DEVELOPMENT: UN Launches Initiative to Wipe Out Poverty

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Jul 5 1999 (IPS) - The United Nations (UN) launched a campaign to eradicate poverty, a blight extending throughout developing and industrialised countries alike, and affecting more than three billion people, or half of the world population.

The international organisation entrusted this difficult enterprise to its Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), which is to analyse the multi-faceted issue and derive conclusions during its annual sessions. This year’s session began Monday in Geneva.

Eliminating poverty is the Council’s primary focus. “It may be an ambitious goal, but it is not utopian,” said Kofi Annan, UN Secretary General.

To reach the goal would require approximately 40 billion dollars per year in additional investments, according to Annan – less than what Europeans spend on tobacco each year and equivalent to one tenth of the world’s annual illegal drug trafficking profits.

Such resources would ensure universal access to basic social services – such as education, health, nutrition, reproductive health, family planning, safe water and sanitation, he added.

Annan, ECOSOC president Paolo Fulci, and directors of several UN agencies supporting the initiative agreed that an important formula for eradicating poverty lies in strengthening women’s role in society.

Juan Somavia, director general of the International Labour Organisation (ILO), proposed broadening the concept of productivity beyond the traditional economic definition to include domestic work, volunteer work and the free use of the environment – which are “hidden subsidies” not included in statistics.

The ILO believes that with a new notion of social productivity, the international community will be able to measure gender mainstreaming, environmental protection, basic labour rights and social participation processes.

In the strictly economic plane, industrialised countries need to enact policies that promote world economic growth. “A world economy growing at two percent per year will not provide the resources or enabling environment for a war on poverty,” stated Annan.

The UN secretary also called upon industrialised nations to reverse the trend that has reduced development aid to its lowest levels in 50 years.

“Developing countries must get relief from the debt that is stifling their development,” said Annan. They must be given greater access to the markets of industrialised nations so they can earn their way out of poverty, he added.

Somavia targeted trade barriers as he called upon nations to “ensure that markets work for everybody. The benefits of the global economy seem to be blocked somewhere and are not reaching the people.”

The predicted effects of trade liberalisation, which included rapid economic growth, more employment and poverty alleviation for developing countries proved to be “overly optimistic,” said Rubens Ricupero, secretary of the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

“Trade has certainly had a remarkable performance during recent years,” said Ricupero, but for developing countries, the expansion of imports did not translate into increased exports.

Given the current economic context, he said, “the time has come to rethink our policies and responsibilities. Developing countries need to protect their political autonomy if pragmatism is to prevail over ideology.”

The UNCTAD secretary, who presented his institution as “the union for developing countries,” recommended that the international community’s efforts be directed towards reforming the trade system so that industrialised nations open their markets to the developing world.

Europe’s protectionism of agricultural raw materials and the recent U.S.-imposed “voluntary” export restrictions on other countries, such as steel from Brazil, indicate a return to “managed trade,” said Ricupero.

But the scope and severity of world poverty cannot be attributed to the economic and financial crisis alone, said Annan. He stressed that it also is due to the global moral and ethical crisis, and “calls for more than declarations of intent and prolonged negotiations.”

“It is the deficit in political will that is our biggest obstacle,” declared the UN secretary general.