Poverty: An Unwinnable War

Posted by Vinia Datinguinoo 
PCIJ

EVERY hour, around the world, more than 1,200 children die of causes related to poverty; it is the equivalent of three tsunamis hitting every month, of the kind that swept across the Indian Ocean in December 2004 and left some 300,000 people dead in its wake. And in the next decade, at least 4.4 million more of the world's poorest children will die of preventable causes, unless governments fulfill the promises they made at the start of the millennium to work to end hunger and inequality.

"The global community will likely fail to achieve the Millennium Development Goals," said Dr. Manuel Montes of the United Nations Development Programme ( UNDP), at the Philippines launch of the 2005 Human Development Report.

The MDGs are a set of targets agreed to by UN member states in 2000, outlining the most urgent development needs for the world's poorest populations. The Goals are used by the international community as benchmark for measuring successes—or failures—in human development.

The Goals include eradicating extreme hunger; achieving universal primary education; improving maternal health; and reducing child mortality. They were set out to be attained by 2015.

The Human Development Report says the world now stands "at a crossroads" as it begins a countdown to 2015: it can either seize the moment and make 2005 "the start of a decade for development," or choose instead "to continue on a business as usual basis and make 2005 the year in which the pledge of the Millennium Declaration is broken."

The 2005 HDR is being released on the eve of the World Summit to be held in New York on September 14 to 16. The Summit will gather heads of state and government to review developments since the Millennium Declaration and draw up a course of action for the coming decade.

Using the Human Development Index (HDI) as tool, the HDR tracks the performance of countries toward achieving the development goals. The HDI looks beyond per capita income as a measure of progress and assesses factors such as life expectancy, education, and literacy.

Of 177 countries monitored using latest available data for 2003, Norway is at the top, with the highest HDI; Niger is at the bottom.

Between those two ends, on average, the HDR says, people are healthier, better educated, less impoverished, and more likely to be living in a multi-party democracy.

The Philippines is ranked 84, a notch lower than its slot in the last Report. Although its HDI has hovered in the area of middle-level development, other countries have overtaken it. In the region, Malaysia (61) and Thailand (73) continue to be higher than the Philippines; Vietnam (108) and Indonesia (110) are behind. (View the Asia-Pacific list.)

Yet whatever gains in human development have been made in the last 15 years should not be exaggerated, the Report warns, as hunger and inequality continue to hurt huge populations around the world.  

The tasks have remained gargantuan:

• Life expectancy in developing countries has increased by two years since 1990. But the HIV/AIDS pandemic claimed some three million lives and infected five million more just in 2003. Other preventable diseases such as malaria have not been eradicated.
• More than 130 million people have been lifted out of extreme poverty since 1990. But more than 1 billion people still live in abject hunger, surviving on less than US$1 a day. And the rate of poverty reduction has slowed down in the 1990s, compared with the more optimistic rates in the previous decade.
• There are three million fewer child deaths annually. But 10.7 million children every year do not live to see their fifth birthday.
• In the 1990s, 1.2 billion people gained access to clean water. Still, more than 1 billion people have no access to safe water.

Overall, the HDR says, human development has been too slow. The lag has been most pronounced in the poorest regions, among them sub-Saharan Africa and the independent states that succeeded the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

• Fifty countries with a combined population of almost 900 million are falling backwards on at least one of the Goals. Twenty-four of these countries are in sub-Saharan Africa.
• Eighteen countries with a total of 460 million people have moved backwards on their HDI. Twelve of these countries are in sub-Saharan Africa. 
• Goal to cut poverty: In 2015, on current trends, there would be 827 million people living in extreme poverty, or on less than US$1 a day. Another 1.7 billion people would be living on US$2 a day.
• Goal to reduce child deaths by two-thirds: On current trends, the goal to reduce the deaths of children under five years of age would be met in 2045, not 2015, or 30 years late.
• Goal of universal primary education: In 2015, 47 million children would still be out of school, 19 million of them in sub-Saharan Africa.

The Report makes a specific argument for the global community to work together for the resolution of domestic conflicts, as it offers evidence of the link between poverty and violent conflict. "Indeed," say the Report's authors, "violent conflict is one of the surest and fastest routes to the bottom of the HDI table."

Of the 32 countries at the bottom of the HDI rankings, the Report notes, 22 have experienced conflict at some point since 1990. Responding to conflicts thus becomes more than an immediate peacekeeping initiative, but "a long-term reconstruction challenge."

The Report makes other recommendations that it says the world must take seriously in negotiations in the coming World Summit:

• Improve the level and quality of aid to levels required by the MDGs. Too little aid is given; and of those that are given, much of it is either poorly targeted. High levels of aid also continue to be tied to conditionalities that are disadvantageous to the receiving countries.
• Reform international trade policies and rules to make international integration productive for poor countries. International trade rules must be made more equal and fair.
• Cooperate to redistribute income. The poorest 40% of the world's poor—or 2.5 billion people—account for less than 5% of all global income. Genuine human development targets must thus use the inequality lens as a guide so that the poorest populations are not left behind.  

"In the end," UNDP's Montes said at the Report's public launch, "MDGs should not simply be a way of picking up the wounded but as a way of rethinking policies."

Read the 2005 Human Development Report.