DEVELOPMENT-ITALY: Spotlight On Poverty Eradication

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Jaya Ramachandran

ROME, Feb 14 2000 (IPS) - Eradication of hunger and abject rural poverty are high on the agenda of a two-day United Nations International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) conference scheduled to begin in Rome on Wednesday.

President Carlos Flores of Honduras and government ministers and top-ranking officials from 161 countries are expected to attend the Feb 16-17 deliberations.

IFAD spokesperson, Farhana Haque Rahman, told IPS that Government representatives constitute the IFAD’s Governing Council, the organisation’s highest decision-making authority.

The council was set up in 1977 to help the poor help themselves, their families and communities.

Officially described as the 23rd annual session of the Governing Council, the conference will discuss wide ranging issues including replenishment of IFAD’s resources.

Also on the agenda is IFAD’s involvement in the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Debt Initiative (HIPC DI) and a review of the progress report on global mechanisms to combat desertification around the world.

The results of establishing partnerships with other multilateral organisations and civil society institutions to combat poverty and ignorance will also be assessed.

Underlining the significance of the conference, Haque Rahman said presently some three billion people, half the world’s population, are forced to survive on two US Dollars or less a day.

She said an estimated 1,3 billion people live in abject poverty, on one US Dollar a day, and that this was expected to swell to two billion by the year 2015 unless the international community intervened.

About three-quarters of the world’s poorest reportedly live in the rural areas where some two billion people have no electricity and 1,5 billion no access to safe drinking water. About 130 million children have no schooling and are condemned to remain illiterate all their life.

The poverty profile of some regions is equally grim. In South Asia, 43 percent of the population are reported to suffer from hunger and poverty. This figure drops to 26 percent in East Asia.

In sub-Saharan Africa, 39 percent are reported to be poor and hungry, while in Latin America and the Caribbean nine percent are affected and four percent each in the Middle East, North Africa, Europe and Central Asia.

“This sad state of affairs calls for adequate measures if the goal of cutting down to half the number of the poor by 2015 is to be achieved,” the IFAD spokesperson said.

A document to be tabled at the conference states that debt write off, agreed by the Group of seven major industrial nations at their summit meeting in Cologne, Germany last June, is an important step in the reduction of poverty.

The seven include; the United States of America, Canada, Japan, Great Britain, France, Germany and Italy.

The paper maintains that the “main concern for IFAD’s participation in the enhanced HIPC DI consists of designing a financing strategy that will permit the Fund to participate in the HIPC DI while simultaneously safeguarding the financial integrity of its regular lending programme levels.”

A draft resolution for consideration of and adoption by the conference says: “Those member countries able to do so should contribute to the enhanced HIPC DI through the HIPC DI Trust Fund of the World Bank, explicitly earmarking those contributions for debt owed to IFAD.” About 36 HIPCs owe some 1.5 billion dollars to IFAD.

The document prepared by IFAD for the conference analyses the cost implications of HIPC DI for IFAD and estimates these at 260 million US Dollars.

“These resource requirements will be additional to the resources needed to maintain the planned critical level of new loan commitments,”says the document.

Thus far, IFAD has committed itself to participate in the HIPC DI for an amount up to 60 million US Dollars.

Though top echelons at IFAD are keeping a low profile on the issue, the document leaves no doubt that they want donor nations to increase their contributions. In the absence of additional money flowing in, IFAD fears a scaling down in its regular lending programmes.

IFAD is one of the smallest UN agencies with just 126 professional staff, but over the past two decades it has gained increasing recognition as a leading institution in sustainable and environment friendly development.

Between 1978 and 1999, IFAD committed over 6,5 billion US Dollars in loans benefiting more than 250 million individuals. Until the end of last year, the Fund had financed 550 projects in 115 countries and provided 1337 grants for research and technical assistance.

Technical assistance grants to institutions and organisations are aimed at strengthening technical and institutional capacities linked to agricultural and rural development. These are limited to 7,5 percent of the resources committed in any financial year. IFAD’s lending terms and conditions vary according to the Gross National Product (GNP) per capita of a country in need of aid.

However, priority is given to the most needy countries and rural population groups. Also, importance is attached to arriving at an equitable regional distribution and ensuring aid to all member states requiring assistance.