BRAZIL: CONTINUITY AND ACCELERATION

By Dilma Rousseff Reprint | | Print |

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BRASILIA, Nov 1 2010 (IPS) - Brazil has already achieved well ahead of schedule the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) for reducing poverty, one of eight established in September 2000 by 170 heads of state brought together at a United Nations summit in New York. The target date stipulated in the agreement was 2015. In the last eight years Brazil has stepped up implementation of an array of public policies that were designed to eradicate extreme poverty in the country as part of a larger plan that would guarantee both economic development and social inclusion.

For the first time in many decades in our country of 192 million inhabitants, economic growth and distribution of income are increasing hand in hand, and as of today, as a result of the policies mentioned above, 28 million people have been able to climb out of the ranks of the extreme poor while at the same time 29 million have improved their economic standing and succeeded in joining the middle class.

However, there is still much that remains to be done. We recognise with absolute certainty that attaining the status of a developed nation requires the elimination of extreme poverty and demands that all Brazilians have access to living conditions that assure them both dignity and citizenship.

Oovercoming the historic blights of poverty and inequality in the world requires an international coordination of forces that are more favourable to change of this type. For this reason, we are convinced that Brazil’s new political relationship with the world is the other side of the social transformations the country has experienced in recent years. Today Brazil is a member of the G20, the club of the most economically powerful nations in the world, created in 1999; of BRIC, along with Russia, India, and China; and IBSA, which also includes India and South Africa.

The commitment that we have made in this period to eradicating extreme poverty will remain a high priority in the years to come. A new global geopolitics must keep sight of the major international challenges of our age: of these two of the most important are defeating poverty and inequality and devising a form of development that is environmentally sustainable.

We are also fully aware of the fact that there can be no peace without economic and social growth. Because of its recent achievements and the position that it now occupies in the world, Brazil knows that it has an enormous contribution to make to the future of the planet on many levels. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

(*) Dilma Rousseff is the presidential candidate of the ruling Workers Party in Brazil’s upcoming elections and ex-minister of energy and ex-chief of staff in the administration of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.