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THE 2003 HUMAN DEVELOPMENT REPORT
“MILLENIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS: PRESENTATION BY MR. NORMAND LAUZON
I am very pleased to be here in Ottawa today to launch the 2003 Human Development Report in Canada. The Report, commissioned by the United Nations Development Programme since 1990, offers this year an analysis of the world’s progress in meeting the ambitious Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and of the long road ahead of us to achieve them. As you will recall, at the UN General Assembly in 2000, all 189 United Nations Member States took stock of the gross inequalities in human development worldwide and recognized their collective responsibility to uphold the principles of human dignity, equality and equity at the global level. In addition to declaring their support for freedom, democracy and human rights, the Member States set eight goals for development and poverty eradication that they pledge should be achieved by 2015. These Goals were reaffirmed by the G-8 last month in France. Will it happen? Where do we stand? What needs to be done and why? This morning, first, I would like to review with you the status of the Human Development Index and, second, review where the world stands with regard to the achievement of the eight MDGs. The Human Development Index (HDI) Since 1990, the Human Development Report has presented the Human Development Index as its core measuring standard. The Index is a composite measure of life expectancy, education and income per-person. The maximum and minimum values for each variable are reduced to a scale between 0 and 1, with each country at some point on the scale. The 2003 Human Development Index ranks 175 countries for 2001, the most recent year of available data. The top and the bottom of the Index remain unchanged from last year: Norway is on top and Sierra Leone is on the bottom.
Now, let me turn to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) The first goal: eradicate poverty and hunger The target is to reduce by 50%, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion
of people whose income is less than 1 dollar per day and the proportion
of people who suffer from hunger. The share of the world’s people living in extreme poverty fell from 29% in 1990 to 23% in 1999. However, in 1999, 2.8 billion people lived on less than $2/day, with 1.2 billion of them barely surviving at the margins of subsistence on less than $1/day. The declining overall number of people living in extreme poverty provides room for hope but the level of people living in extreme poverty remains disturbingly high. And the failure to reduce poverty in sub-Saharan Africa, the world’s poorest region, is a grave concern. In 1997-1999, 815 million people were undernourished. While the proportion of hungry people has been declining, the world’s booming population means that the number of malnourished people has not been falling fast enough. During the 1990’s, it declined by just 6 million people a year. At this rate, it would take more than 130 years to rid the world of hunger. The second goal: achieve universal primary education The target is to ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere – boys and girls alike – will be able to complete primary schooling. What is the situation now? World wide, primary enrolment has been improving, rising from 80% in 1990 to roughly 85% now. But that still means that of the 680 million children of primary school age, 115 million are not in school — 97% of them in developing countries. The third goal: achieve gender equity and empower women The target is to eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005, and in all levels of education no later than 2015. What is the situation now? The issue here is for a society to accept and ensure that women are equal partners with men in private and public spheres of life and decision-making. Consider the following statistics:
The fourth goal: reduce child mortality The target is to reduce by 66%, between 1990 and 2015, the under-five mortality rate. What is the situation now? Every year, 11 million children die of preventable causes. Immunizations in developing countries have levelled off at about 75% in 1990. In recent years, immunizations have fallen below 50% in Sub-Saharan Africa. Sub-Saharan Africa, ravaged by HIV/AIDS, saw life expectancy reverse in the 1990s from already tragically low levels. The fifth goal: improve maternal health The target is to reduce by 75%, between 990 and 2015, the maternal mortality rate. But not a single word in the Millennium Declaration on reproductive health! What is the situation now? Every year, 500,000 women die as a result of pregnancy and childbirth. In sub-Saharan Africa, a woman has a 1 in 13 chance of dying in pregnancy or childbirth. In OECD countries, it is 1 out of 4,085. The sixth goal: combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases The target - for 2015 - is to halt the progression and reverse the spread and incidence of HIV/AIDS, malaria and other major diseases. What is the situation now? Every year, there are more than 300 million cases of malaria, 90% of them in Sub-Saharan Africa. And every year, 60 million people are infected with tuberculosis. Current medical technologies can prevent these diseases from being fatal, but lack of access means that tuberculosis kills 2 million people/year and malaria 1 million. Obviously, the poorest people suffer most. The seventh goal: ensure environmental sustainability Several targets have been defined to reach this goal. The first target is to integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes and reverse the loss of environmental resources. The second target is to reduce by 50%, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water. The third target is to achieve by 2020 a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers. What is the situation now? Global warming is a global concern — and carbon dioxide emissions are one of its main causes. High-income countries with 14% of the world’s population generate 44% of CO2 emissions. More than 250 million people living off the land are directly affected by desertification. In 2000, 1.1 billion people lacked access to safe drinking water. The Human Development Report 2003 identifies 59 countries where, unless urgent action is taken, the Millennium Development Goals will not be met. In 31 countries, income and other human development indicators remain very low and progress towards the goals has stalled or begun to reverse. Many of these 59 countries face endemic problems related to geographical and other factors often overlooked in previous development strategies. It is not coincidental that 24 of these countries suffer from a high incidence of HIV/AIDS, 13 are embroiled in armed conflict, and 31 have unusually high foreign debts. The Millennium Development Goals are based on the premise that
economic growth alone will not rescue the world from the poverty
that entraps more than one billion people. The Human Development
Report 2003 argues that to reverse declines, development strategies
must focus not only on economic growth, but also on more equitable
distribution of wealth and services. Many of the solutions to the problems of hunger, disease, and illiteracy are known—such as bed nets to prevent malaria; midwives to assist labouring women; fertilizers to increase agricultural productivity; hygiene training to safeguard potable water supplies. These are hardly high-tech strategies. Yet, combined they would save millions of lives. The eighth goal: develop a global partnership for development If the international community seems to have reached a consensus on what needs to be achieved by 2015, no consensus has yet been reached on what needs to be done and by whom. The Human Development Report for 2003 tries to shed light on this key issue by putting meat on the bones of the eighth Goal of the Millennium Declaration and calls for the need to develop a global partnership for development The implications are clear: concrete action must be taken to improve the situation that I have just described under each Goal, to create an environment in which all people have a chance to realize their potential. One way of measuring progress achieved will be whether the gap in life expectancy at birth between a country such as Sierra Leone (34.5 years in 2001) and Canada (79.2 years in 2001) can be reduced over the next 12 years. The political framework for achieving the Millennium Development Goals was provided by the new global deal struck in 2002 in Monterrey, Mexico, between the North and the South. The rich nations represented at the Monterrey “Financing for Development” summit pledged to remove trade barriers and provide more aid and meaningful debt relief to developing countries that undertake tough political and economic reforms. The Human Development Report 2003 features a detailed “Millennium Development Compact” with concrete proposals for making the Monterrey deal a reality. The Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme, Mr. Mark Malloch Brown said recently: “We should all be asking what it would take to achieve the Millennium Declaration, not what can we afford to do.” The new Millennium Development Compact urges strategic action in the fight against poverty and calls on developing countries to adopt pro-poor policies that reinforce each other and are targeted to the Goals; donor countries to back these reforms with more resources and trade opportunities; and, for nations both rich and poor to put the Goals at the center of national and global decision-making. The Report argues that investment in industries and businesses that create jobs, such as manufacturing and textiles, are more important for human development than industries that require large amounts of capital, such as oil exploration and production. The Report also calls for special initiatives to support small businesses and entrepreneurs in developing countries. Microfinance is also a very important tool to be promoted as an integral part of the promotion of the financial sector in developing countries. The Report also identifies the absolute need to develop and implement, in partnership with developing countries, strategies for decent and productive work for youth. The Report also calls on developing country governments to prioritize spending on the basic services that poor people need most: primary schools, not universities; rural clinics, not technologically advanced hospitals in big cities. “Poor countries cannot afford to wait until they are wealthy before they invest in their people,” said Jeffrey Sachs, Special Adviser to the UN Secretary-General on the Millennium Development Goals, and a guest contributor to this year’s Human Development Report. “This is the wrong way round. They need rural health clinics, schools, roads, and safe drinking water and sanitation, so that economic growth can take root in the first place. Investment in meeting basic needs isn’t just desirable in its own right for ending human suffering, but it is also a key part of an overall strategy of economic growth.” I am pleased to say that the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF), which I