No excuse

As the economic crisis pinches national budgets, EU member states' funds set aside for development are dwindling and increasingly being used instead as channels for public cash for domestic companies and promoting national vested interests, rather than poverty reduction in the poorest of countries.

Some states are even counting the cost of deporting refugees back to their home countries as "development aid". And very little aid actually makes its way to the least developed countries, such as those in Africa.

As a result of the drop in spending, African countries are coming to the conclusion that Africa will not be able to meet any of its Millennium Development Goals, such as eradicating extreme poverty and reducing child mortality by 2014. Across the continent, some 70 per cent of people now live below the poverty line ($1 a day) and more people are now dying from malaria than Aids, while maternal and child mortality is increasing.

We cannot use the excuse of the current economic climate to turn our back on our obligations to the developing world.

ALEX ORR

Bryson Road

Edinburgh