Global Policy Forum

By Thalif Deen

Global poverty is threatening world security and jeopardising international efforts to end violent conflict, instability and terrorism, a team of leading development experts declared in a study released Monday.

"When people lack access to food, medical care, safe drinking water, and a chance at a better future, their societies are likely to experience instability, and the unrest spills over to the rest of the world," says Jeffrey Sachs, U.N. special adviser and professor at Columbia University. Sachs, who headed the 265-member team called the Millennium Task Force, unveiled a global plan of action aimed at reducing poverty by half and radically improving the lives of at least one billion people by the year 2015.

"Breaking the poverty trap of the poorest countries is a matter of extreme urgency for our security," he said. "Poor and hungry societies are much more likely than high-income societies to fall into conflict over scarce vital resources."

According to the United Nations, more than one billion people worldwide live on less than a dollar a day. Another 2.7 billion struggle to survive on less than two dollars a day, while 11 million children die each year from completely preventable causes like malaria, diarrhea and pneumonia. Additionally, 114 million children do not attend primary school and 584 million women are illiterate.

A summary of the voluminous 3,000-page project titled "A Practical Plan to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals" (MDGs) lists a series of recommendations -- some of which have been labeled "quick wins". These include: the free mass distribution of malaria bed nets, which can save the lives of up to one million children per year in sub-Saharan Africa, and ending user fees for primary schools and essential health services, compensated by increased donor aid as necessary. Sachs said the experts also proposed expanding the school meals programmes to cover all children in hunger hotspots, using locally produced foods, and a massive replenishment of soil nutrients for impoverished farmers, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa.

At a much broader level, the recommendations include: the opening of high-income country markets to developing country exports; the creation of ambitious national development strategies; an increase in regional trade among poorer nations; elimination of debt; the provision of better quality aid; and a hefty increase in official development assistance (ODA). The report also calls for gender empowerment by strengthening opportunities for post-primary education for girls and sexual and reproductive health and rights for women.

"Until now, we did not have a concrete plan for achieving the MDGs," Sachs said. "The experts who contributed to this huge undertaking have shown without a doubt that we can still meet the goals -- if we start putting this plan into action right now." The MDGs include a 50 percent reduction in poverty and hunger; universal primary education; reduction of child mortality by two-thirds; cutbacks in maternal mortality by three-quarters; the promotion of gender equality; and the reversal of the spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases.

A summit meeting of 189 world leaders in Sep. 2000 pledged to meet all of these goals by the year 2015. But their implementation has depended primarily on increased development aid by Western donors. A second summit meeting, scheduled to take place in New York in September this year, will review the progress made so far and set the world's development agenda for the next decade.

A World Bank report released last week warned that about two million people in Asia --including one million Indonesians, 435,000 Indians and 250,000 Sri Lankans -- are at risk of sinking deeper into poverty in the aftermath of the tsunami disaster

The experts focus heavily on the need for a substantial increase in development aid to the world's poorer nations. "The question is not whether aid works," says the study. "Ample evidence shows that it does when it is sufficient and well directed. The problem has been how and when aid has been delivered, to which countries, and in what amounts." Sachs said that 2005 will mark the 35th year since the U.N. General Assembly first affirmed the target of 0.7 of gross national product (GNP) as overseas development aid (ODA). So far, only five countries have met or surpassed the target: Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden.

In the past two years, he said, six other countries have committed themselves to specific timetables to achieving the target before 2015: Belgium, Finland, France, Ireland, Spain and the United Kingdom. Still, the remaining 11 of the world's 22 rich nations, have failed to make any commitment to meet this target. Jonathan Hepburn, policy coordinator of Oxfam's MDGs campaign, said the report lays down the gauntlet to the leaders of the rich countries. The United States, Japan and Germany, three of the major donors, should establish a timetable to meet their ODA targets, Hepburn told IPS. "They lack the political will," he added.

"(This year) must see substantial new investment to fund a war on poverty. The tiny amounts currently given by rich countries are inexcusable and the poorest are paying with their lives," he added. In an interview with Cable News Network (CNN) last week, the outgoing U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said the United States does not accept a percentage of GNP as the best measure of international aid. "We do not accept that definition of giving," he added, although the United States has reaffirmed the principle at several U.N. meetings over the years.

Hepburn said the global outpouring of generosity in response to the tsunami disaster shows what the international community can achieve when it unites behind a common purpose. The question posed by the Sachs report is "can we now turn this energy to ending the scourge of extreme poverty and achieving the MDGs?" "The cost is low. The benefits are huge. Oxfam believes we can," said Hepburn.

Immediately after the outpouring of aid in the aftermath of the tsunami disaster, Eveline Herfkens, U.N.'s Executive Coordinator for MDGs Campaign, told IPS: "There is a big risk that there will be no additional aid (for MDGs)." A former Dutch Minister for Development Cooperation, Herfkens said that most European countries have a fixed development budget. "So there will be a very big risk of diversion (of aid) from long term investment on poor people" to the tsunami emergency, she added. Emergency aid, Herfkens pointed out, counts as part of official development assistance (ODA), particularly in relation to developing nations.

In its report, the Millennium Task Force also says that private businesses are important partners in achieving the MDGs. "Long term poverty reduction in developing countries will not happen without sustained economic growth, which requires a vibrant private sector."

Saradha Iyer of the Malaysia-based Third World Network said that several non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have been critical of the Sachs project based on procedural as well as substantive issues. Procedurally, she told IPS, the experts have been attacked as lacking in transparency and not taking adequate account of NGO perspectives. She pointed out that NGOs on the expert task forces were handpicked and not according to any criteria. She also said the bulk of the 3,000 page documents was "too academic as to be useful for something as practical as the MDGs." Most reports were about 300 pages long. "Substantively," Iyer said, "the report favours the business as usual neo-liberal scenario, going easy on the private sector."

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