Development & Aid, Food and Agriculture, Global, Global Geopolitics, Global Governance, Headlines, IPS UN: Inside the Glasshouse, Poverty & SDGs

DEVELOPMENT: Home Stretch for MDGs Looks Bumpier Than Ever

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 25 2008 (IPS) - At a time when the world's cash-strapped developing nations, particularly in Africa, have admitted their inability to meet most of the U.N.'s eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), one Latin American country stands apart – confident it could even beat the deadline set by the United Nations.

"Modestly and proudly, we announce to this Assembly that Chile is achieving the Millennium Goals set for 2015- and ahead of time," Dr. Michelle Bachelet, president of Chile, told delegates.

Addressing the 192-member General Assembly, she said: "We can say that it is possible to eradicate poverty, that it is possible to emerge from underdevelopment and – even more importantly- that it is possible to do so in democracy and freedom."

Chile, which has almost tripled the size of its economy between 1990 and 2008, has "advanced strongly" on all fronts: health, education, housing, quality of life and social cohesion, she added, referring to some of goals set by the United Nations.

With a total population of over 16.4 million people, Chile's level of poverty has dropped: from about 40 percent in 1989 to 13 percent today.

The Chilean president provided one of the few bright political sparks in a gathering of over 100 world leaders, most of whom complained that the ongoing food, fuel and energy crises were undermining their attempts to achieve the MDGs set by the General Assembly back in 2000.

The eights MDGs include a 50-percent reduction in extreme poverty and hunger; universal primary education; promotion of gender equality; reduction of child mortality by two-thirds; cutbacks in maternal mortality by three-quarters; combating the spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases; ensuring environmental sustainability; and developing a North-South global partnership for development.

The volatile situation has been aggravated by an unprecedented economic crisis facing the United States, described by some as a "gathering storm" threatening to devastate the developing world.

At a high-level meeting on the MDGs Thursday, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said: "While we are moving in the right direction, we are not moving quickly enough."

Father Miguel d'Escoto Brockman, president of the General Assembly, warned that the current financial crisis will have "very serious consequences" that will impede the significant progress, "if indeed any progress is made", towards the targets established by the MDGs, "which are themselves insufficient."

"It is always the poor who pay the price for the unbridled greed and irresponsibility of the powerful," he said, taking a passing shot at the staggering 700-billion-dollar bailout, proposed by the U.S. administration, to save the high-stakes investment banks of New York from bankruptcy and collapse.

Asked if there were any other developing countries that have made public pronouncements on meeting all of the MDGs ahead of the deadline, Salil Shetty, director of the U.N.'s Millennium Campaign, told IPS: "Sadly, we don't really have easily accessible information at the country level in one place."

"But we do know that 47 countries are on track to meet the education goal, 44 countries are on track to meet the poverty goal and 34 countries are on track to meet the infant mortality goal," he said.

Interestingly, Shetty said, this includes some of the poorest countries of the world like Zambia, which is on track on six of the goals. And some big countries like Brazil, which is on track for all except the sanitation target, he added.

The biggest challenges, he said, are the environment goals and reducing the maternal mortality rates by three-quarters.

Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, executive director of the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), said it would cost the world about 6.0 billion dollars, less than a day-and-a-half of global military spending, to stop women from dying in childbirth.

"We will not achieve the MDGs unless reproductive health and the rights of women become a political and financing priority," Obaid told IPS.

She said the MDGs were designed "to put our world on a more secure and sustainable path…And it is hard to envision a safe future without safe motherhood."

The one-day high-level meeting Thursday saw the creation of a new coalition to meet the challenges facing MDGs: governments, non-governmental organisations, chief executive officers of transnational corporations, faith groups and philanthropists.

"We know this approach will work," the secretary-general said. It has already worked, he said, to successfully fight malaria, a disease that kills a child every 30 seconds.

Ban has called for 72 billion dollars per year in external financing to achieve the MDGs by 2015.

"While the figure might seem daunting, it was, in fact affordable, particularly considering the 267 billion dollars spent last year by countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) on agricultural subsidies alone," he added.

Kenyan President Mwai Kbaki singled out rising oil prices as a factor in the current economic crisis facing most developing nations.

"I wish to make a passionate appeal to oil-producing nations to consider the plight of non-oil-producing nations, especially those in the developing world," he said. The rapid increase in oil prices is hurting developing countries the most, "and does not augur well for international peace and stability."

But Rwandan President Paul Kagame was more confident of his battle against poverty.

"In the context of fighting poverty and achieving the MDGs objectives, our second generation poverty reduction strategy is gathering momentum in Africa, East Africa and in Rwanda, contextualised in greater stability and peace," he added.

He said in Rwanda, one of the recent success stories in Africa, "we are registering a healthy economic growth rate, currently averaging 7.0 percent annually, in an increasingly open and conducive environment that encourages domestic and foreign investors."

Outlining some of the successes of the MDGs, the secretary-general said that measles vaccinations have prevented 7.5 million deaths. There have also been inroads against AIDS, while there is a surge in school enrolment in several African countries following the abolition of school fees, he added.

"Millions of poor households have risen out of extreme poverty, not just in China and India, but in many countries, including some of the poorest," Ban said. Still, he admitted that sub-Saharan Africa actually saw the number of poor increase between 1990 and 2005.

Pronouncing her verdict on the high-level meeting, Alison Woodhead, spokeswoman for Oxfam International, told IPS: "The summit has proven that there is a renewed appetite for the fight against poverty."

She said the high-level meeting has injected new life into the MDGs. The sense of urgency on maternal health and fighting malaria is genuine progress. But the fact remains that this year there are more people living in poverty than last year, she pointed out.

"The financial crisis and recent increases in food prices have raised the bar even higher in meeting poverty goals," she said.

The big failure of the summit is the response to the food crisis, she said, because world leaders have simply not risen to the challenge, with commitments made months ago remaining largely unfulfilled.

"With one billion people suffering from acute hunger, what we have seen this week is nowhere near good enough," Woodhead said.