DEVELOPMENT: Millennium Goals Should Reflect Racial Disparities, Say Experts

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Gustava Capdevila

GENEVA, Aug 31 2005 (IPS) - The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) should be modified to reflect racial and ethnic inequalities, instead of just social and economic disparities, said Brazilian expert Edna María Santos Roland.

The first of the eight MDGs adopted by 189 heads of state and government at the September 2000 United Nations General Assembly is to halve the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day and suffering from hunger by 2015, from 1990 levels.

The second is to achieve universal primary education by 2015.

But Roland, a member of the U.N. Independent Eminent Experts Group created to follow up on the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action, is advocating the adoption of an additional goal: “to halve the inequalities existing between the white population and the people of African descent.”

“In order to reach this target,” said Roland, “it is necessary to know the proportion of white population and of people of African descent that live in extreme poverty and hunger and establish different targets for each,” aimed at meeting the first MDG.

“Otherwise, the goal may be reached with policies that will benefit preferentially the white population, at the cost of increasing the inequality between the white population and people of African descent,” said the expert, who served as rapporteur-general at the World Conference against Racism held four years ago in Durban, South Africa.

Roland presented her idea at a session of the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent, another U.N. mechanism established to follow up on compliance with the Declaration and Programme of Action adopted in Durban.

The initiative is based on demands for statistics disaggregated by ethnicity, a concern shared by the Working Group and by all specialists interested in getting the needs and rights of people of African descent respected in the strategies designed to reach the MDGs.

The remaining MDGs involve promoting gender equality and empowering women, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, combating HIV/AIDS and other diseases, ensuring environmental sustainability, and developing a global partnership for development.

Peter Lesa Kasanda, chairman of the Working Group, said that “While each country is devising its own strategy to implement the Millennium Declaration and to achieve its goals, suggestions have been put forward in several fora that MDGs country reports and processes take into account statistical information disaggregated by sex and ethnicity.”

He pointed out that disaggregated data are crucial to understanding “patterns of inequality, because otherwise, inequality can appear to be purely a function of ‘class-based’ disadvantage, thus omitting the horizontal dimension of inequality, namely the gaps in well-being between clearly defined groups (along the lines of gender or ethnicity for instance).”

Eric E. Boone, with the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP), in the United States, said there is real concern over the strategies being followed to achieve the MDGs.

“Many are fearful that strategies which fail to sufficiently take into consideration the particular challenges faced by racial and ethnic minorities will only increase the inequalities felt by these segments of the population,” said Boone.

In the United States, for example, the most advanced minorities benefit disproportionately from “affirmative action programmes” because they are in a better position to compete with others for better-paid jobs, admission to the university, promotions and other advantages, he argued.

Among African-Americans, while the middle class is the fastest-growing segment, “it has been discovered that the greatest growth actually occurred in the top 40 percent while growth in the bottom 60 percent stagnated if not declined,” he added.

For that reason, the NAACP insists that in designing affirmative action programmes, “sincere thought and consideration must be given to assure that these programmes are truly targeted to affect the lives of the most disadvantaged.”

If the statistics referring to progress in fulfilling the MDGs are not based on disaggregated data, they could mask “groups that are missing out,” such as national, religious, or linguistic minorities, people of African descent or indigenous people, said Boone.

He argued that in the case of each MDG, an analysis focusing specifically on the situation of people of African descent could help design more effective strategies.

For instance, poverty reduction strategies should ensure that these communities are not disproportionately represented among the one-half of persons apparently condemned to continuing to live in extreme poverty, added Boone.

But the experts also warned of the possibility of generating social stigmas by identifying disadvantaged groups, and the challenge of getting ethnic groups to support the strategies designed to achieve the MDGs.

Roland mentioned the “Um Brazil para as Crianças” (Brazil for Children) report by the Rede de Monitoramento Amiga da Criança (Brazilian Monitoring Network Friendly to Children), which underlines the inequalities in Brazilian society, especially arising from race and ethnicity.

The report demonstrated that policies focused on improving the lives of children and adolescents could have a negative impact on people affected by discrimination if the policies fail to take into account the question of equality, she said.

Mercedes Moya, an Afro-Colombian activist with the organisation Espacio Afroamericano, complained that the MDGs do not recognise cultural differences and ignore communities that propose models of social organisation that differ from the current ones.