DEVELOPMENT: UN Officials Lament Decline in International Aid

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Oct 17 1997 (IPS) - U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson lamented Friday – on the world day dedicated to the eradication of poverty – that industrialised countries had reduced their official development aid (ODA).

Robinson cited – “with concern” – a report released this week by an international coalition of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) which pointed to the cut in ODA earmarked by the members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which links the world’s 25 richest countries.

The ODA provided by the OECD member states to developing countries has hit its lowest point since 1950, the U.N. commissioner underlined.

“The fight against poverty demands a commitment by all in a broad boost of solidarity at the international, national and local levels,” said the former president of Ireland.

OECD countries earmarked 55.8 billion dollars to foreign aid in 1996, 4.2 percent less than the 1995 total.

Aid from the 25 OECD countries amounted to 0.25 percent of their gross domestic product, far below the 0.7 percent goal laid out by the organisation.

The secretary-general of the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), Rubens Ricupero, said this week that “a trend that has been of some concern to us and to the international community in general is the further reduction in ODA flows in LDCs (least developed countries).

“Unfortunately, there is no sign of reversal in that trend. These flows have also shifted away from longer-term development programmes towards short-term emergency relief.”

Ricupero urged the international community to recognise the need for “an explicit link between debt relief and poverty reduction,” pointing out that the external debt burden of the LDCs had reached 135 billion dollars by 1995.

At the ceremony commemorating the day for the eradication of poverty declared by the United Nations, Robinson said poverty and social exclusion were attacks on human dignity and a denial of human rights.

One of every five people in the world live in poverty, a phenomenon that affects individuals and families in both the developing world and industrialised countries, she added.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said “on this day, dedicated to the eradication of poverty, I appeal to the haves of the world to recognize the needs of the have-nots.

“Some individuals today are enjoying wealth on a scale previously unimagined. Yet, victims of poverty still endure intolerable forms of deprivation,” he stressed.

Around 1.3 billion people, one third of the population of the developing world, scrape by on less than a dollar a day, Annan added.

In industrialised countries with high unemployment social protections have been reduced, and more than 100 million people live under the poverty level.