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My organization Amnesty International USA is joining forces with ally organizations in the U.S. and around the world (including Bono's organization DATA) who are concerned about poverty, AIDS, and the rights to health and education. Our aim is to put pressure on the G8 (the leaders of the world's most powerful countries) to meet the funding promises they themselves have set in these areas.The commitments made by the G8 leaders in 2005 on poverty, aid to poor countries, HIV and AIDS, health systems, and education, are solemn promises, made to impoverished people, including millions of orphaned children.
Yet, the G8 is not on track to keep these promises, and aid levels have actually declined. Less than half of all people in urgent need of AIDS treatment by 2010 will be receiving it, 77 million children have no access to school, and Africa alone faces a shortage of nearly 1.5 million health workers.
Under international law, all countries, particularly those with the resources to assist other countries, are obliged to cooperate in the development and realization of human rights. The international community, particularly the G8 countries, can meet this obligation by providing adequate resources to ensure access to prevention, care, and treatment for HIV and AIDS, to strengthen local health systems, and to achieve universal primary education.
Please take a moment today to sign the petition to the G8, and to encourage your friends to do the same. We and our ally organizations will pool all of our signatures and present them to the G8 when it meets in Germany on June 6.
Join us in holding the G8 accountable for its promises. Sign the petition.
For more information about the issue and what we're doing about it, click here.
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