U.N., world financial officials say disorganization, disagreement hinder relief of global poverty

from The International Herald Tribune

UNITED NATIONS: Disagreement and disorganization among the world's richest nations are hampering efforts to relieve poverty and desperation in the poorest countries, U.N. and international financial officials said Monday.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban-Ki Moon told officials from the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and World Trade Organization that rich nations were coming up short in promises of increased aid to developing countries, which fell more than five percent last year.

And, he said, the process of distributing assistance is "unnecessarily complicated, fragmented and poorly coordinated."

"All too often, aid is driven more by politics than by need, undermining its effectiveness," Ban told the U.N. Economic and Social Council's annual meeting with the international financial organizations and the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development.

Ban and other speakers offered progress reports on the Monterrey Consensus — a 2002 international agreement on alleviating poverty and related problems — and the U.N.'s Millenium Development Goals, which call on governments to cut extreme poverty by half, stop the spread of AIDS, ensure universal primary education, and expand access for the poor to clean water, all by 2015.

Alejandro M. Werner, deputy chairman of the IMF and World Bank's Development Committee, which advises the two bodies on international aid issues, said a strong global economy was helping reduce poverty, the first of the millenium goals.

But he cited "mixed results" in other goals, such as getting more children to school and reducing child mortality, malnutrition and deaths in childbirth.

Werner said the committee felt that increasing gender equality and giving women greater control of their lives around the world were key to achieving all aspects of the millenium goals.

Valentine Rugwabiza, deputy director-general of the World Trade Organization, urged progress on the Doha round of negotiations to liberalize global commerce, which she called key to improving life in poorer nations.

The talks at the WTO, named after the capital of Qatar where negotiations began in 2001, have been stalled since last July over rich nations' refusal to significantly cut farm subsidies, and by the reluctance of developing nations to grant greater access to their markets.

Top trade representatives from the United States, European Union, Brazil, India Australia and Japan have proposed a new year-end deadline to complete negotiations.

Failure of the negotiations, "would mean that developing countries lose a once-in-a-generation opportunity to open world markets for their exports," she said. "Time is running out."