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News :: Globalization |
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Programs To Help Poor Nations Criticized |
Current rating: 0 |
by Naomi Koppel
(No verified email address) |
08 Jul 2003
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The News-Gazette provided only a very truncated and imcomplete version of this story in today's (7/8/03) edition on page A-3. A complete and much more informative version is provided here, one that clearly calls for change in the present policies of the IMF and World Bank. Since the full version goes outside what the N-G finds to be politically acceptable in its myopic worldview (that is, uncritical support for Bush's foreign and economic policies), it was likely watered down to a benign synopsis by an editor at the N-G, instead of being reported on in its entirety, as it is here. |
GENEVA -- International programs to help poor nations develop and industrialize are failing in many countries and need radical changes if the world is to meet its targets for reducing poverty, a major United Nations report said Tuesday.
Instead of forcing developing countries to cut back on public spending, the International Monetary Fund and World Bank should be pressing rich countries to provide more help, the 367-page Human Development Report 2003 (http://www.undp.org/hdr2003/) said.
Despite a widespread assumption that all countries are slowly getting richer, the report says that 54 are poorer now than they were in 1990, while life expectancy fell in 34 countries -- primarily because of the HIV/AIDS epidemic -- and 21 countries are hungrier than they were in 1990.
"For many countries, the 1990s were a decade of despair," said the report, produced by the U.N. Development Program.
It said at the current rate the world will fail to meet most of the "Millennium Development Goals" agreed upon by the countries of the world in 2000. They call for poverty to be reduced by half by 2015 and for big steps forward in education, sanitation and health.
UNDP Administrator Mark Malloch-Brown said a "guerrilla assault" is needed on the so-called "Washington Consensus" that sets out the general policies used by the IMF and the World Bank -- including an emphasis on careful control of public spending, tax reform, trade liberalization and privatization.
"The IMF and the World Bank should no longer set these kinds of ceilings" on spending, he said.
"These measures were introduced at a time when finances were leaking red ink all over the place and there was an urgent need to stabilize. The strategy had its time and place. The Washington Consensus did some good things, but people stuck with it too long -- and it wasn't enough."
The report cited the case of Malawi, which has produced a strategy for reducing poverty based on IMF and World Bank guidelines. But the plan would not achieve the Millennium Development Goals.
"Malawi requires far more donor assistance -- as do many other countries in similar circumstances," the report said.
"Rather than being told to lower their sights, they should be aided in achieving the goals, with the IMF and World Bank helping to mobilize the needed additional assistance."
The study says a total reliance on market forces and increased trade to achieve development will not succeed.
"Public interventions are necessary to set the preconditions for market-led economic growth," said Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, chief author of the report.
The IMF had no immediate comment on the U.N. report.
The study also includes UNDP's annual Human Development Index, which ranks 175 countries based on income per person, life expectancy, literacy and school enrollment.
For the third year in a row, Norway topped the list, which is based on 2001 data. Two other Scandinavian countries -- Iceland and Sweden -- followed. The United States dropped one place to seventh but for the first time overtook Canada -- which was top of the list in 2000.
The bottom 25 places on the list were all held by countries in sub-Saharan Africa, with Sierra Leone in last position.
Copyright 2003 The Associated Press |
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The Lost Decade |
by Larry Elliott
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
10 Jul 2003
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They Were Promised a Brighter Future, But in the 1990s the World's Poor Fell Further Behind
The widening gulf between the global haves and have-nots was starkly revealed last night when the UN announced that while the US was booming in the 1990s more than 50 countries suffered falling living standards.
The UN's annual human development report (http://www.undp.org/hdr2003/) charted increasing poverty for more than a quarter of the world's countries, where a lethal combination of famine, HIV/Aids, conflict and failed economic policies have turned the clock back.
Highlighting the setbacks endured by sub-Saharan Africa and the countries that emerged from the break-up of the Soviet Union at the end of the cold war, the UN called for urgent action to meet its millennium development goals for 2015.
