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Business Page – October 13th, 2002 |
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Introduction Guyana is aiming to be
among the first wave of countries to publish a progress report on the
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to which the world is committed. The
MDGs were part of the United Nations Millennium Declaration adopted by a
resolution of close to two hundred member countries of the world body at the
General Assembly at what was called Millennium Summit in September 2000. The
Declaration was quite wide-ranging addressing such issues as the core Values and principles of the organization; the pursuit of Peace, security
and disarmament to free the world’s population from the scourge of war
whether within or between states; Development and poverty eradication aimed
at freeing the world from abject and dehumanizing conditions of extreme
poverty to which some one billion were still subjected; Protecting the
world’s environment within the framework of the Rio Summit and the Kyoto
Protocol; Human rights, democracy and good governance to strengthen the rule
of law, combat violence against women, strengthen democracy and protect the
freedom of the press and the right of the citizen to access to information;
and Protecting the vulnerable including children; Meeting the special needs
of Africa with a view to bringing Africa into the mainstream of the world
economy; and the strengthening of the United Nations. Cynics
might well ask whether President Bush and his team are aware of these
commitments in the light of his relentless pursuit of war against real and
perceived enemies, the Kyoto Protocol and the World Court. Many respected
international NGO groups including ACTIONAID have raised doubts about the
seriousness of the G8 countries to provide the resources necessary for the
achievement of the MDGs. Earlier this year in Monterrey, Mexico the G8
countries acknowledged that those goals cannot be achieved without increased
aid and ACTIONAID called on the leaders to take concrete and radical steps
to improve the international environment for African countries in the areas
of aid, trade and debt. Bold
Step The
MDGs represent the boldest international step ever to recognize the right of
everyone to a decent life. In essence the MDGs are global targets for
poverty reduction, social development and environmental regeneration. and
comprise seven substantive goals underpinned by eighteen targets and
forty-eight success indicators. These are supported by an eighth goal
dealing with international partnerships that will facilitate the achievement
of the principal goals. MDGs are not in themselves original in that they are
based on several earlier declarations of the world body and other
international groups and very particularly the International Development
Targets set by the OECD in 1996. In
summary, the MDGs are designed to achieve the following by the year 2015:
Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger; Achieve universal primary education;
Promote gender equality and empower women; Reduce child mortality; Combat
HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases; Ensure environmental sustainability;
and develop a global partnership for development. While one of the chief
virtues of the MDGs is their specificity in that the targets are quantified,
therein also lies one of their weaknesses for they assume the existence of
reliable and credible statistics. Governments may not only be tempted to but
since they are the national scorekeepers may actually fix the numbers to
show achievement. The
Score Card Like
its predecessors, the MDGs are not a success, affected no doubt by the
slowdown in the world economy, the events of September 11 in the US and the
shift in world attention to the war on terrorism and now Iraq. Under his
mandate to report periodically on the progress of the implementation of the
Millennium Declaration, Secretary-General of the United nations Kofi Annan
on October 1, 2002 warned that the world was falling short in meeting the
objectives of the Declaration and outlined a series of steps that his
organization and its partners must take to accelerate progress. In what must
be an understatement, the Secretary-General noted that the prospects for
achievement were mixed and recommended annual reporting by countries to
ensure that commitments are better known and that they can act as a “focus
for global action” Canadian
Prime Minister Jean Chretien put it more directly in a speech to a
Conference in June 2002 when he said that “it should be clear that the
continued marginalisation of Africa from the globalisation process, and the
social exclusion of the vast majority of its people, present a serious
impediment to the goal of global prosperity and economic stability.”
ACTIONAID has accepted that there have been some successes particularly in
the reduction in child nutrition, rising primary school enrolment and
improvement in maternal health care. Even this has to be considered against
the findings published in the September 2002 Choices magazine
published by the UNDP that “of seven MDG goals for which reasonably
reliable targets exist, six are off track” The only target that is on
track is the one for halving the proportion of people without access to safe
water by 2015 and with current weather patterns, growth and shifts in
population and environment degradation even this may be unsustainable. On
the issue of poverty reduction, the data are unreliable while the slow down
in the international economy is likely to have a negative impact. Just by
way of example, for Guyana to achieve its poverty reduction goal, economic
growth has to be in the region of six percent annually which in the current
situation is highly unlikely. There
has been little progress in combating the AIDS/HIV epidemic, child and
maternal mortality and gender discrimination in primary enrolment. Given the
central role and function of education in each of the goals and the fact
that meeting the education enrolment target is not rocket science, the
failure to meet this target is a major worry. Africa The
global conditions mask some severe variations particularly in sub-Saharan
Africa which constitute the world’s poorest countries and where conditions
are in fact worsening. Progress in Latin America has been slow and in South
East Asia where a substantial portion of the world’s population live,
improvements have been uneven. Africa remains a major concern not only
because the twenty-three poorest countries of the world are in that region
or because of the extent of the underdevelopment and the external resources
which are necessary to address the problems but also because of the
continuing governance and political problems which have marred development
in that continent. Cote d’Ivoire is the latest in a long list of countries
facing civil war and the creation of an ever growing pool of refugees, child
soldiers, single mothers and persons facing starvation. Regional efforts to
resolve these problems have so far produced only limited results while
international efforts are often met with suspicion. It will not be easy. Guyana Guyana
has adopted all the goals although very little information has been shared
with citizens and no public consultation held to win support.
Understandably, the goals have been designed in a generic form and some
countries have in fact modified them to suit their particular circumstances.
Poland for example in its progress report has noted that in respect of Goal
2 relating to education, it has changed the goal from primary to tertiary
education since it has long achieved universal primary education. Poland has
also modified Goal 1 dealing with poverty and hunger since hunger is not an
issue in that country. While
a number of the goals are indeed relevant to Guyana it would seem
appropriate for these and perhaps more specifically the targets to be
refined to suit our specific circumstances. For example, Guyana has for
decades had universal primary education but the dropout rate has been
climbing to an alarming extent while access to and enrolment in tertiary
institutions are too low to support the country’s necessary development
objectives. Gains from the Economic Recovery Programme have slowed while all
the evidence suggests that unemployment is on the rise mitigated only by the
equally worrying phenomenon of the brain drain. Confusion The
Government also needs to clarify its real position on the Millennium
Development Goals particularly in relation to several other policy papers to
which it had committed substantial national resources. We cannot forget the
National Development Strategy and the 20/20 Framework to which the late
President Cheddi appeared totally committed but on which Mr. Jagdeo even as
Finance Minister appears to have poured cold water. More recently the
Government published the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper which like the NDS
was used mainly to garner international support and finance. Business Page
takes no satisfaction in reminding readers that a long time ago, having
observed Finance Minister Jagdeo’s ambivalence on the NDS it had dubbed
that document the Now Dead Strategy. Conclusion The
MDGs require serious commitment of time and other resources with clear and
strong leadership convinced about the link between economic and social
policies and about the critical importance of consistency between them and
economic growth and human development. They require the design and
implementation of multi-sectoral and participatory social policies that are
flexible, monitored and subject to necessary intervention.
So far only a small number of countries have published their progress reports and the timing and quality of the Guyana’s report will be a major indicator of the country’s commitment to the MDGs. Let us hope for the benefit of Guyana that the Government is not again found wanting. It is after all a very important matter and a significant commitment it has made to the world.
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