May 16, 2001
Ten years ago, the plight of the least developed countries was the subject of an ambitious programme of action at the end of the United Nations LDC II conference in Paris. Now it is Brussels' turn to host the ten-yearly get together, but it is a far harder task: cynicism abounds. Virtually every commitment of the programme has been broken. By every measure, the poorest countries are worse off than in 1990. There was hope in the early 90s that the wealth created by globalization and liberalization would trickle down - but the reverse has happened.
The depressing reality on the agenda in Brussels is that the number of poor countries has actually increased from 42 to 49, with 40% of their 640m people living on less than a Dollars 1 a day. Their life expectancy is 25 years less than that of developed countries. Even the World Bank now admits (in a report just before the spring meetings last month) that few of the LDCs would meet the UN agreed 2015 targets to halve those living in poverty. Even worse, over the next half century only one LDC is projected to escape this crushing poverty. Our current model of globalization ensures the permanent marginalisation of a large proportion of the world's population.
There were three issues on which promises were made in Paris - trade, aid and debt. The last has been the subject of a major international effort, with huge popular pressure contributing to successive debt relief initiatives. Many LDCs have seen their debt servicing reduced, but it still amounts to a debilitating drain on government revenue. On trade, LDCs are losing Dollars 2.5bn a year in export revenue because of tariffs, according to a recent Oxfam report; for every Dollars 1 in aid which Bangladesh receives from the US, it loses Dollars 8 in trade restrictions. On aid, the record is most shameful: in 1990 developed countries promised 0.2% of GNP to LDCs, but to date only five countries have achieved that - Sweden, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway and Netherlands - while the average is 0.05%, representing a Dollars 3.5bn cut, bringing it to the lowest per capita level since the early 70s. The US manages only 0.02%. The Labour government may have increased the total aid budget, but it is not meeting the target to LDCs. What is needed now in Brussels is not more promises but action; what is at stake is the lives of millions of people and the credibility of an economic system and that of the international institutions managing it.
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