U.N. Report urges Rich Nations to Double Aid to Poor by Associated Press / BBC News / The Globe & Mail.. 9:29am 18th Jan, 2005   January 17, 2005    Millions rely on promises of rich, UN says. (Associated Press)    In the coming decade, more than 500 million people can escape from poverty and tens of millions can avoid certain death if rich countries keep their promises to vastly increase development aid to the world's poorest countries, a UN-sponsored report said Monday.    The report spells out the investments needed to meet UN goals adopted by world leaders at the Millennium Summit in 2000 to tackle poverty, hunger and disease mainly in African and Asian countries where one billion people live on a dollar a day or less and 1.8 billion more live on just $2 (U.S.) a day.    The system is not working right now, let's be clear, said Professor Jeffrey Sachs, head of the UN anti-poverty effort and lead author of the report. There's a tremendous imbalance of focus on the issues of war and peace, and less on the dying and suffering of the poor who have no voice.    The overwhelming reality on our planet is that impoverished people get sick and die for lack of access to basic practical means that could help keep them alive.. help them achieve livelihoods and escape from poverty, said Mr. Sachs, who heads the Earth Institute at Columbia University.    As an example, he said, providing nets to cover beds and keep out mosquitoes in impoverished African and Asian countries could save the lives of a million children this year who otherwise will die from malaria.    We have the world's eyes focused on the tsunami of the Indian Ocean, but the world continues to overlook the silent tsunamis of deaths from malaria which take every month the number of people that died in the Asian tragedy, Mr. Sachs said.    Every month, 150,000 children in Africa, if not more, are dying from the silent tsunami of malaria, a largely preventable and utterly treatable disease. Mr. Sachs was appointed by Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 2002 to head the Millennium Project and develop a plan to meet the Millennium Development Goals by 2015. Mr. Annan is expected to use the report to help prepare his own recommendations to world leaders who will be attending a follow-up summit in September that will also tackle UN reform.    The 3,000-page report by a team of 265 experts, Investing In Development, said the poorest countries don't have the resources to meet the goals. They include halving the number of people living on a dollar a day, achieving universal primary education, reducing child and maternal mortality, halting and reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS and malaria, and halving the number of people without access to clean water and basic sanitation.    The resources needed to meet the goals are within the means of the world's richest nations and their $30-trillion economy, Mr. Sachs said.    In 1970, the world's nations agreed to provide 0.7 per cent of their gross national income for development assistance. So far, only five -Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden have met or surpassed the target.    Six others - Belgium, Finland, France, Ireland, Spain and Britain - have made commitments to reach the target by 2015, and the report urged all developed countries to set similar timetables.    The United States currently spends only about 0.15 per cent of its $12-trillion GDP on development aid, although U.S. President George W. Bush has increased the amount.    The required doubling of annual official development assistance to $135-billion in 2006, rising to $195-billion by 2015, pales beside the wealth of high income countries and the world's military budget of $900-billion a year, the report said.    It recommended that the international community designate a significant number of well-governed low-income countries for fast-track status to receive the massive increase in development aid this year.    Poorly governed poverty-stricken countries such as Belarus, Myanmar, North Korea and Zimbabwe, which are accused of wide-scale human rights abuses, should not receive large-scale aid, the report said.    Mr. Sachs said several dozen well-governed poor countries could be fast-tracked, and the report names Mali, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Mauritania and Yemen.    The report said large middle-income countries such as China, Brazil, Malaysia, Mexico and South Africa can afford to eliminate pockets of extreme poverty themselves and should assist poorer countries with expertise in climbing out of the poverty trap.    We have the opportunity in the coming decade to cut world poverty by half,the report said.    If the millennium goals are achieved by 2015, more than 500 million people will be lifted out of extreme poverty. More than 300 million will no longer suffer from hunger. ... Hundreds of millions more women and girls will go to school, it said. If the goals are not met, millions will die who would otherwise live.    17 January, 2005    UN urges rapid action on poverty. (BBC News)    A major UN report on world poverty has urged a vast increase in development aid to the world's poorest countries. The Millennium Development Goals report says developed nations could do much more to prevent poverty, hunger and disease around the world. Correspondents say targets to halve poverty by 2015 are way off track. Disease, war and incompetence combined with a lack of will in the developed world have already made them virtually meaningless, they say.    