MILLENNIUM GOALS: Disparities Grow Within Asia-Pacific

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Theresa Martelino

MANILA, Sep 7 2005 (IPS) - Despite ”dramatic progress” the developing countries of the Asia-Pacific region have a long way to go before achieving all eight goals set by the United Nations towards erasing poverty by 2015, said a regional report released by the world body on Wednesday.

About three-fourths of the world’s poor still live in the region is the message that Kim Hak-Su, U.N. Undersecretary General, will carry to world leaders when they gather for the U.N. summit in New York next week to assess progress towards the U.N. Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) they set at a summit in 2000.

Five years down the road, world leaders will revisit these targets: eradicate extreme poverty and hunger; achieve universal primary education; promote gender equality and empower women; reduce child mortality; improve maternal health; combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases; ensure environmental sustainability; and develop a global partnership for development.

The regional report, released in the Philippine capital on Wednesday, entitled ”A Future Within Reach: Reshaping Institutions in a Region of Disparities to Meet the Millennium Development Goals in Asia and the Pacific”, painted a mixed picture of early achievers and laggards in the region.

Prepared by the U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP), the UN Development Programme (UNDP), and the Asian Development Bank (AsDB), the report, the second in a series, revealed that India and China, leaders of economic growth in the region, are well on track as are 17 other countries.

Between 1990 and 2001, in 23 countries where data was available, the number of people living on less than one US dollar a day reduced from 31 percent to 20 percent. Despite growing populations, the number of poor people also fell from 931 to 679 million.

However, 36 of the 55 least developed countries have fallen behind in the march out of poverty.

”To achieve the MDGs, the key challenge is to tackle the region’s growing disparities by extending the benefits of the region’s economic success and prosperity to its 680 million poor. This is the real battle we will have to fight in Asia-Pacific,” Kim said.

The report showed that progress has been good in providing universal primary education to people in the region. Most Asia-Pacific countries have enrolment rates above 80 percent in primary education, and several, even above 90 percent.

But South Asia has more undernourished people than sub-Saharan Africa, more people without access to improved sanitation and more people living in slums.

U.N. data reveal that Asia and the Pacific is home to 71 percent of the total number of people in the world without access to improved sanitation; 58 percent of those without access to safe water; 56 percent of the world’s undernourished; 54 percent of those living in slums; and the region accounts for 43 percent of the world’s child mortality.

Kim said, despite the dismal picture, official development assistance to the region has been steadily falling with donor countries giving less than before so that a need was felt for Asian voices to be heard at the U.N. in order channel more financial assistance to the region.

The report also noted an increasing trend in gender inequality, whereby fewer opportunities were being provided to women.

”It’s no surprise because it’s there in all the government reports. What governments will do is institute equality and the law will then say there’s no difference between men and women – but if you look at the ground level, women can’t access schools and hospitals because of the social and cultural factors that operate,” said Anuradha Rao, a representative of a leading non-government organization (NGO).

”Governments have to create enabling conditions whereby women can access these services,” Rao, executive executive director of the Kuala Lumpur-based, International Women’s Rights Action Watch.

Rishi Adhikari, project director of Rural Reconstruction a Nepal-based NGO said there is a weakness in the U.N. approach because it does not hold governments accountable for the commitments they make. He said the report should have gone deeper into the root causes of the disparities in the performance of countries in achieving the MDGs.

”It showed up a lot of disparities within the region, with the castes, different social groups. It doesn’t go into the deeper root causes of these disparities so it could come up with better recommendations,” he said.

Adhikari said a closer look at real situations in individual countries would reveal dangers of reversal in the achievements especially in those facing political conflicts like Nepal.

”There are very big problems in many countries that have become barriers to achieving the MDGs. The report talks about achievements that are on track, but it doesn’t talk about achievements that may be halted, or maybe reversed, because of so many socio-economic factors.,” he suggested.

The report, however, stressed the need for countries in the region to emphasise access for the poor to basic services such as education, health, water supply and sanitation. It also noted the need for governments to improve governance and get rid of corruption.

The report cited fresh ideas as to how countries in the region can work together to help each other. It proposed, for example, the creation of an Asia-Pacific grain bank from which countries could borrow from during emergencies and ”keep hunger at bay.”

Tajikistan and North Korea figured in the report as countries where large percentages of the population went hungry everyday while more than 40 percent of children in South Asia suffered from malnutrition.

The report mooted an ‘Asian Monetary Fund’, using the three trillion dollar reserves in the region, in order to prevent a future crisis, similar to the 1997 Asian financial crisis when governments were unable to provide basic services for the poor.

Rao said while international agencies are useful, because governments listen to them, the real agents of change were NGOs and therefore the need therefore was build partnerships among these entities.

”I think the enabling aspect is weak. It’s more of a government service delivery approach. Then who holds the government accountable?” she asked to know.

Progress towards achieving MDGs could improve, she said provided ”it is recognised that NGOs are not only players but also part of available resources”.