Saturday, February 03, 2007

Oil producers 'must do more to fight poverty'

from The Gulf News

By Emmanuelle Landais, Staff Reporter

Dubai: An international organisation has called on oil producing countries to do more to eradicate poverty in rural areas.

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) said more than 800 million people are living on less than a dollar a day in rural areas of Asia and Africa yet only 100 million of them get international aid.

Mona Bishay, director of IFAD's Near East and North Africa division, said rural poverty is a phen-omenon with the number of people living on a dollar a day or less estimated at 59 million.

Bishay said funds and grants have been given to countries in the Middle East for technological development.

Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Turkey, Yemen, Sudan, Egypt and North African countries are some of the countries where IFAD projects target the poorest residents and the agriculture sector.

"We don't target irrigated areas, it is only dry areas with minimal rain, mountainous areas and isolated areas.

"Unemployment among young people has reached 35 per cent in North Africa. This is a very serious problem," said Bishay.

She said poor rural areas had been surveyed to gather information.

"Our dream is to create innovative models so bigger organisations can adopt them. We have to go through the government, we cannot just do it by ourselves," said Bishay.

Lennart Bage, president of IFAD, said countries in the Organisation of Petro-leum Exporting Countries (Opec) were giving support but some countries had increased their donations while others had not.

"The possibility exists for higher contributions. Higher oil prices helped some countries and allowed them to contribute more," said Bage.

"We want to enable the rural poor to support themselves. Some of the projects are temporary but we hope that once it is finished the community will be able keep going," he said.

The six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members except Bahrain are founding members of IFAD when it was established in 1977.

A cooperation agreement was signed by the GCC and IFAD in 1989 to jointly pursue shared development goals.

Bage is scheduled to attend the annual meeting of the heads of the Arab Funds Coordination Group, which will bring together the eight most important aid agencies of the Arab world in Kuwait on February 4.

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