A year after the Gleneagles G8 meeting — and one of the biggest civil society campaigns Scotland has ever seen — poverty is still not history.
In fact, it is in rude health; as revealed by a startling new report that shows the way the world's leaders have failed even to live up to the "lukewarm" promises they made in Scotland last July.
Leading Scottish campaigners — to mark the anniversary of the summit — have come together to urge the G8 nations to do more. They claim a child still dies every 3.5 seconds due to poverty.
They praise Britain's individual extra commitment to improving the trade, aid and debt rules that kill millions every year but argue that all G8 governments — including the UK — are content to hide behind financial trickery rather than fulfil their promises.
Vicky Clayton, head of debt group Jubilee Scotland, said, "On the face of it the G8 has massively increased the amount of money they give in aid, but the figures do not stand up to scrutiny."
A new 'one year on' report from leading charity the Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund (SCIAF) — seen exclusively by the Big Issue — claims that, rather than making poverty history, "the insufficient increases in aid given at Gleneagles are being honoured by the G8 states only in theory."
Chris Hegarty of SCIAF said: "Our findings show that the promises made by the G8 are insufficient to lift millions from poverty and disappointingly they are not even keeping their word in relation to those commitments."
A celebrated deal last year — described by Bob Geldof as a 10/10 commitment on aid and widely celebrated in the media at the time — promised $50 billion extra in aid money every year. However Clayton said that when the numbers had been crunched properly, less than half of the figure was actually new money in the fight against poverty. "That was not good enough," she said.
Eilidh Whiteford, campaign manager for Oxfam Scotland, said there was some progress and it would be wrong not to note what has been achieved. She said work done to pay off some very poor countries' debts had freed up cash that was now used to pay teachers and improve food security, and noted the extra work the UK government had done to raise the profile of international development issues.
However, she said there was still a very long way to go: "It's been a case of one step forward and two steps back. The promises that have been made are important but the real value was in the mobilization of people."
The claim comes from Mary Cullen, the Chairwoman of the Scottish wing of the Make Poverty History movement, who last year packed Edinburgh with 250,000 demonstrators demanding a fairer deal for the world's poor.
She said many charities and development organisations were already monitoring the progress on the G8 promises closely and were disappointed with the lack of real progress following the "fine words" spoken at Gleneagles.
There was a danger Blair's plan would be seen as a PR exercise to divert attention away from the slow progress in the year since the Gleneagles summit, she added.
The watchdog group, the Africa Progress Panel, will be chaired by UN secretary general Kofi Annan and will include high-profile figures such as Tony Blair, Bob Geldof and the Nigerian president, Olusegun Obasanjo.
Blair claims the panel will monitor progress made by the G8 nations in meeting their promises to the world's poorest countries. Blair said the panel will help keep trade, aid and debt issues high on the international agenda.
However, Cullen, who is also head of communications and education at leading charity SCIAF, said it was only through civil society — and events like the Make Poverty History march — that G8 politicians would be forced to honor their responsibilities to the world's poorest nations.
She said: "It is not yet clear to me what this panel is going to achieve. Blair says we need to keep international attention on the issue. Well, lots of people still have their attention very much firmly focused on the issue.
"The difference was — and will continue to be — made by ordinary people campaigning."