By Tamira Gunzberg
BRUSSELS, Jul 18 2015 (IPS)

Today Jul. 18 is Mandela Day, the annual international day in honour of the late Nelson Mandela, the first democratically-elected President of the Republic of South Africa.

The day was instated by the United Nations after Nelson Mandela made a call for the next generation to take on the burden of leadership in addressing the world’s social injustices. Mandela said, “It is in your hands now”.

Tamira Gunzburg

Today, then, is a moment to reflect on whether we are indeed rising to that occasion. One of the scourges of humanity today, in Mandela’s own words, is poverty. And 2015 is a year rife with opportunities to make historic strides in the fight against extreme poverty. Halfway through the year, what have our leaders made of this potential?

Many of them will have just arrived home from an international summit held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, this week. The summit was meant to land an international agreement on how to finance development going forward. Against difficult odds, world leaders indeed signed up to an agreement that could start to reshape how developing countries are supported in their progress towards growth and prosperity.

But over the months of negotiation preceding the summit, some key areas were watered down. For example, one measure to curb illicit financial flows, involving the public disclosure of multinational companies’ tax reports, was weakened.

A proposed commitment to prioritise the poorest countries by directing half of development assistance there suffered the same fate.

The result is a final agreement that, as it stands, is not ambitious enough to be able to successfully end extreme poverty.“Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings” – Nelson Mandela, Trafalgar Square, 3 February 2005

Mandela Day is perfectly timed because his legacy reminds us that now is not the time to give up. Indeed, in just two months’ time, another historic opportunity will be within reach.

At the U.N. General Assembly in New York, world leaders will come together once again, this time to adopt a new set of Global Goals that will shape the future of our planet and its people.

The previous set of anti-poverty goals, the Millennium Development Goals, set in 2000 and due to expire this year, indeed played a critical role in drastically bringing down global average levels of hunger, child mortality, and extreme poverty.

But this time around, the Global Goals are all about finishing the job. In order to reach the very last person at the end of the very last mile, leaders will have to put the most vulnerable at the centre of their efforts from the get-go.

When this new blueprint is unveiled in September, we expect leaders to underpin the goals and objectives with the means and actions needed to actually achieve them by the 2030 deadline.

It would be the perfect opportunity for big donors like the European Union to prioritise the poorest countries by announcing they will direct half of their development aid to the least developed countries.

There are plenty more ways in which individual countries can step up and guarantee that the Global Goals are launched with the best chances of succeeding. I, for one, am optimistic about the prospects of that happening.

Part of that optimism I derive from my South African heritage. My mother, who grew up in South Africa under the cloud of apartheid, always tells me that she grew up convinced the world as she knew it would never change. And then one day it did.

We have Nelson Mandela to thank for that. But also many others who believed that a better world was possible, and who worked tirelessly to change the status quo.

In the year 2015, our generation faces formidable challenges of its own, but looking back at incredible transformations like South Africa’s shows that anything is possible.

In the last twenty years, we already halved the proportion of the world’s population living in extreme poverty, and virtually eliminating it by 2030 is entirely possible if our leaders get it right.

There is no better day than today to contemplate the role each and every one of us can play in making sure we do not fail on that count.

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

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By Tamira Gunzberg
BRUSSELS, Jun 18 2015 (IPS)

My colleagues just got back from Munich, where we held a summit bringing together over 250 young volunteers from across Europe. These youngsters campaigned in the run-up to and at the doorstep of the G7 Summit in Schloss Elmau, as one of the key moments in a year brimming with opportunities to tackle extreme poverty.

It’s inspiring to work with these young activists – their enthusiasm and creativity are humbling. But the other thing about young people is that they don’t let anyone pull the wool over their eyes. Euphemisms don’t stick; skirting the point doesn’t get you very far. They keep us on our toes and that is not a bad thing at all.

Courtesy of Tamira Gunzburg

But some phenomena I am simply at a loss to explain. One such paradox is the fact that only a third of aid goes to the very poorest countries, and that aid to those countries has been declining. Yet in the so-called ‘Least Developed Countries’, 43 percent of the population still lives in extreme poverty, compared to 13 percent in other countries.

This begs so many questions it is dizzying. How are we going to eradicate extreme poverty if we don’t prioritise the countries that need aid the most? What is aid for if not helping the poorest?

Why are we cutting aid to the poorest countries when it is the middle income countries that are becoming more able to mobilise their own sources of financing for development? And why aren’t leaders doing anything to reverse this perverse trend?

Instead, EU development ministers in May recommitted to the existing promise of providing 0.7 percent of national income in aid, and up to 0.2 percent of national income in aid to the least developed countries – this time “within the timeframe” of the post-2015 agenda to be adopted in September.

But even if they achieved both targets by say, 2025, that would still mean a share of only 28.6 percent of total aid going to the poorest countries. In other words: business as usual. This is where any young person would detect the glaring no-brainer, and unapologetically probe “… but isn’t that too little, too late?”Ending extreme poverty by 2030 and leaving no one behind will become harder as we near the zero zone.

Whereas the Millennium Development Goals – global anti-poverty goals agreed in the year 2000 – allowed us to pick the ‘low-hanging fruit’ in terms of bringing down average levels of extreme poverty and child mortality, this year’s new set of ‘Global Goals’ is all about finishing the job.

Ending extreme poverty by 2030 and leaving no one behind will become harder as we near the zero zone. We need to frontload our efforts and put the poorest and most vulnerable at the centre of our approach from the get-go.

That is why donors must commit to spending at least half of their aid on the poorest countries, and to doing this by 2020, so that those countries have time to tackle the Global Goals in time for the 2030 deadline.

This is but one of the debates that are heating up in the final weeks before the Summit in Addis Ababa in July, where world leaders will come together to decide on how to finance development. Negotiations touch upon topics that go well beyond aid, and rightly so, in an attempt to unlock new sources of financing such as domestic resource mobilisation and private sector investment.

Sadly though, many of the discussions are still being held hostage by the impasse on aid commitments. Indeed, donor countries’ laborious reaffirmation of decade-old broken promises does not inspire confidence that they are committed to doing things differently this time.

What, then, can change the game at this point? For one, let’s kick things up a level and bring in the big bosses. We fully expect heads of state to be in attendance in Addis – but even before then, the leaders of all 28 EU Member States are getting together for their own summit at the end of June.

Here they have the authority to agree on a more ambitious commitment than the development ministers managed to broker last month. Announcing an EU-wide intent to direct at least half of collective aid to the least developed countries would send a strong political message that could spark a much-needed race to the top in the final sprint towards Addis.

Another sure way to guarantee the success of this Summit is to inject more political will into the discussions that go beyond aid. For example, several countries are coming together to harness the “Data Revolution” to ensure that we collect the statistics needed to track progress and achieve the new Global Goals.

Right now, the world’s governments do not have more than 70 percent of the data they need to measure progress. Clearly, we need to aim for more with the new Global Goals.

Further, it will be crucial to agree on minimum per capita spending levels on essential services to deliver, by 2020, a basic package for all. In order to fund these efforts, governments should increase domestic revenues towards ambitious revenue-to-GDP targets and halve the gap to those targets by 2020 by implementing fair tax policies, curbing corruption and stemming illicit flows.

The list is long and time is running out, but as our youth activists would unwaveringly note, there is still ample opportunity for leaders in both North and South to rise to the occasion and throw their weight behind ending extreme poverty. Pesky questions aside, leaders really should take note of these young voices, because it is quite literally their future world that leaders are shaping this year.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

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