mdg promises to keep

7/29/2019 MDG Promises to Keep

1/6

P r o m i s e s t o K e e p


2/6

develop men t" which includes fair trad e, dehl relief andmore generous foreign aid.The M DGs are the most com prehensive set of devel-opment targets ever set down on paper. Time-boundand measurable, they received unprecedented politicalsupport. Although many criticized them for not goingfar enou gh, they w ere at least believed to be achievable.Progress during the first five years, however, was notgood. "If current trends persist," says UN SecretaryGeneral Kofi Annan, "there is a risk that many of thepoorest countries will not be able to meet many ofthem." Given the bleak findings in two recent UNreports, this is something of an understatement.' TheSecretary General goes on to say, "Let us be clear ab outthe costs of missing this opportunity: millions ot livesthat could have been saved will be lost; many freedomsthat could have been secured will be denied; and weshall inhabit a more dangerous and unstable world."

In fact, it was all the assembled United Nations coulddo at their World Summit in September 2003 to avoidhaving the United States throw the MDGs right out ofthe window. Hama Amadou, the Prime Minister ofNiger, told the BBC afterwards, "A few years ago, devel-oped countries made some promises; but since then,very few concrete actions were implemented." BobGeldof said (less diplomatically) that the tepid result ofthe meeting was "bloody outrageous".'A legacy o f debtAid critics say that aid does not work, and judging fromthe hundreds of millions of people living in absolutepoverty, it is not difficult to see why they might reach thatconclusion . The criticism is usually unfau*, however. Aidthat is properly targeted and properly monitored doeswork. The most vociferous critics seldom diiferentiatebetween aid that vaccinates or educates children, andaid that subsidizes locomotive sales, or pays for theinstallation of high-end rich-country technology insettings where it is almost guaranteed to fail.

And they ignore or forget that huge volumes otforeign aid over the past 50 years have been used tosupport and sustain corrupt dictators like Mobutu SeseSeko in the Congo, Siad Barre in Somalia and SamuelDoe in Liberia. Tbis was done not because donorsapprove of corruption and dictatorship (although itmight sometimes seem that way), but to protect andadvance Western interests during the Cold War.To say that aid given to such regimes was squanderedis an understatement, but it was squandered knowingly- and it was squandered in the first instance by the

givers, not the receivers. The Cold War may be over, bu tthe debt racked up by many of these client regimesremains on the books.

T h e re i s n o g u a ra n t e e t h a t t h eef fects o f poverty , s ta te co l lapseand conf l ic t wi l l conf ine themselves ,as they once d id , to the increas ing lya r t i f i c i a l b o rd e rs o f wh a t u s e d t o b ec a lle d t h e " T h i r d W o r l d " .

Consider the formidable challenges ahead of Ellenlohnson-Sirleaf, who took office as the President ofLiberia in lanuary 2006 with three major distinctions.First, she is the first truly democratically elected leaderin the country's history. Second, she is the first womanhead of state in Africa. And third, she inherits one ofth eworst debt loads on the continent. Liberia's externaldebt is in the neighbourhood of $3.8 billion. All of itwas negotiated by one tyrant after anotbcr, more thanhalf of it with "aid" agencies like the InternationalMon etary F und, the World Bank, the African Develop-ment Bank and others. Liberia's debt-to-export ratiowas more than 2700 percent at the end of 2004, about18 times higher than what is thought to be "sustain-able".' This is a bit like saying that Liberia is in 18 timesworse financial trouble than other c ountries currentlyon the verge of bankruptcy.Strategic givingThe Cold War may be over, but Western strategic interestsdo co ntinue , if not in Liberia. And otber wars persist inskewing foreign aid. Iraq and Afghanistan certainlyreceive disproportionate attention. So do oil producerslike Chad and Fquatorial Guinea, not to mentioncountries like China, Pakistan and Indonesia, wheredonor countries have trade and security interests.Meanwhile, don ors, academics and critics pore rest-lessly through the ruins of past aid program s, searchingfor ever more sophisticated ways of dealing with seem-ingly intractable developmen t problem s. New fads rollregularly over the aid business like waves on a beach:population control, integrated rural development, thebasic human needs approach, growth-with-equity,structural adjustment, appropriate technology, genderand development, microfinance, civil society, goodgovernance, security sector reform and a dozen others,many of which will be consigned in due course to thedevelopment dumpster.

