[UN] Poverty Fight May Be Subverted at U.N. Summit

From The Asian Tribune

United Nations 12 September, (IPS): The U.N. summit, billed as one of the largest single gatherings of world leaders, will prove to be an exercise in futility if its primary focus on poverty and hunger eradication is subverted by other extraneous political issues, according to development experts, senior U.N. officials and representatives of non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

"With an agenda dominated by global security and U.N. reform, it appears that the decisions needed to lift millions of people from abject poverty are not being given the prominence they deserve," complains Kumi Naidoo, chair of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty.

The original objective of the summit, which runs Wednesday through Friday, was to review progress made by the world's poorer nations on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set in 2000. A pledge to halve extreme poverty and hunger by 2015 was a high priority on the agenda.

But this objective seems to have been overtaken by other political priorities, including human rights, terrorism, peacekeeping, disarmament, national sovereignty, nuclear non-proliferation and the restructuring of the world body.

As a result, the 191 member states have remained sharply divided over these politically-sensitive issues, thereby marginalizing the original development agenda of the summit.

Last week, the United States was embroiled in a controversy over its demand that all references to MDGs be eliminated from a declaration that is to be adopted at the summit. But since then, it has tried to tone down its political rhetoric.

Naidoo said the summit "is a chance for world leaders to reaffirm a timetable for achieving poverty reduction and get back on track with the promises made in 2000 to achieve the MDGs by 2015".

The MDGs include a 50 percent reduction in extreme poverty and hunger; universal primary education; promotion of gender equality; reduction of child mortality by two-thirds; cutbacks in maternal mortality by three-quarters; combating the spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases; ensuring environmental sustainability; and developing a North-South global partnership for development.

A meeting of 189 world leaders in September 2000 pledged to meet all of these goals by the year 2015.

But Nicola Reindorp, of the international relief agency Oxfam, warns that if governments fail to make clear commitments regarding development goals, including the eradication of poverty and hunger, "progress would be so gradual that the Millennium Development Goals would not be met even in 100 years".

In a report released last week, ActionAid International said: "Without decisive and immediate action in New York to put poverty eradication back at the top of the agenda, and identify measures to get the world's poorest countries -- especially those in Africa -- back on track for the goals, the slim gains to date risk unraveling."

The U.S. government has launched "a wrecking ball against the development agenda, by opposing any reference to the goals, to targets on aid and debt, or to the need for action on Africa. The upshot is a summit that looks increasingly rudderless, and that risks going down in history as a hugely expensive failure," it added.

Wahu Kaara, ecumenical coordinator for the MDGs at the All African Conference of Churches, told the annual meeting of NGOs in New York last week: "Five years ago, world leaders had committed to overcome hunger, poverty and illiteracy by 2015. Since then, the world had focused not on the Millennium Development Goals, but on the so-called war on terror."

"There was a need to go back to the development agenda for the new millennium," she added. While U.N. reforms were important, the MDGs should not be sacrificed at the altar of some governments pushing their own self-interest.

Although Secretary-General Kofi Annan believes that development, security and human rights are interlinked, he points out that world leaders will have to make a stronger commitment to meet the MDGs.

"Instead of setting targets, this time leaders must decide how to achieve them" -- five years after the MDGs were adopted and 10 years before the Goals fall due. "If current trends persist," he warns, "there is a risk that many of the poorest countries will not be able to meet many of the goals."

Asked to single out the successes and failures of MDGs over the last five years, Salil Shetty, director of the U.N. Millennium Campaign, told IPS that in concrete terms, many developing countries have adapted the Goals to their own national context and started implementing strategies and plans with clear budgets attached to them, e.g. Vietnam and Brazil.

Shetty said that on Goal 8, namely commitments from rich countries, "there is no doubt that aid levels have gone up after decades of decline for the first time in the last couple of years because of (commitments made at the International Conference on Financing for Development in) Monterrey and MDG commitments".

The Group of 8 (G8) industrial nations have made some commitments on debt relief that take a small step forward on debt cancellation, he added. "A very important development has been the massive global effort from civil society in its broadest sense to mobilise citizens against the scourge of poverty and to use the MDGs as the minimal package that governments must deliver by 2015," Shetty added.

On the downside, he said, the hard data on progress is very disconcerting. "The overall performance on most Goals is far behind where we should be by now. The relatively good performance on the first Goal at the aggregate level masks huge disparities across and within countries and regions," Shetty said.

"Looking ahead to the next 10 years, we still feel that if governments across the world and international institutions have the political will, the Goals can be achieved. This will can be created only through citizens' pressure and active campaigning."

Asked whether or not the targeted deadline should be pushed beyond 2015, Shetty said that commitments made in 2005 will have to be monitored and enforced.

"There is no question of pushing back the deadlines, these Goals were so minimalistic in the first instance and the cost of their non-achievement can only be measured in terms of tens of millions of lives lost for no reason other than our collective inaction," he said.

Addressing the NGO conference last week, Shetty said 2005 was a crucial year for the MDGs. With the last three years lost to the "war on terror", he said, the Millennium Development Campaign was working to return the focus of international attention to the MDGs, including the need to achieve 0.7 percent of gross national income for official development assistance (ODA) to the world's poorer nations.

He said there was also a need to ensure the quality, not just the quantity of aid, and for a 100 percent debt cancellation.

Jeffrey Sachs, a professor at the Earth Institute at Columbia University and a director of the U.N. Millennium Project, is equally pessimistic.

"If the MDGs are not achieved by 2015," he warns, "then the world will have failed to reach its goals to save the 30 million children who would otherwise die; to provide 300 million more people with access to basic sanitation who would otherwise lack it; to ensure an adequate food supply for 230 million people who would otherwise go hungry; to ensure equality for women and men; and to ensure sustainable environment for the coming generation."

Such failure, he said, will lead to rising insecurity since extreme poverty is an important driver of conflict. And the year 2005 is the make-or-break year for the MDGs, he added.

- Inter Press Service -