Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Prime Minister Stephen Harper chat before the beginning of a maternal and child health meeting at the UN's European headquarters in Geneva on Jan. 26, 2011.Martial Trezzini/The Associated Press
A $40-billion initiative on maternal and child health will create a "wave of hope" across the developing world, Prime Minister Stephen Harper is predicting.
But he's also warning that it's vital to get the project right, as evidence emerges that a previous billion-dollar UN program had issues with corruption.
"Nobody wants to blow it," Mr. Harper said Wednesday after the first meeting of a United Nations accountability commission on spending for the initiative.
The prime minister led a session on the commission's efforts to ensure donor countries make good on their pledges, as well as a session on outreach to stakeholders.
The commission, which Canada co-chairs with Tanzania, is taking the first steps toward building an accountability model that is both simple enough and comprehensive enough to ensure the donors pay up and recipients use the money effectively. The aim is to assist mothers and their children in developing countries.
The focus on accountability comes after special audit investigations of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria recently turned up $34-million in losses, prompting some donor countries to freeze contributions to that program.
"We have an unprecedented opportunity to make a real difference in the lives of people and a real difference in the world as a consequence," Mr. Harper said at a news conference, flanked by Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete.
"That's why we're taking the time to get these things right… If there is political will, everything is possible."
The one-day summit was designed to give a high-profile political kick start to what can be perceived as a dry accounting exercise, albeit on a motherhood issue.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon met briefly with Mr. Harper before the summit officially got underway at the World Health Organization headquarters.
The summit also had the side benefit for Mr. Harper of refurbishing his international credentials after the bruising UN Security Council vote last fall that saw Canadian membership snubbed for the first time in 60 years.
Canada used the summit to announce support for new development projects in Ethiopia, Mozambique and Bangladesh totalling about $230-million over five years.
Mr. Harper, as chair of last year's G8 Summit, launched the maternal- and child-health initiative. The plan initially drew widespread criticism when the Conservative government ruled out funding for family planning and safe abortion services. The Conservatives ended up conceding on contraception, but not abortion.
The contretemps did not surface publicly in Geneva, but there was evidence nonetheless that hard feelings remain. The chair of a key working group of technical experts supporting the UN accountability commission posted snarky remarks about the Canadian delegation on a social networking site.
"As usual, protocol suffocates substance," Richard Horton, the editor of the influential British medical journal The Lancet, wrote on Twitter while suggesting Mr. Harper's large group of officials was big-footing the summit.
"What are they all doing here?"
It was a rare sour note in an otherwise pitch-perfect event for Mr. Harper.
In a speech to the 25 members of the newly created UN commission to begin Wednesday's meeting, Mr. Harper gave an upbeat assessment of the job ahead.
"This is about the future, the future of families, of communities, countries and indeed ultimately of humanity," he said in his opening remarks.
"Improvements to the health, education and living conditions of millions of women and children will mean a wave of hope that will ripple through the developing world."
President Kikwete headed up sessions on accounting for the results of the maternal health spending, but made a point later in the day of emphasizing that donors must come through.
He noted that of the eight millennium development goals set by the UN for 2015, "the ones on maternal and child health are lagging far behind target."
Citing what he called "staggering statistics," Mr. Kikwete said that although Africa has just 12 per cent of the global population, it accounts for half of all maternal deaths and half the deaths of children under five.
The numbers, he said, offer "a stark reminder of the enormity of the challenge."
The meeting Wednesday was essentially a steering committee, after which two working groups of technical experts will map out an accountability framework that will then have to be sold to donor countries, recipients and civil society groups.
The framework is to be completed by May.