At the Millennium Summit of the United Nations in September 2000, all 189 member states unanimously adopted the Millennium Declaration. They agreed upon a series of quantified and time-bound goals to reduce extreme poverty, disease and deprivation; the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). However, despite progress in some areas, it now seems unlikely that these goals will be met.

Decreasign funding, increasing needs

It was not the first time that the international community committed to these objectives. The World Summit for Children in 1990 witnessed a pledge to achieve universal access to primary education by the year 2000. So what is different this time? Global interconnectedness and market interdependence play a significant role. In this new climate of globalization and with more talk of terrorism, extreme poverty has more far-reaching consequences than in the past. Ensuring adequate living conditions worldwide would be a significant contribution towards global peace and stability. Likewise, conservation of the environment and biodiversity is an issue of universal concern.

However, these goals are unlikely to be met. The MDGs were set in a period of unprecedented economic growth and prosperity. The affluent financial situation enabled donors to pledge contributions towards the realisation of these goals. The 2008 financial crash was an unexpected and acute setback. It forced many countries to cut expenses. Foreign aid budgets suffered.

As a result, this year, a wide range of UN agency, and other NGO budgets have experienced large budget shortages.  Subsequently, certain development projects underwent significant quality decreases. For instance UNRWA, which provides aid to Palestinian refugees in the Near East, has already been experiencing increasing budget shortages in the last years: $87.4 million in 2008, and $107 million in 2009.

The financial crisis also had severe direct effects on aid recipient countries. The progress towards the achievement of the MDGs in most developing countries resulted from the high economic growth of the early 2000s. Now, “the immediate prospects are for reduced global growth and higher inflation. Both threaten continued success in reducing income poverty,” Sha Zukang, the Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations, stated in the overview of the 2008 MDG report.

Aid allocation
discrepancies

Aid allocation methods are also likely to undermine progress towards these goals. The United States and the European Commission spend the majority of their aid budgets in middle-income countries, which were already on course to meet the MDGs. This demonstrates that donors
distribute much less aid to the most deprived countries for various political reasons. It is therefore unsurprising that, despite considerable progress, numerous countries in sub-Saharan Africa are not on track to achieve a single Millennium Development Goal. Another impediment to the achievement of the MDGs is that the populations of countries where corruption or authoritarian regimes prevail are deprived of foreign aid and opportunities, which may lead to disastrous consequences. Jeffrey Sachs proposes in his book, ‘The End of Poverty’, that “perhaps the most important action that rich countries can take in those circumstances is to help the well-governed neighbours of such countries to prove that there is help available for those that are organized politically to help themselves. The biggest problem today is not that poorly governed countries get too much help, but that well-governed countries get far too little.

Substantial Progress

The predicted failure of certain regions to meet the MDGs, however, does not necessary imply a lack of development. In fact, some of the poorest states in Africa, which are far from being on track to meet the MDGs, have been making the most rapid progress in their history.  Analyst Michael Clemens highlights the fact that most African countries have expanded primary enrolment rates far more rapidly during the last 50 years than Western countries did during their development. Nevertheless, this is still not sufficient to reach the 2nd MDG of achieving universal primary education.

Furthermore, Africa’s recent GDP growth of an average of 5.2 percent during 2000-07 has been the highest in Africa’s history for a seven-year period, and above historical averages for all countries. It is nevertheless 1.8 percent short of the growth needed for the region to achieve the 1st MDG, of reducing poverty rate by half.

Significant African successes are being depicted as failures, according to economist William Easterly. He believes that “the negative picture matters because it is demoralizing to African leaders and activists, and because it might have real consequences for things like private foreign investment to reinforce the stereotype that “Africa always fails”. That said, rich countries who have not met pledges must shoulder their share of blame for what failures there are.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 2nd, 2009 at 18:20 and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.