manage, is entirely committed to address the concerns raised by Mr. Mr. Sachs. Indeed, UNCDF invests with the poor in the poorest countries in two areas: decentralized socio-economic public investments and microfinance. In so doing, UNCDF is working with the poor to help address their needs for basic socio-economic infrastructure and financial services. The Report challenges rich countries to set concrete targets and deadlines and take action by: Dismantling unfair trade subsidies and tariffs to create a level playing field: OECD countries provide more than US$300 billion in agricultural subsidies each year. Subsidies to US cotton growers are more than three times the amount of US Government aid to sub-Saharan Africa. In the European Union, the cash subsidy to every dairy cow exceeds total per capita EU aid to sub-Saharan Africa. The average poor person in a developing country selling into global markets confronts barriers twice as high as the typical worker in industrial countries, where agricultural subsidies alone are about $1billion/day, more than six times total aid. These barriers and subsidies cost developing countries more in lost export opportunities than the $56 billion in aid they receive each year. The Report urges rich countries to eliminate the discriminatory tariffs, quotas and subsidies that inhibit agricultural trade and investment in the developing world, and first and foremost, to the benefit of the Least Developed Countries (LDCs). Writing off unsustainable debt: The Human Development Report 2003 argues that rich countries need to provide more meaningful debt relief and calls on donor countries to be more cognizant of the particular debt burdens faced by heavily indebted poor countries. In all of the world’s 42 Highly Indebted Poor Countries, per capita income is less than $1,500—and between 1990 and 2001 these economies grew on average by only half a percent per year. Stepping-up aid flows: Last year the long decline in official aid flows was at last halted, and they rose to $57 billion (from $52.3 billion in 2001). At the Monterrey Conference for Financing for Development in 2002, both rich and poor countries pledged support for the policy reforms and new resources needed to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, including a promise to increase annual aid flows by $16 billion by 2006. But even if the commitments announced in Monterrey are fulfilled, the total will still fall far short of the $100 billion minimum needed per year to meet the goals. Creating better access to technological progress: Only 10 percent of research and development focuses on the health problems of 90 percent of the world’s people. Rich countries have undermined the right of poor countries to make life-saving drugs available to their people at affordable prices; a right endorsed by the World Trade Organization’s agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). The Human Development Report 2003 calls on rich countries to make this right a reality. The report also identifies as a priority the need, in cooperation with the private sector, to make available the benefits of new technologies, especially information and communication technologies. Much of the debate around the Goals has focused on whether poor countries will meet the Millennium targets. The 2003 HDR argues that rich countries should be subject to the same scrutiny, and be made to report on their progress towards meeting Goal 8, thus participating fully and transparently in a global partnership for development. These progress reports would contribute to a global poverty reduction strategy. “It is not a matter of charity,” said the report’s lead author, Ms. Sakiko Fukuda-Parr. “Diseases don’t respect neat geographical boundaries, nor do hurricanes or droughts or wars. These are the shared responsibilities of an increasingly inter-dependent world.” The Report warns that unless rich countries keep their pledges to deliver financing for development, the Millennium Development Goals—a series of time-bound, quantifiable targets ranging from halving poverty to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS by 2015—will not be met. The Human Development Report 2003 warns that these commitments are in fact not being met. “The concept behind a fair deal is for both rich and developing countries to be held accountable to benchmarks and deadlines,” said Ms. Eveline Herfkens, Executive Coordinator of the Millennium Development Goals’ Campaign. “Without rich nations doing their share, the poor countries will not be able to achieve the Goals.” As you know, regrettably, the world continues to be fragmented — between the rich and the poor, between the powerful and the powerless, and between those who welcome the global economy and those who demand a different course. Can we go beyond simply hoping for a more equitable and safer world for all? Each and every one of us has a role to play to transform good intentions into reality. I know that Canada is committed to doing a lot more in the forthcoming years in the areas of Official Development Assistance, trade and the other areas referred to in the Human Development Report to help meet the Millennium Development Goals. It would be interesting to hear from the other panellists and from the audience what is currently being done, what are the plans and, ultimately, what can Canada realistically contribute towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals? XXX Annex 1 Table 1 Data for the HDI: Canada, HDR 2002 and 2003
Footnotes
Download: Full Text of the 2003 Human Development Report [pdf] |
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