Millennium Development Goals: A Brief Evaluation(First publishedPolitico.ie)

www.GlobalSocialJustice.com

Justin Frewen

In the midst of the economic and financial ‘bonfire of the vanities’, which continues tosmoulder around us, it becomes even more difficult to consider the plight of the poor andthe destitute who reside in distant, ‘exotic’ lands. Indeed, it takes a calamity such as therecent horrendous earthquake in Haiti to confront us with the daily struggle for survivalfaced by so many of our fellow humans on this planet. However, while Haiti is now firmlyin the public eye and widely covered by the media - if not generally in any great depthas to the underlying causes – billions of people continue to live in dire poverty, hungerand inequitable conditions globally.The Egyptian economist and director of theThird World Forumin Dakar (Senegal), SamirAmin, wrote at the beginning of this millennium

The polarization that is characteristic of modern globalization is phenomenal, without precedent in the entire past history of humanity.

Moreover, despite the expenditure of some US$2.74 trillion in international developmentassistance the situation seems worse than ever. However, while outlining the problemsfacing the poorest of our planet’s citizens is a relatively easy task, what can be done tostop this ongoing cataclysm?Probably the best known large scale recent international initiative to tackle the evils of poverty, hunger and inequality in the area of international development is the MillenniumDevelopment Goals (MDG). The MDG arose out of the proceedings of the 1996 FAO-organised World Food Summit and were animated by a commitment

“

to halve thenumber of hungry people in the world by 2015, as a first step towards the goal of foodfor all”, approval of the Rome Declaration on World Food Security and a “Plan of Actionto combat hunger”.According to the 2005 UN Millennium Project report, these MDG are aimed at providingsupport and assistance to over a billion people who are “still living in extreme poverty” and are “a life and death issue” for them. According to this document,

Extreme poverty can be defined as “poverty that kills,” depriving individuals of themeans to stay alive in the face of hunger, disease, and environmental hazards. Whenindividuals suffer from extreme poverty and lack the meager income needed even tocover basic needs, a single episode of disease, or a drought, or a pest that destroys aharvest can be the difference between life and death.

The MDG are comprised of eight goals and cover areas including the end of poverty andhunger, tackling child health and maternal health concerns, the provision of universaleducation and so on. Each goal is further broken down into a number of specific targets.The target date set for the realisation of the majority of these goals was 2015. For manycommentators, the drawing up and implementation of the MDG was seen as a realisationon the part of the world’s leaders that the promotion of human development was crucialif social and economic progress was to be made sustainable.

However, this was not the first time such a development programme had beeninstituted. In fact, development goals had been set by the UN since the 1960s but thelack of effective accountability mechanisms and dispersal of such initiatives amongstvarious bodies frequently contributed to their overall failure.Furthermore, praiseworthy though the aims of these MDG might appear at first sight,they were never intended to act as a universal panacea for the planet’s poor and hungry.The MDG has been plagued by bickering from the start as to their exact significance. Inthe preparatory debates to the MDG, there was a major dispute as to whether they wereto be understood as a commitment to halving “the

numbers

of poor and undernourished” in relation to the “

percentage

of the world’s rising population or of the faster-risingpopulation of the developing countries.” While this might appear to be merely one moreexample of bureaucratic haggling, its outcome could literally signify the differencebetween life and death for millions of mean. AsThomas Pogge, the Leitner Professor of Philosophy and International Affairs at Yale University, outlines:

Since the aggregate population of the developing world is projected to grow from 4,860million in 1996 to an estimated 6,217 million in 2015, we would then aim to reduce thenumbers of poor and undernourished by merely 36 (rather than 50) percent.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the lower target carried the day. However, by 2001 achievementof even the less ambitious target was not looking good as the trends indicated thepossibility of even greater poverty and malnutrition in 2015 than there had been in1996.The 2005 UNDP HDR was also pessimistic regarding the possibility of achieving thetargets laid out in the MDG as it noted that poor people were being left behind acrossmany of the goals. Moreover, the same report also noted that the “recurring theme indata from a large group of countries is that progress among the poorest 20% of thepopulation is far below the national average.” As a result several of the MDG targetswere unlikely to be met.For instance, it was estimated that the MDG target for reducing child mortality would bemissed by 4.4 million, a figure equivalent to three times the total number of childrenunder five in London, New York and Tokyo. This would add a total of 41 more childrendying from poverty – between 2005 and 2015 than would have occurred if the MDGtarget had been reached. Similarly, the target of universal primary education would notbe achieved with some 47 million children still not in school by 2015.The 2009 MDG progress report is also very pessimistic regarding the potential realisationof the MDG by 2015. While this Report does point out dramatic gains in certain areas,such as the massive reduction in the percentage of those living in extreme poverty indeveloping regions from just under half of the population to slightly over a quarter, it isimportant to point out that this progress has not been equitable across the ‘developingworld’. In fact, the great majority of the gains in this area have been made in Asia and,in particular, China. Moreover, the current lack of economic growth, diminishedresources, food security resources and so forth is now making their realisation evenmore difficult.A major obstacle to the realisation of the MDG has been the failure of the ‘richer nations’ to fully honour their development commitments. At the Monterey Financing forDevelopment Conference in 2002 the ‘developed’ nations pledged to make concreteefforts

towards meeting the UN 1970 General Assembly Resolution target of allocating0.7%

of their GNP in international aid. Meeting this target would have resulted in some

US$200 billion in total aid. However, the following year 2003 saw the 22 richest statesfailing absolutely to honour their development assistance pledge. In fact, the totaldevelopment assistance amounted to just over $69 billion, some $130 billion dollars lessthan - or approximately 35% of - the 0.7% promise would have realised.While international development aid did increase over the following years and in 2007,an 8.4% drop in net aid disbursements in real terms over 2006, saw a total of $103.7billion committed, representing only 0.28 per cent of the combined GNP of ‘developedcountries’.Furthermore, the manner in which the MDG were drawn up makes their fulfilmentpotentially compatible with increasing inequality. One of the principal objectives of theMDG is a decrease in the levels of poverty worldwide. While a reduction in poverty levelsis of course welcome, particularly if provides people with the chance to enjoy lives freefrom want and hunger, it is possible that inequality could increase at the same time. Thiscould occur if the higher income brackets experience a faster rise than lower incomelevels. Given the present extremes of inequality, as discussed in part 4 of this mini-series, this is hardly a desirable outcome, as further increases in inequality riskprovoking even greater marginalisation of lower income groups, reduced social cohesionand a decline in the general well-being of poorer people.There is also a further absolutely critical objection, which relates to the limited scope of the MDG. Thomas Pogge puts this point very well when he writes that the MDG

[p]ledge cannot justify setting this problem aside: Our governments’ plan envisagesthat, even in 2015, there will still be 420 million undernourished human beings and,assuming rough proportionality, 9 million annual poverty deaths. Are these levels we cancondone? With a linear decline, implying a 474,000 annual reduction in the number of poverty deaths, the plan envisages 250 million deaths from poverty-related causes over the 19-year period. Is so huge a death toll acceptable because these deaths would beoccurring at a declining rate?”

It would appear therefore, that the MDG are a far from adequate approach on the part of the richer countries to tackle the evils of poverty, inequality, hunger and half-lives of those living in the poorer countries. Though it may be true that the MDG might havepositive consequences for a certain number of those in poverty, even allowing for thewrangling over the numbers targeted for assistance, they still condemn many who mightbe assisted to continue to live and die in poverty and hunger.