SOCIAL SUMMIT: No Increase in ODA expected, nor any Debt Relief

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

COPENHAGEN, Mar 13 1995 (IPS) - The U.N. Conference for Social Development enters goes into its third day Wednesday with no sign of any debt relief or additional resources for the cash-strapped developing nations of the world.

“I don’t see any hard figures on the table,” Simon Stocker of the Brussels-based organisation EUROSTEP said.

Nor did be believe the Social Summit would produce any commitment for an increase in Official Development Assistance (ODA) to the poorer nations.

The one possbility Stocker saw emerging from the conference was some form of bilateral debt relief by individual countries.

Other conference sources expected Western nations to reject a Third World proposal for an International Fund for Social Development and also ignore demands to honour the agreed U.N. target for ODA of 0.7 percent of gross national product (GNP) which was set in 1970.

Only four countries have met the target so far – Denmark, Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands.

Razali Ismail of Malaysia admitted that financial resources would certainly determine the decisions of the summit.

But the issue of ODA is a matter of great concern to developing nations, he said. “They are trying to blur the issue by saying that ODA is anachronistic.”

There are still countries that depend on ODA but Malaysia does not need any, he added. “If the performance of ODA is not satisfactory, it does not mean one has to welsh on the agreement.”

He said that debt cancellation was not likely to happen in Copenhagen. But he pointed out that the summit could provide a “political nudge” toward that end.

The Group of 77 developing countries want an outright cancellation of the debts owed by the world’s 47 least developed countries (LDCs), described as “the poorest of the poor.”

Of the 47, more than two thirds are from Africa, a continent devastated by drought, famine and ethnic conflicts.

Mahbub ul Haq, major author of the annual Human Development Report published by the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP), does not hold much hopes for ODA either.

“These are the last phases of ODA. There will be a struggle to keep it. But ODA is a thing of the past, not a reality of the future,” he said.