Religious leaders call for heads of government to renew efforts to meet MDGs

Apr 10 2013

"With fewer than 1,000 days left to meet the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals [MDGs], religious leaders from the G8 countries are pushing heads of government to renew their efforts to meet the anti-poverty benchmarks by 2015," the Washington Post reports. "In an April 5 letter to the Financial Times, the 80 religious leaders said 'meeting the targets is possible but only if governments do not waver from the moral and political commitments made over a decade ago,'" the newspaper writes, adding, "The letter was signed by Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, newly installed Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and other clerics from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the U.S." The newspaper continues, "The letter focused on the need for tax reforms, free trade and business transparency in order to strike at the underlying causes of poverty," and "[i]t also called on all G8 countries to fulfill an existing commitment to devote 0.7 percent of their national incomes to aid" (Grundy, 4/8).