UN millennium goals ignore deeper causes of poverty

Posted on September 26, 2010 in Debates

Source: — Authors:

montrealgazette.com – business
September 22, 2010.   By Olivier De Schutter, Freelance

World leaders are meeting in New York this week to encourage progress toward meeting the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals -a set of eight objectives, ranging from eradicating extreme poverty and hunger to reducing child mortality and achieving universal primary education. These are, in theory, to be achieved by 2015. The summit will take stock of successes and failures, and move toward “concrete strategies for action.” But this summit would do the entire world a great service by acknowledging what has gone so wrong with the MDGs, and choosing a radically different approach.

The MDGs, as they are currently conceived, address the symptoms of poverty and underdevelopment, but mostly ignore the deeper causes. They draw attention to 18 targets in total -those for which data are most easily compiled. But the result is that the MDGs might divert attention from the mechanisms that produce underdevelopment – rather like the drunken man searching for his keys under the lone streetlamp because the light is better there.

Instead of vowing to support humanitarian objectives and throwing money at poverty’s symptoms, the rich countries must recognize the urgency of removing the obstacles to development that they have the power to address.

Each year, for example, developing countries miss out on $124 billion in revenue from offshore assets held in tax havens. By not closing down such tax havens, we actively encourage corrupt elites in these countries to continue cheating their populations.

Moreover, the current system of international trade is deeply inequitable: It exposes developing countries to unfair competition, and discourages diversification of their economies. These countries face a burden of foreign debt -estimated at $500 billion for poor countries -that is simply incompatible with the pursuit of development goals.

Addressing these issues is vital for development objectives to have any chance to succeed. Yet, although Goal 8 is to achieve a global partnership for development, and although some progress has been made on the debt issue, too little in fact has been done to give this initiative concrete meaning.

Another major deficiency of the MDGs is their failure to recognize human rights as essential to any sustainable development strategy. But human rights are not just symbols; they are also tools. They are valuable because they are operational.

The world’s one billion hungry people do not deserve charity: they have a human right to adequate food, and governments have corresponding duties, which are enshrined in international human-rights law. Governments that are serious about making progress on development objectives should be asked to adopt a legislative framework for the realization of economic and social rights such as the right to food or the right to health care.

That framework should be designed through a participatory process involving civil society. It should define which actions should be taken, by whom, within which time frame, and with which resources. The intended beneficiaries of these actions should be defined as rights-holders.

< http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/millennium+goals+ignore+deeper+causes+poverty/3560511/story.html >

Tags: ,

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 26th, 2010 at 4:37 pm and is filed under Debates. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Leave a Reply