Global Policy Forum

Aids, education, debt relief and other hot topics for poor countries are likely to be pushed to one side at this weekend's World Bank meetings as rich nations ponder the global economy and rebuilding Iraq. A World Bank report for discussion at the meetings said "bluntly speaking" many poor countries will not meet the United Nations goals of cutting poverty in half by 2015.

But non-governmental groups, developing country and World Bank officials fear tackling poverty will be buried under talks about how to rev up the sluggish economy and rebuilding Iraq. "In terms of priorities everybody is concerned about the war," World Bank President James Wolfensohn said this week.

The official agenda includes talks about how to better monitor progress toward the UN goals and about giving poor nations more say on the World Bank and International Monetary Fund boards. This is a subject close to the hearts of developing country officials who dislike how Bank and IMF policies are often dictated by rich countries with larger board votes.

"The most important thing for us at these meetings is to increase the voice of the developing countries in these institutions," said an official from one developing country.

African countries only have two seats on each executive board while the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, France and Germany all have individual seats. Poor nations would like more seats but with the attention of rich countries elsewhere they do not expect that any time soon. "Perhaps it won't happen now," another developing country official said. "But this is out of the Pandora's box now. Nobody can put it back."

The UN Millennium Development Goals aim to wipe out extreme poverty and hunger, ensure all primary school age children have access to education, empower women, reduce child mortality, beat HIV/Aids and other diseases and ensure environmental sustainability by 2015.

But the goals are way off track. The World Bank estimates about a billion people in the developing world still have no access to safe drinking water while each minute a woman dies in pregnancy or childbirth, with 99 per cent of maternal deaths in developing countries.

The education target is the closest to being met but is still in need of more funding. "At the moment the G7 spends less than the cost of a stealth bomber each year on aid to education," said Oliver Buston, policy advisor for the aid agency, Oxfam. Around 1 million children around the world, including an estimated 400,000 in Bangladesh, participated in the "world's biggest lesson" on Wednesday, an event organized by NGOs to draw attention to the global crisis in education.

NGOs have also expressed concern that there will be no attempt at this year's World Bank and IMF meetings to drum up more money from rich countries for debt relief. "You would think as the HIPC (heavily indebted poor countries) programme is failing this badly the fact that they're not going to the boards and saying it is, looks like they're sweeping it under the rug," said Rick Rowden, a policy researcher for Jubilee USA, a debt-reduction charity. The World Bank has admitted that HIPC has moved along much more slowly than originally expected with only eight countries having completed the programme.

But Wolfensohn said on Monday the initiative won't be on the agenda this weekend even though the programme is going to need more money. "The concern is that at some point we'll want to come back and take another look at the whole thing," he said. "But not at this meeting."

Some observers say it is right that the focus of the meetings should be on the global economy and Iraq. "At the immediate moment, the problems have to do with Iraq and the global economy," said Ted Truman of the Institute for International Economics. "If those things can be done right and constructively, then those other issues can be addressed."

But others said that if poverty is to be successfully vanquished, now is the time to start work. "The Iraq issue is a short term issue and in a few months hopefully it will be a matter of the past," said a World Bank source. "But poverty is a long time issue."

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