THIS WEEK world leaders gathered in New York to encourage progress towards meeting the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals (MDG) – a set of eight objectives, ranging from eradicating extreme poverty and hunger to reducing child mortality and achieving universal primary education, that are to be achieved by 2015.
Most experts say it will be impossible to meet many of the goals, which range from cutting the number of people in extreme poverty by half and the number of children who die before reaching five by two-thirds, to fairer trade and spreading the Internet to the world’s poor.
According to Robert Zoellick, president of the World Bank, the drive to overcome extreme poverty and hunger has been at the heart of global efforts to achieve the MDG since their adoption a decade ago.
The summit’s purpose was to take stock of successes and failures, and to move towards “concrete strategies for action”. However, this summit would have done the world a great service by acknowledging what has gone so wrong with the MDGs, and choosing a radically different approach to achieving these goals.
The MDGs, as they are currently conceived, address the symptoms of poverty and underdevelopment, but mostly ignore the deeper underlying causes. Part of the problem is that many of the developed countries have not met their financial commitments to the attainment of the goals.
The result is that the goals, though laudable, divert attention from the economic and political policies that produce the real causes of underdevelopment and poverty in developing countries.
Instead of vowing to support humanitarian objectives and throwing money at poverty’s symptoms, developed countries must recognise the urgency of removing the obstacles to development that they have the power to address.
Moreover, the current system of global trade is deeply inequitable: it exposes developing countries to unfair competition, and discourages diversification of their economies. It is estimated that these countries face a burden of foreign debt of $500 billion that is simply incompatible with the pursuit of development goals.
Addressing these issues is vital if developing countries are to have any chance of succeeding or alleviating poverty any time. United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon believes the MDGs could still be met by the 2015 deadline if enough work is done, despite the current economic crisis.
He says more money and political will are needed to give life to the MDGs but the main summit document acknowledges that the financial crisis has increased inequality and vulnerability in the world and halted progress made after the 2000 Millennium summit.
Given the state of the global crisis, we do not share Mr Ban’s optimism the MDGs could be met.