These include a halving of the number of people living on less than a dollar a day, a two-thirds drop in mortality for the under-fives, universal primary education and a halving of those without access to safe drinking water and improved sanitation.
The report said the 90s had seen a drop from 30% to 23% in the number of people globally living on less than a dollar a day, but the improvement had largely been the result of the progress in China and India, the world's two most populous countries.
Despite some sporadic successes such as Ghana and Senegal, there was little hope of Africa meeting the UN's 2015 development goals; on current trends it would be 2147 before the poorest countries in the poorest continent halved poverty and 2165 before child mortality was cut by two-thirds. Thirty of the 34 countries classified by the UN as "low human development" are in sub-Saharan Africa.
Taking issue with those who have argued that the "tough love" policies of the past two decades have spawned the growth of a new global middle class, the report says the world became ever more divided between the super-rich and the desperately poor.
The richest 1% of the world's population (around 60 million) now receive as much income as the poorest 57%, while the income of the richest 25 million Americans is the equivalent of that of almost 2 billion of the world's poorest people. In 1820 western Europe's per capita income was three times that of Africa's; by the 90s it was more than 13 times as high.
In Norway, top of the UN's league table for human development, life expectancy at birth is 78.7 years, there is 100% literacy and annual income is just under $30,000 (about £18,200). At the other end of the scale, a newborn child in Sierra Leone will be lucky to reach its 35th birthday, has a two in three chance of growing up illiterate and would have an income of $470 a year.
Overall human development, measured by the UN as an amalgam of income, life expectancy and literacy, fell in 21 countries during the 90s. By contrast only four countries suffered falling human development in the 80s.
"Though average incomes have risen and fallen over time, human development has historically shown sustained improvement, especially when measured by the human development index," the report said. "But the 1990s saw unprecedented stagnation, with the HDI falling in 21 countries.
"Much of the decline in the 1990s can be traced to the spread of HIV/AIDS, which lowered life expectancies, and to a collapse in incomes, particularly in the commonwealth of independent states."
The UN said the events of September 11 had created a "genuine consensus" that poverty was the world's problem, but urged the west to abandon the one-size-fits-all liberalization agenda foisted on poor countries.
Mark Malloch-Brown, administrator of the UN development program, said many countries in Africa and Latin America held up as examples of how to kickstart development were among the stragglers in the global economy.
"The poster children of the 1990s are among those who didn't do terribly well," he said. "There are structural restraints on development. Market reforms are not enough. You can't just liberalize; you need an interventionist strategy."
The report added that: "Over the past 20 years too much development thinking and practice have confused market-based economic growth with laissez faire."
The west needed to tear down trade barriers, dismantle its lavish subsidy regimes, provide deeper debt relief and double aid from $50bn to $100bn a year. This would provide the resources for investment in the building blocks of development - health, education, clean water and rural roads.
"Poor countries cannot afford to wait until they are wealthy before they invest in their people," said Jeffrey Sachs, special adviser to Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general, on the UN's millennium development goals.
Economic growth alone would not rescue the world from poverty, the report said. "Without addressing issues like malnutrition and illiteracy that are both causes and symptoms of poverty, the goals will not be met.
"The statistics today are shaming: more than 13 million children have died through diarrhea disease in the past decade. Each year, over half a million women, one for every minute of the day, die in pregnancy and childbirth. More than 800 million suffer from malnutrition."
It added: "For many countries the 1990s were a decade of despair. Some 54 countries are poorer now than in 1990. In 21, a larger proportion is going hungry.
"In 14, more children are dying before age five. In 12, primary school enrolments are shrinking. In 34, life expectancy has fallen. Such reversals in survival were previously rare."
Matthew Lockwood, head of UK Advocacy Team, ActionAid, said: "The shocking truth is that the poor are getting poorer. Leaders, in rich and poor countries alike, are not taking poverty seriously enough.
"You don't solve this problem by making the leaders of poor countries accountable to their rich-country counterparts. They need to be accountable to their own citizens. Poor people must have a voice.
"We agree with much in the report but we would have liked to see more about grassroots participation."
© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003
http://www.guardian.co.uk/ |
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