Trade rules need to be changed and infrastructure developed in poorer countries to allow them to compete, the report adds. It also calls for financing of workable poverty-reduction schemes put forward by the poorest nations themselves. Written by former Harvard economist Dr Jeffrey Sachs, the report calls for much higher spending on development.    UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, who received the report from Dr Sachs, said the goals of the project were not utopian but eminently achievable. Many countries are making real progress in achieving them but other are not moving fast enough," he said.    BBC developing world correspondent David Loyn says the report is an attempt to engage real change in the UN to go along with grandiose declarations.    "The system is not working right now, let's be clear," Dr Sachs said. "The overwhelmingly reality on our planet is that impoverished people get sick and die for lack of access to basic practical means that could help keep them alive and do more than that - help them achieve livelihoods and escape from poverty."    Dr Sachs singled out malaria, which kills as many people as in the whole Indian Ocean wave disaster every month and could be easily remedied by such measures as the provision of mosquito nets. "Every month, 150,000 children in Africa, if not more, are dying from the silent tsunami of malaria, a largely preventable and utterly treatable disease," he said.    Dr Sachs added that the resources needed were well within the means of the world's richest nations. But only five nations - Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden - have met self-imposed targets of providing 0.7% of GNP for development assistance.    The report will recommend that some well-governed poor countries should be fast-tracked for aid, whereas others with poor human rights records should get no large-scale aid. However, the tying of aid to a list of demands over how well countries are run has been highly controversial. Middle-income countries with pockets of extreme poverty, such as China, Brazil, Malaysia, Mexico and South Africa, should eliminate those pockets, the report adds.    Much of this thinking will be welcome in the UK, our correspondent says, with international development and Africa in particular so much to the fore of Prime Minister Tony Blair's thinking as Britain leads the G8 group of industrialised nations.    But Dr Sachs' solutions are not as radical as some observers would like, he adds. For example, the report falls short of demanding something which he himself has separately called for - for African countries to take the debt issue into their own hands and stop paying interest on bad debts.    January 17, 2005    "Not enough aid reaches poor, UN says", by Estanislao Oziewicz. (The Globe & Mail / Canada)    Only about 30 cents of each dollar in international aid actually reaches the world's poor, according to a major UN report that is calling for a major overhaul of the global development system.    The report says that making the system more efficient and focused is an essential part of breaking the poverty trap of the poorest countries as a counter-weight to violent conflict, instability and terrorism.    List of recommendations    "When people lack access to food, medical care, safe drinking water, and a chance at a better future, their societies are likely to experience instability and unrest that spills over the rest of the word," said Jeffery Sachs, a Columbia University professor and lead author of the 3,000-page report, commissioned by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan.    The report, "Investment in Development," says that time is quickly running out but if rich countries live up to promises made at a UN summit in 2000 and if poor nations reordered their priorities half a billion people could be lifted out of poverty.    At the summit, the world's nations agreed on a set of goals that included cutting in half extreme poverty and hunger for at least one billion people living on $1 (U.S.) a day, reversing the spread of AIDS and malaria and providing basic education by 2015.    "With the right mobilization of resources and political will, and reform in developing countries as well as in developed countries, these goals are still achievable," said Mark Malloch Brown, head of the UN Development Program.    The massive report was put together by 265 of the world's leading development experts, who concluded that only about 30 cents of each aid dollar actually helps the poor, the diseased and hungry. The report's research also shows that only about one-quarter of bilateral aid is available for on-the-ground investments to confront hunger, education, gender equality, health, water and sanitation, slums, energy and roads.    Mr. Sachs said that increased international support should go only to countries that have shown good governance, those trying to open up their economies, to reform their political systems and to combat corruption. "Lawless countries led by corrupt leaders are incapable of investing resources in health, education and roads," he said.    Among industrial countries, only Denmark, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands and Luxembourg have spent more than the long-established target of 0.7 per cent of their gross national product on development aid. Canada spent 0.28 per cent in 2002. The report says that rich countries should increase their development aid in stages to reach the 0.7-per-cent target by 2015.    "We have the world's eyes focused on the tsunami of the Indian Ocean," Mr. Sachs said. "But the world continues to overlook the silent tsunamis of deaths from malaria which take very month the number of people that died in the Asian tragedy."    Key recommendations    Below are some of the key recommendations from the UN-sponsored report released Monday on how to meet UN goals to tackle poverty, hunger and disease by 2015.    * Poor countries should develop national strategies to meet the UN goals, including moves to strengthen good governance and promote of human rights.    * International donors should recognize at least a dozen "fast-track" countries for a rapid scaling-up of development assistance in 2005, on the basis of their good governance.    * Developed and developing countries should jointly launch, in 2005, quick actions to save millions of lives. These should include free mass distribution of anti-malaria bed-nets and anti-malaria medicines for children, eliminating fees for primary school and essential health services, providing antiretroviral drugs to 3 million AIDS patients by the end of 2005, and providing free fertilizer for small farmers with poor soil by the end of 2006.    * Rich countries should increase development assistance from 0.25 per cent of gross national income in 2003 to about 0.44 per cent in 2006 and 0.54 per cent in 2015 to support the Millennium Development Goals. Rich countries should reach the UN target of 0.7 per cent of gross national income by 2015, to support the millennium goals as well as other development priorities.    * Rich countries should open their markets to developing country exports through the Doha round of global trade talks which should be completed no later than 2006.    * International donors should mobilize support for global scientific research and development to address the needs of the poor in health, agriculture, natural resource and environmental management, energy and climate. The report estimated that about $7-billion (U.S.) a year will be needed for this research by 2015.    January 17, 2005    "Set clear goals to meet aid targets, UN study urges", by Mark Turner. (The Financial Times)    Donors and recipients of aid must abandon a defeatist mindset if the world is to have a chance of fulfilling a promise to halve extreme poverty by 2015, according to the United Nations' most comprehensive development report in two decades.    A three-year study headed by Jeffrey Sachs, the US economist, and published on Monday, says that with enough money and co-ordination, the Millennium Development Goals, adopted by world leaders in 2000, are achievable.    But the process of increasing aid and focusing on specific objectives had to begin now. The biggest thing is to get back our ambition: to think big, said Mark Malloch Brown, head of the UN Development Programme who is to become chief of staff to Kofi Annan, UN secretary-general.    The UN hopes that the report, taken together with a UN study last year on security challenges, can form the basis of a global bargain between rich and poor countries at a summit of world leaders in September.    In return for agreeing enhanced security measures sought by rich countries, developing countries would receive a clearer commitment of help to escape extreme poverty.    Mr Sachs says the aid community must identify effective investments in a far more practical way to achieve the goals. Poor countries in turn should offer a clear costing of what it would take to achieve each goal.    As a first measure, the UN millennium project identifies a series of quick win interventions, with a proven and immediate effect. It advocates, for example, free insecticide-treated bed-nets for all children in malaria-afflicted areas, and eliminating school and uniform fees.    Beyond that, a massive increase is needed in public investment in infrastructure, such as transport, and human capital, such as health and education.This is not a dreary set of global ambitions, Mr Sachs says. These are very specific investments that spell the practical difference between life and death.    The cost would be well within a target already agreed by most donors to spend 0.7 per cent of GNP on development. The millennium project offers a timetable to reach the necessary levels by 2015.    The political challenge is to generate enough pressure on specific countries, such as the US, Germany and Japan, to live up to those commitments.    Officials argue that Germany's and Japan's bids for permanent UN Security Council seats could provide leverage to persuade them to increase aid levels. They also say the huge public response to the tsunami crisis could help press countries such as the US to increase aid.    One of the main impediments to more aid has been concern about poor governance. The report says a new approach is needed: while some governments are clearly not acting in their citizens' interests, others are willing but need help.    In such countries, the report argues, donors should not see weak capacity as a constraint but an investment opportunity, and initiate a huge public administration training programme. Both the World Bank and the IMF, which come under some criticism, have lent their backing.    We agree that the Millennium Development Goals cannot be achieved with business as usual' on reform, said James Wolfensohn, president of the World Bank. The report's appeal . . . is needed, given the depth of the development challenges in many countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Visit the related web page
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