After 40 or 50 years of foreign aid, it seems almostnaive to return to the basic aid objective as taxpayersunderstand it - poverty reduction. Much of the aid


3/6

Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf taok office as the Prcsiilcn! of Liberia inJanuary 2006. She is the first truly ilanoiratiailly elected leaderill the eounlry'!! history: she is the first wonutii head of stute inAfrica; and she inherits one ofthe worst tiehi loads on thecontinent. This debt is connected to huge volumes of foreign aidthat supported corrupt dictatorships during the Cold War.

establishment seems to have lost sight of this idea, or tohave confused means and ends.Rising numbersHistorically, when not diverted by political andcommercial interests, official development assistancehas focused its main efforts on economic growth.Growth is not in itself a bad thing, but alone it is insuf-ficient. Herman llaly, once a World Bank economist,pointed out that when something grows, it gets bigger.When something develops, it gets different.' As asynonym lor development, growth assumes that thetrickle-down approach really does work in alleviatingpoverty. John Kenneth Gaibraith, another economist,said many years ago that the trickle down theory is likefeeding oats to a horse. If you feed the horse enough, a fewgrains will pass throu gh to the road for the sparrows.Nevertheless, some things re growing. Foreign aid.

for example, is growing. In 2004, it reached an all-tihigh of $79 billion, the reversal of a 15-year downwatrend, and in 2005, it grew again. Much of this recgrowth in official development assistance, however, hbeen used for debt relief and emergency assistanNeither of these is a bad thing, but they do not cremuch in the way of new m oney for development, espcially in the poorest countries like Liberia, where modebt repayment has stopped anyway.

In addition to thefivecountries that currently spemore than 0.7 percent of national income on officdevelopment assistance (Denmark, Finland, Luxebourg, Norway and Sweden), six more bavc promisto do so by 2015. Canada, the only OECD membcountry that has run a consistent budget surplus, is among them.Targets and pledges have been useful in the officdevelopment assistance business, not so much as gothat governments have any intention of reaching, but

ex post facto demonstrations that donor promises ha consistently hollow ring to them. The famous atarget of 0.7 percent of gross national income for doncountries - established by the 1969 Pearson Commsion on international development - has proven im posible for a dozen rich countries over the 37 years it hbeen out there, even though rich countries have enjoysome ot the most accelerated growth in a centuduring that time.

As a percentage ofthe overall gross national incomof rich countries, official development assistance - one-third of one percent - remains significantly belo1990 levels, and significantly short of 0.7 percent.Canada in 2005, we were seventh from the bottom,something like 0.34 percent. That number was, in faa significant jum p over 2004 because of huge infusioof aid to Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as a very larcontribution for tsunami relief.Othe r things are growing too, and not in a good wThe number of people in Africa living on a dollar a d(or less) increased from 227 million in 1990, to 3million in 2004. And an estimated 2.7 billion peopmore tban halt ot those living in developing ct>untrisurvive on less th an two dollars a day.Aid watchers take heart from positive changesAsia, where absolute poverty (the dollar a day calcultion) has declined from 936 million in 1990, to 7miMion in 2004, a remarkable achievement resultimainly from sustained growth in China and India. B

Branko Milanovic, a lead economist with the WorBank, pu ts a different spin on the numbers. In whatcalls a "downwardly mobile world", Milanovic show


4/6

In African countriesj a ratio of one doctor for every 10^000 people isnot unco mm on. This compares to one doctor per 500 people in theUnited States.

- Uiiiteil Naiians I'opiitutioH Fund, State of World Population 2005

that globally, tbe gap between rich countries and poorcountries is growing. For example in 1960, there were41 rich countries, 19 of them non-Western. By 2000,there were 31 rich countries, only nine of them non-Western. And almost all of the non-Western middle-income countries had dropped to the ranks of the poor.In India and China, widely quoted average growth ratesconceal huge levels of inequality between urban andrural populations.'Broken promisesIn 1978, senior government delegates meeting at aWorld Health Organization summit in Alma-Atapledged "health for all by the year 2000." It was not anidle or ill-considered target; the goal, relating almostexclusively to primary health care, was more achievablein that 22-year time frame than the current health-related targets ofthe 15-year Millennium DevelopmentGoals. Needless to say, the "health for all" slogan was

forgotten by most, not long after donor representativesreturned home. The development business, in fact, islittered with the empty promises of donor govern-men ts. Meeting at a 1990 UNFSCO conference in Thai-land, governments solemnly pledged to provide "educa-tion for all" at some unspecified future date. At the timethere were 100 million children with no access toprimary education. Today, the nu mber has risen to 115million.

The 1990 United Nations World Summit for Childrenwas a repeat performance. Led by 71 heads of governmentand other senior officials, the Summit adopted a"Declaration on the Survival, Protection and Develop-ment of Children" and a "Plan of Action" for imple-menting the declaration in the 1990s. Since then, someprogress has been made, but it falls far short ofthe 1990goals. Today, an estimated 30,000 children under the ageof five die every da y from preventable diseases, a note-worthy 25 percent decline (if the numbers are to be

Unfair TradeDONOR COUNTRIES GIVE, but they also take. Key exportsfrom developing countries - clothing, agricultural products,textiles - remain subject to high tariffs in rich countries. Andagricultural subsidies in rich countries give them an unfairtrading advantage, undercutting the p roductivity of farmersin developing countries. It is estimated that free trade infarm products alone would be worth $20 billion todeveloping countries.

