out on providing a clear timeline for deliveries of their vaccine doses and did not commit to any new dose-sharing or financing for the ACT-Accelerator. Currently only 14% of promised doses have reached lower- and middle-income countries.

“This proves once again that their promise for global solidarity remains an empty one,” Save the Children said. “No one is safe until we are all safe, and without strong political will leading to concrete actions on dose sharing, fair financing and scaling up vaccine supply, the world will not succeed in bringing this pandemic to an end and protecting children’s futures.”

We welcome G20 recognition of education as a pivotal tool for inclusive and sustainable economic recovery and the commitments to ensure access to quality education for all, with particular attention to women and girls and vulnerable students. However, this needs to be backed up with financial commitments and concrete actions to properly ensure a right to education for all children.

Despite the G20 countries’ different positions on how to address the climate crisis the agreement to pursue efforts to limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial level is welcome. This was an encouraging message from the G20 countries – which are responsible for almost 80% of global emissions – and on the eve of the COP26 summit where there will be calls for swift, ambitious, concrete actions to achieve this goal.

We urge all world leaders to ensure their words become reality.

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