DEVELOPMENT: A Mixed Record on Global Poverty Eradication

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 19 1999 (IPS) - The spreading economic crisis in Southeast Asia and Latin America has severely setback plans to eradicate poverty – one of the major goals spelled out at the 1995 Social Summit in Copenhagen.

Social Watch, a global coalition of 50 non-governmental organisations (NGOs), has expressed mixed feelings about the successes and failures of the Copenhagen summit where 185 world leaders committed themselves to fight poverty and adopt concrete plans to achieve that objective.

As the United Nations planned a post-Copenhagen review of poverty eradication, Social Watch admitted that more than 60 developing nations had made significant progress in providing basic education, safe water, sanitation, child nutrition and reproductive health care – as agreed to at the Summit.

These included South Korea, El Salvador, China, Colombia, Iran, Argentina, Denmark, Netherlands, Singapore, India, Sweden, Brazil, Chile, Ireland and New Zealand.

“If this pace is kept up, these countries will be able to celebrate the millennium by announcing fulfilment of the goals set out by the Social Summit and the (1995) Women’s Conference in Beijing,” said Roberto Bissio, Secretary of Social Watch.

John Langmore, Director of the UN Division of Social Policy and Development, told reporters that many countries had taken their Copenhagen commitments seriously.

For example, he said, China had announced that it had set itself the target of eliminating the worst forms of poverty in its outlying regions by the year 2000. About 38 countries, he said, had also adopted time-bound poverty reduction targets as recommended by the Copenhagen Summit.

But the bad news, according to Bissio, was that progress toward eradicating poverty eradication remained far too slow in at least 70 countries.

Thirteen countries were in the same shape or worse off today than they were in 1990. And in 40 countries, insufficient data “probably reflects an even worse situation,” Bissio said.

These countries included Liberia, Somalia, Nigeria, Haiti, Albania, Burundi, Iraq, Burma, Guinea-Bissau and Sierra Leone.

Addressing the UN Commission for Social Development Wednesday. Bissio pointed out that the financial crisis, which began in Thailand in mid-1997, had a largely negative impact on poverty eradication.

“The mechanisms designed to cope with it had placed most of the burden unevenly on the shoulders of the poor, women, children and other vulnerable sectors of society,” he told the Commission.

In June next year, the 185-member U.N General Assembly planned a special session in Geneva to evaluate the social progress made since the Copenhagen summit. Titled “Copenhagen Plus Five,” the meeting would seek to renew commitments made to eradicate poverty.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said last week that progress in the fight against unemployment and poverty had been eroded by severe economic difficulties precipitated by the Asian financial turmoil.

The crisis – which devastated the economies of Thailand, South Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, Russia and Brazil – however provoked an intense debate about what should constitute sound economic policy, he said.

Governments and financial institutions were becoming increasingly aware of the need to have a comprehensive approach to development, and were starting to translate that awareness into action, Annan said.

“If the seeds of change are nourished, then there will be a greater chance that the (Social) Summit’s goals will be fulfilled,” he added.

In its third annual report released here, Social Watch says that while the goals targeted are feasible, many countries have failed to make a sufficient effort to meet them.

The failure to reach some of the goals of the Summit is also attributed to rising Third World debts, declining development aid and internal conflicts in some countries.

Other factors include the negative effects of globalisation and the social impact of structural adjustment policies imposed by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

The report said the number of poor people living on less than one dollar-a-day was growing, and one-third of the population in developing countries was living in poverty. At the same time, more than 800 million people were going hungry and 180 million children remained malnourished.

“Prospects for growth are not promising: consumption has stagnated in Latin America, North Africa and the Near East, and has fallen in sub-Saharan Africa” the report said. “If growth decelerates over the next few years, poverty will probably become more serious. The situation is particularly serious in Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America.”

As a consequence of the economic crisis, poverty was expected to double in Southeast Asia while the distribution of income would worsen.

According to the report, the number of people living under the poverty line in the crisis-affected countries would increase from 40 million to 90 million.