The Doha Round of World Trade Organization negotia-tions that began in 2001 was aimed at fixing this problem .At first, the talks looked pro mising. But the rich countriesthat initially promised to reduce agricultural subsidies haveactually done the opposite. Rich countries provide onebillion dollars a year in agricultural assistance to poor coun-tries, but they spend one billion dollars a day subsidizing

over-production at home. The indifferent effort to keep theDoha Round alive at the WTO Conference in Hong Kong inDecember 2005 managed little more than a half-heartedpromise by rich countries to stop subsidizing theiragricultural exports by 2013. Other subsidies and high tariffsagainst imports fro m developing countries remaineduntouched. The Doha Round collapsed altogether in July2006 when negotiators at the Geneva talks failed to reachagreement, leaving many in the international communitycounting the setback not in months, but in years. Someblamed the US for the failure; others breathed a sigh ofrelief that the WTO agenda, which was expected to leavesome of the poorest countries worse off than before, wouldnot be expanded. V

- Ian Smillie


5/6

Between 1994 and 2003, an estimated 13 million people died inlarge scale conflicts, 12 million of them in Africa, Western Asia an dSouthern Asia. In 200 3, there were an estimated 37 million refugeesand internally displaced people.mill Agrtciiliiire of iliL- Uiiilcil NotioIS (2005)

trusted) over 15 years. The current figure still represents,however, eleven million child deaths each year - theequivalent ofthe combined populations of all childrenand all adults in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Ireland.

Part of the prohlem is that donors do not actuallyspend very much on basic health, basic education, water.supply and sanitation - areas with good track recordsin reducing poverty and child m ortality. The good newsis that between 1999 and 2003, World Bank and donorgovernment spending on these sectors almost doubled- from 11.1 percent of total official development assistanceto 19.4 percent. The had news is that the increase overa ten-year period is only slightly mo re than one percent.Reca l l ing a id 's p urposePoverty was ignored with considerahle imp unity duringthe Cold War, when the great powers could he reliedupon hy badly governed, poverty-ridden states forassistance with money, advice, weapons and eventroops to put down rebellion. Donors could be countedon to turn a selective if not a blind eye to repression andhuman rights abuse. Poverty could be more easilyignored when the only real form of internationalcommunication for the poor was the transistor radio,when there were no cell phones, no television, nointernet, no apparent allies for those living in isolatedpockets of discontent. But the idea of a better life canno longer be hidden so easily from the poor.

Poverty, even where it is on the decline, is the mostdangerous social problem of our tim e, and it is also thegreatest threat to peace and the long-term well being ofall. There is no guarantee that the effects of poverty,state collapse, conflict and discontent will confinethemselves, as they once did, to the increasingly artifi-cial borders of what used to be called the "Third World".These eftects have leeched dramatically into the widerworld in the form of pollution, illegal refugees, terror-

SARS outbreak was contained to a few centres in Aand North America. Had it reached Africa, where heacare tor simple things like childbirth and diarrhoeaappalling, and where seven out of every iOO adults already living with HIV/AIDS, the results would haheen catastrophic.

None of these are new lessons, but the need to something ahout them is becoming much more urgeAid programs, when well-targeted and well-monitorhave demons trated time and again that they can prevedisease. They can give people the numeracy and literacy they need to improve their lives. They can crejobs and reduce discrimination. After four decadesmangled aid, wasted more by givers than receivers, time has come tor a rededication ol the aid pu rposeto end p ov ert y- an d for a gathering of the political wand the money that will he required to do it. 4^Ian Smillie is an Ottawa-based development consuan d writer who works part-time on Partnership AfrCanada's campaign to halt the traffic in blood diaHis most recent hook is The Ch arity of Nations:Huittaiiitarian Action in a Calculating World.N o t e s' The Milleiinitiin Davlopnient Goals Report 2005 (New York: Uiiiicd2(KJ5): mill Human Development Report 2005 (New York: UNIH'. 2(1' UBC. "U N Reforms Receive Mixed Response".^http://news.bbc.i-o.uk/]/Ui/worhi/a!nericasl4255](iti.ilm> (September2(m, accesicd laiiuary 2(X)(,).- IMF. "Liberia: Seleited hnia ami Suiiisticii! Appendix"www.imf.org/exiernal/piihs/ft/scr/2ntl5/crO5167.piif.- iM.iy 21)05. alanuary 2006).^ Duly km med this line ui ;^ood cffcci seivral times. See. for example. the Earth: Economics. Ecology an d Ethics (with K enneth N. Townsend).(Cambridge Massachusells: MIT Presi. 19931, pg. 267.

Brunko Milanovic, Worlds Apart: M easuring Internal iotial ami GtobaPrinceton: Princeton University /'rcji, 2005).

Find out more about the UN Millennium Development Goals:


6/6

mdg promises to keep

Documents