Coronavirus: Three former PMs among world leaders calling for $2.5 trillion emergency package for developing countries

Letter demanding emergency G20 summit signed by 225 former presidents, prime ministers and heads of international institutions from around the world

Three former British prime ministers have signed a joint plea by 225 world leaders for a $2.5 trillion package of support from the international community for developing countries threatened with health, economic and malnutrition disaster due to coronavirus.

Gordon Brown, Tony Blair and Sir John Major are among the eminent roster of ex-presidents, prime ministers and leaders of international institutions calling for an emergency summit of the G20 to agree a global health and economic recovery plan which would “send out a message of hope for the future”.

Without urgent and concerted action, the letter warned that the world faces a deep recession threatening hundreds of millions of the poorest and most disadvantaged with unemployment, destitution and starvation, along with a second wave of Covid-19 outbreaks in the developing world sweeping back to reinfect richer nations which have got the disease under control.

Mr Brown warned of a “vacuum of global leadership” which could undermine efforts to eradicate the disease and chart a course out of the pandemic and towards recovery.

Representing voices from all continents, the G20 was a better forum to “agree a global growth plan and unite a divided world” than the G7, even in the expanded form taking in countries like South Korea, Australia and India proposed by Donald Trump, he said.

Also signed by former UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, financier George Soros, former Irish president Mary Robinson, Nelson Mandela’s widow Graca Machel and ex-Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the letter cautioned that only a “fraction” of the $2.5 trillion (£2 trillion) shortfall in developing countries’ capacity to respond to Covid-19 identified in March by the International Monetary Fund has so far been met.

With 300 million jobs lost due to the pandemic, 400 million-plus people facing poverty and 265 million at risk of malnutrition, the letter to G20 leaders – including Boris Johnson and Donald Trump – said it was not possible to wait for action until the scheduled November summit of the group of leading economies, which between them represent 85 per cent of the global economy.

“Without action from the G20, the recession caused by the pandemic will only deepen, hurting all economies and the world’s most marginalised and poorest peoples and nations the most,” the 225 former leaders said.

“Representing, as it does, 85 per cent of the world’s nominal GDP, the G20 has the capacity to lead the mobilisation of resources on the scale required. We urge leaders to do so immediately.

“Covid-19 is a wake-up call to the global community. The global health and financial architecture must be further strengthened, and in parts redesigned, to enhance our preparedness and capacity to act with speed and at scale to fight future crises.

“We should send out a message of hope for the future: that the UN, the governments of the G20 nations and all interested partners can turn this crisis into an opportunity to build a new and more effective multilateralism, which more appropriately reflects current economic and political realities and is better equipped to address the challenges of the 21st century.”

The leaders called for an online summit of the G20 to agree:

• The issue of $1 trillion in new international money through a mechanism known as special drawing rights (SDRs) to regenerate global growth
• The release of 76 poor countries from $80bn in debt-servicing payments
• A doubling in amounts available to the World Ban for emergency economic aid

They also called on world leaders to immediately contribute the $7.4bn being sought for vaccines at a pledging conference being hosted by the UK on Thursday, with the aim of immunising 300 million children from a variety of diseases by 2025.

Mr Brown, who hosted the G20’s second-ever summit in London to thrash out a global response to the financial crisis in 2009, said: “As our letter states the world is at a critical moment.

“Without a G20 leaders’ meeting online soon and certainly long before the end of November, a vacuum in global leadership will open up just at the time when we need global action most – to avoid a second wave of Covid coming out of the poorest countries and to move the world economy from rescue operations to planning a global recovery.

“The G20 states it is the ‘world’s premium economic forum for international co-operation’. And so a G20 meeting now that – unlike President Trump’s proposed September invitation to only 10 countries –includes Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and most of Asia could agree a global growth plan and unite a divided world.”

The world leaders’ letter cited United Nations warnings of a worldwide recession reversing three decades of improved living standards and plunging over 420 million more people into extreme poverty.

And it pointed to estimates from the World Food Programme that 265 million are likely to suffer from crisis levels of hunger – an increase of 130 million over pre-pandemic levels.

Meanwhile, it said that Covid had created “the greatest education emergency of our lifetime”, with 1.5 billion – 80 per cent of the world’s children – out of school, many of whom may never return.

And it quoted the International Labour Organisation’s estimate of a 10.5 per cent decline in the number of hours worked, equivalent to the loss of more than 300 million full-time jobs.

One of the letter’s signatories, former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark, said: “The IMF has said emerging markets and developing countries need $2.5 trillion to overcome the crisis but only a fraction of that $2.5 trillion has so far been allocated.

“While we welcome the good intentions at the heart of the G20 action plan, concrete measures must urgently be agreed and be implemented in full.”