Aid for poor guarantees security for rich - Sachs

from Peace Journalism

By Jeremy Clarke

NAIROBI, Jan 17 (Reuters) - Curbing poverty in Third World countries will not only satisfy life and death needs for the poor but also provide security for rich nations, one of the world's best-known economists said on Wednesday.

Jeffrey Sachs, special adviser to the United Nations on the Millennium Development Goals, said extreme poverty was fuelling conflicts in places such as Somalia and Sudan's Darfur region.

"Instability will grow where poverty festers in an extreme form, that's what we're seeing in the Horn of Africa. This isn't a crisis about Islam, this isn't a crisis about geopolitics, this is essentially a crisis of extreme poverty," Sachs said.

"Whether it's Darfur or Somalia or other conflict regions, people are in conflict because they're so poor they cannot stay alive -- that's what needs to be addressed for security for rich countries," he told a news conference in Nairobi.

Sachs said it was targeted investments in tools like mosquito nets, medicines and fertilisers that would help in the fight against poverty.

"Africa's small-holder farmers could double or triple their crop yield within even a single season if they have access to improved inputs," he said.

World leaders have vowed to cut extreme poverty by half, ensure universal primary education and stem the AIDS pandemic by 2015.

A key U.N. experiment is Sachs' Millennium Village Project in Senegal, Mali, Ghana, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania and Malawi.

The project in 78 villages is a blueprint for quick rural development and is expected to reach 400,000 people at an annual cost of $50 per villager over five years.

The United Nations said on Wednesday it would scale up the activity in Kenya, where it says significant improvement in food security and the fight against malaria has been achieved since the project was launched in two villages two years ago.