COOPERATION: Aid Should Ease Poverty, Not Serve Special Interests

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, May 18 1996 (IPS) - A high ranking U.N. official has criticised the tendency of industrialised countries to grant development aid only to nations in which they have clear political and military interests.

James Gustave Speth, administrator of the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP), said member nations of the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) – which groups devloped countries – should adopt a wider perspective on international aid.

OECD leaders should understand that human suffering and tragedies existed not only in the Middle East and former Yugoslavia — areas now receiving considerable attention from the donor community. Many other regions of the world had conflicts, and needed help to avoid environmental problems.

Further, a considerable increase of development cooperation was indispensable in giving credibility to any attack on world poverty.

His comments, made at a press conference here this week, came against the backdrop of reports that the number of poor people in the world is expanding at a faster rate than the world population.

A total of 1.5 billion people in countries covered by U.N. projects live in poverty. Some three billion live in deplorable conditions worldwide. Half the population of sub-saharan Africa will be in absolute poverty by the year 2000, said the UNDP director.

Between 1960 and 1990, the gap between the richest 20 percent in the world and the poorest 20 percent increased by 30 to 60 times. Even taking into account the high growth rates achieved in Asia,the participation of OECD nations in the world income kept increasing, from 68 to 72 percent.

Speth said growing poverty, unemployment, environmental deterioration and the gap between the powerful and the dispossessed were causing desperation and instability.

All attacks against mass poverty must include real economic growth and political measures to assure this. “But it is a myth this growth is being achieved in a generalised way,” he added.

The World Bank recently reported that during the last decade, more than half the countries receiving help from U.N. programmes had negative growth rates in the real per head income.

The picture was even worse in the 48 least developed nations. Though they contained 10 percent of the world population, these nations received 0.1 percent of the global income.

For 25 years, the average per head income in these countries had fallen. At present the average income is 350 dollars per year — less than a dollar a day.

Speth said it was also a “myth” that market forces in an increasingly globalised market would be enough to replace the need for cooperation for development.

“We know that policies favourable to investments and the structural ajustment plans are no solution for most of the developing world,” he said.

The needs bore no relation to direct foreign investment. Nearly all foreign investment was aimed at 20 countries, while only six percent went to Africa and barely two to the least developed nations.