Development goals still a long way off

A resident of Khanh Hoa Province’s mountainous Khanh Son District in a vocational class for poverty reduction. One of the eight MDGs is to eradicate poverty by 2015. — VNA/VNS Photo
Seoul — Rich nations are failing to offer enough assistance for developing nations to meet their Millennium Development Goals, European Union Deputy Director General for Development Bernard Petit has said.
"One of the major challenges facing developing nations is their lack of resources, and to overcome that we must keep our promises, the ones we made in Monterrey (Mexico) and Gleneagles (Scotland)," Petit said yesterday at a summit in Seoul to review MDGs and ODA effectiveness.
At the summit in Seoul, Petit said the international donor community had made numerous commitments to deliver more effective assistance, but that many had not kept their word.
In 2007, official aid offered by Development Assistance Committee (DAC) member nations was US$103.7 billion – a decrease of 8.4 per cent compared to the previous year.
Even the EU was part of that negative trend, said Petit, explaining that the excellent performance of some EU member states had been overshadowed by the failure of others to honour their commitments.
However, the Development head was quick to point out that the EU remained the largest single donor in the world, contributing up to 60 per cent of all DAC assistance.
He said the EU would lead the donor community in providing 90 per cent more aid for the 2006-2010 period – the same percentage of additional aid offered by the G8 at Gleneagles in 2005 for Africa.
Participants at yesterday’s international conference to review MDGs and ODA effectiveness also discussed other issues facing the world community, such as rising oil and food prices, climate change and the economic slowdown.
Bruce Jenks, the UNDP assistant secretary general, said the growing gap between rich and poor was frightening. He said one in 16 women would die during pregnancy in the sub-Saharan countries in 2015, against one in 3,800 in the rich countries.
"We need action now, no more pledges," said Kim Hye-kyung, secretary general of Korea’s non-governmental organisation Global Civic Sharing.
Eight goals
In 2000, 189 member countries signed the United Nations’ Millennium Declaration, which commits the signatories to reach their Millennium Development Goals by 2015.The eight goals are to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger; to achieve universal primary education; to promote gender equality and empower women; to reduce child mortality; to improve maternal health; to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases; to ensure environmental sustainability; and to develop a global partnership for development.The halfway point has been reached yet achieving these goals remains a long way off.It is estimated 11 million children, most under five, die every year of curable diseases and one out of four people in the world do not have access to clean drinking water; while 114 million children have received no primary education.
Kim said that despite the great progress that had been achieved in improving the lives of the poor in the sub-Saharan continent, almost half the regional population was still living on less than $1 a day.
Korean expertise
Host nation South Korea was an example to all, delegates heard. Following the Second World War the poverty-stricken nation had gone through decades of reconstruction and was now an emerging ODA donor.
"I believe we Koreans have a lot of experience and expertise to share and contribute to global ODA effectiveness," said Park Dae-won, president of the Korea International Co-operation Agency.
"Having achieved rapid and phenomenal economic and social development in half a century, Korea has valuable know-how in poverty reduction, and we seek to share it with developing countries through our ODA projects," said Park.
Kim said more needed to be done to increase public awareness about the need to help the poor help themselves.
"We Koreans have a responsibility to help developing countries. We received so much aid for our development, and it is now time for us to return what we received to the developing world," said Kim.
Meanwhile, Viet Nam was yesterday cited as an exemplary example of successful co-operation between the national Government and the international donor community to reduce poverty.
The country had reduced poverty from 58 per cent in 1993 to 16 per cent in 2006, said Sarah Cliffe, the World Bank’s East Asia and Pacific regional director for Strategy and Co-operation.
"We donors should change our own behaviour and replace rhetoric with action," Cliffe said.
She said inconsistency in targeting and implementing projects and "doing things one way today and another way tomorrow" were plainly counterproductive.
Her views were echoed by the EU’s Petit, who said the complicated way international aid was given was hampering developing nations’ efforts to achieve their MDGs.
Petit called for a fundamental reassessment of the way donors managed and delivered aid.
"We continue to absorb the time and energy of local governments for our own individual donor missions. We arrive in various ways, at different times, and are not connected with the national calendars of recipient countries," he said.
Petit cited several African countries as examples. Each year, Tanzania had to produce 2,400 reports for aid donors. In Mali, more than 26 donors were active in the rural development sector. And in Kenya, 20 donors were buying drugs using 13 different procurement agencies, he said. — VNS

by Nguyen Minh Huyen
Source vietnamnew