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MILLENNIUM GOALS-BRAZIL: Poverty Must Be Attacked at Its Roots, Say Activists

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Sep 15 2005 (IPS) - Instead of focusing on reducing the number of people living in extreme poverty, the world’s leaders should be working towards combating the root causes of poverty, since this is the only real way of eradicating it, says the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP).

The GCAP is a worldwide alliance of more than 100 non-governmental groups and coalitions. Last Sunday, demonstrations were organised in over 80 countries as a “wake-up call” to the world leaders meeting this Wednesday through Friday at the United Nations headquarters in New York, urging them to live up to the commitments they have made through the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The eight goals adopted by the international community in 2000, which include 18 specific targets to be met by 2015, are nevertheless overly limited in scope, because they do not attack the root causes of poverty, such as persistent inequalities, said Fernanda de Carvalho, one of the coordinators of the GCAP campaign in Brazil.

Consequently, while the first MDG is to reduce by half the proportion of people living in extreme hunger and poverty by 2015, using 1990 levels as a baseline, the key to eradicating poverty lies with the eighth goal – creating “a global partnership for development” that will foster more favourable international trade and financial conditions, Carvalho told IPS.

The remaining six MDGs are to achieve universal primary education, promote gender equality and empower women, reduce child mortality, improve maternal health, combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, and ensure environmental sustainability.

Without changes in these global relations, many countries are deprived of the economic autonomy they need to implement their own policies to eradicate extreme poverty, because they are restricted by the rules imposed by the International Monetary Fund, external debt, and unfair trade, Carvalho argued.

While Brazil is in a better situation than many other developing countries, it is a prime example of the difficulties faced in combating extreme poverty, and especially in overcoming the marked social inequality among different sectors of the population, she said.

A significant reduction was achieved in 1994 by bringing inflation under control, but since then there has been no real progress, she added.

The social programmes implemented by the government of leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, such as the Zero Hunger initiative and the “family grant” income assistance programme, have succeeded in transferring a certain amount of the country’s wealth to the poorest sectors, but “they do nothing to change the structure that generates poverty and inequality,” said Carvalho, who is also a coordinator at the non-governmental Brazilian Institute for Social and Economic Analysis (IBASE).

These efforts to alleviate poverty do not compensate for the unemployment and low wages resulting from the government’s economic policies, based primarily on maintaining high interest rates, which concentrates wealth in one small sector, and a fiscal adjustment policy that sacrifices spending on education, health care and infrastructure, she said.

Nevertheless, Brazil is well on track towards meeting a number of the other MDGs, because of the social policies it has been pursuing since long before these particular goals were adopted by the 189 U.N. member countries in the year 2000.

The MDGs offer the advantage of establishing quantitative targets to be met by a specific deadline – the year 2015 in most cases – thus allowing for more precise monitoring of progress, remarked Luis Fernando Rezende, a social sciences expert with the state-run Institute for Applied Economic Research.

But Brazil is not limiting its efforts to the eight MDGs and their 18 specific targets, and uses a great many more indicators than the 48 defined by the U.N., because of the importance it places on other dimensions that these do not take into account, such as environmental concerns, the labour market, child labour, slave labour, racial inequality and human rights, said Rezende.

Some initiatives aimed at fighting poverty through the transfer of income have been in force for over a decade in Brazil. One example is the programme that provides pensions for retirement-aged agricultural workers who have not paid into pension plans during the years they worked. This initiative alone has served to reduce the number of Brazilians living in poverty by 17 million, Rezende noted.

In 2003, the government combined a number of initiatives into the family grant programme, which now provides 7.5 million households with a monthly income supplement averaging 65 reals (28 dollars). The ultimate goal is to extend this assistance to a total of 11.2 million families, which means roughly 44 million poor people, by the end of next year.

In addition, Brazil has made major advances with regard to education, infant mortality, curbing the spread of AIDS, and achieving gender equity in the school system. The greatest challenge it still faces is that of providing adequate sanitation services.

Unresolved disputes between state and municipal governments and a lack of public expenditure on the necessary infrastructure are largely to blame for the fact that almost one half of Brazil’s 182 million inhabitants do not live in areas with proper sewage systems.

Without progress in this crucial area, it will be difficult to reduce infant mortality, which has declined considerably over the last few decades, but still stands at 24.4 deaths per 1000 live births, “a very high rate,” admitted Rezende.

Brazil also faces other problems that are not addressed by the overly simplified criteria of the MDGs and the human development index (HDI) designed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), he added.

For instance, Brazil has practically achieved the goal of ensuring universal primary education, since over 97 percent of the country’s school-aged children do in fact attend school.

However, the quality of education remains a problem, as reflected by a recent study which showed that 76 percent of Brazilians between the ages of 15 and 64 are either completely or functionally illiterate.

In the coming years, Brazil will enjoy an exceptional opportunity to significantly reduce poverty, Rezende noted. A demographic shift over the next two decades resulting from a drop in birth rates will mean considerable growth of the economically active sector of the population, while the proportion of children will decline and that of the elderly will increase more slowly.

Two other factors that can have a major impact on reducing poverty are economic growth and greater economic and social equality. These are dependent on decisions adopted by the government and society, such as tax reform and other mechanisms for redistributing income, he concluded.