Development & Aid, Global, Global Geopolitics, Headlines, Poverty & SDGs

DEVELOPMENT: Rich Nations Again Falter in Aid Pledges

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 29 2005 (IPS) - A two-day high-level U.N. meeting on development financing concluded here on a predictable note: developing nations criticising industrial countries for reneging on their pledges to increase aid to help eradicate poverty.

Speaking on behalf of the 132 developing nations of the Group of 77, Jamaica’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Delano Franklyn said Western donors had failed to honour commitments made at a landmark U.N. conference on development financing in Monterrey, Mexico, three years ago.

"All reports, reviews, analyses and consultations on development since Monterrey lead to one major overall conclusion, namely the international community is far short of mobilising the level of resources required to finance the level of development envisaged in the development oriented summits and conferences including the Millennium Summit," he said.

The Monterrey conference urged industrial nations to make "concrete efforts" towards the longstanding U.N. target of 0.7 percent of gross national product (GNP) as official development assistance (ODA) to developing nations.

But so far only five countries – Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Luxembourg and the Netherlands – have either met or exceeded the 0.7 target set by the U.N. General Assembly in the 1960s.

The 25-member European Union (EU), however, agreed last month on a collective target of 0.56 by 2010, and 0.7 percent by 2015. Still, countries such as the United States and Japan, two of the world’s richest nations, have refused to make any firm commitments.

Ironically, said Franklyn, resources have been moving in the wrong direction – not from developed to developing countries but the other way around.

"There is an increasing net transfer of resources from developing countries, as a group, to developed countries and multilateral financial institutions for debt servicing and other payments," he added.

These "negative transfers", which have persisted for the last eight years, totaled a staggering 312 billion dollars in 2004, Franklyn said.

Still ODA from rich to poor nations reached only 78 billion dollars in 2004 – an increase from 52 billion dollars in 2001, an all-time low as a percentage of donor country income.

In a report to the two-day meeting, which concluded Tuesday, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan dismissed the increase as only in "nominal terms."

"More needs to be done to increase assistance to ensure the financing required to attain the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)," he said.

The MDGs include a 50 percent reduction in poverty and hunger; universal primary education; reduction of child mortality by two-thirds; cutbacks in maternal mortality by three-quarters; promotion of gender equality; reversal of the spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases; environmental sustainability; and a global partnership for development.

A summit meeting of 189 world leaders in September 2000 pledged to meet all of these goals by the year 2015. But their implementation has depended primarily on increased development aid by Western donors.

A second summit meeting, scheduled to take place in New York in September this year, will review the progress made so far and set the world’s development agenda for the next decade.

Annan’s report says it is important to introduce meaningful rules for special and differential treatment; provide immediate duty-free and quota-free access for all exports from the world’s 50 least developed countries (LDCs); and special support to commodity-dependent countries to diversify their exports.

Hilary Benn, the British secretary of state for international development, presented a gloomy picture of the current state of MDGs when he told delegates that at present rates of progress, several of the goals would be reached "far too late."

Benn said primary education for all would not be achieved until 2130 – 115 years too late; poverty would not be halved until 2150; and avoidable infant diseases would not end until 2165.

"Those who died today, were ill today, didn’t go to school today, and were poor today, could not wait that long. To help, the international community must provide more and better aid, debt relief and trade," he added.

At a press conference Monday, Benn singled out two significant developments that took place last month: the EU’s agreement to increase ODA between now and 2015, and the agreement for debt cancellation packaged by the British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown.

ODA from EU nations, he said, is expected to increase from 40 billion dollars to 80 billion dollars by 2010, half of which would go to Africa.

The second agreement on debt cancellation has to potential to deliver 55 billion dollars in debt cancellations to up to 38 countries, he predicted.

But Jubilee South, a global network of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), says that only the "unconditional cancellation" of all debts claimed from all developing nations "will liberate the peoples of the South from debt domination."

"The multilateral debt cancellation being proposed is still clearly tied to compliance with conditionalities which exacerbate poverty, open our countries further for exploitation and plunder, and perpetuate the domination of the South," it said.

Norwegian Minister of International Development Hilde Johnson was pessimistic about the slow progress in achieving MDGs. "Everyone knew what was needed, yet we are dragging our feet," she said.

Without the will to reform, MDGs would become "little more than wishful thinking." She said these goals would soon join other well-intended initiatives in "the graveyard of broken promises" to the poor.

"That must not be allowed to happen," Johnson said. "More aid was needed, as well as more debt relief. So was fresh money."