UN rethinks its goals for development
Back in the newly minted millennium year 2000, the image of a starved, impoverished African child was top of mind for leaders in rich countries. They set out utopian-sounding goals for ending poverty and hunger, beating back preventable diseases, empowering women, sustaining the environment and delivering literacy to people in ramshackle barrios and remote villages.
A-list celebrities such as Bono and Bob Geldof put the campaign on centre stage. The Millennium Development Goals were the magic wand that many hoped would wave the world’s poorest people, living on less than $1.25 (U.S.) a day, onto the path to sustainable lives within 15 years.
The goals raised more than one billion people out of absolute poverty and increased global primary school enrolment to 91per cent, while the goal of halving the proportion of people with no access to clean drinking water was met ahead of schedule.
But in spite of some resounding successes, most of the original targets for funding or achievement have not been met.
While primary school enrolment rose significantly, the campaign narrowly missed the goal of universal enrolment. Although the child mortality rate was reduced by more than half over 25 years, it also failed to meet the MDG target of two-thirds.
Nor did the global maternal mortality rate — which fell by nearly half — achieve the goal of two-thirds reduction. And while the number of new HIV infections fell by about 40 per cent, it missed the target of halting and beginning to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS by 2015.
The shortfalls are not surprising. The bars for achievement were set high, and the amounts pledged by wealthier countries to aid the poorest ones were voluntary and subject to economic and political fortunes.
Fast forward to 2015: The MDGs’ shelf life has expired and new goals are taking their place. An international conference has already endorsed a framework for financing Sustainable Development Goals that will be the centrepiece of a Sept. 25-27 meeting of world leaders in New York, hosted by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
The new goals come with stunning price tags: an estimated $3.3 trillion to $4.5 trillion a year until 2030. And they are being launched during a perfect storm of donor demands: debt and financial crises; migration and refugee floods; a horrific war in Syria and Iraq; spreading terrorism and the escalating threat of climate change disaster.
Acting before a crisis begins In an increasingly ADHD world that clicks from crisis to crisis, images of drowned children or desperate refugees may be more compelling than those of kids squatting in makeshift schoolrooms or women trudging over dusty roads to seek water.
“The issue of long-term goals and at the same time humanitarian crises is not new, it’s an ongoing challenge,” says Amanda Sussman, head of policy for Plan International Canada.
“Now we’re seeing emergency funding going up. But there are few crises where you can’t do something beforehand to mitigate the impact and cost. There’s no either/or here. Countries, including Canada, have to find ways to do both.”
To gain the lofty sums needed to accomplish the SDGs by 2030, the UN is counting on overseas development aid from wealthy countries as a mainstay, along with “innovative partnerships” with the private sector.
But they also require boosting of domestic resources among the aid recipient countries, which must strive to grow their economies to sustain development into the future: one of the keys to pulling them permanently out of poverty.
Paradoxically, an unfair international tax system dominated by rich countries helps to keep struggling states poor and less able to support their own development.
“To reach those ambitious funding goals, developing countries have to be able to collect more taxes than they can get now,” says Brittany Lambert of Oxfam Canada, a senior policy adviser on women’s rights and global issues. “Many of them have weak tax bases because global tax rules allow the big multinational corporations to dodge taxes. They deprive poor countries of revenue they need to fund health care, education and basic services.”
It’s no small problem. A recent report by the UN’s trade and development committee (UNCTAD) found that developing countries lose $100 billion in tax revenues a year through corporate shuffling of investments to offshore tax havens.
According to calculations by Washington-based Global Financial Integrity, about $1 trillion a year is lost due to illicit financial flows from crime, corruption, tax evasion and other activities.
That makes the estimated $27 billion a year needed to provide universal access to water and sanitation by 2030 — a pillar of development — look like small change. But digging the missing money out of the dark is another matter.
At a funding conference in July, the G77 developing countries tried — and failed — to create an intergovernmental tax body in which all could take part on an equal footing.
“It’s especially hard on women,” says Lambert. “Lack of tax dollars prevents funding for health and education, and women get the least. They won’t be sent to school because their families can’t afford fees. And they won’t get health ser- vices like maternal and reproductive care, that they need over a lifetime, but men don’t.”
Even with improved tax revenues, there’s a need for better accountability inside developing countries.
In some, corruption and nepotism are rife, and funds don’t trickle down to the poor. A report by Oxfam and Development Finance International says that 32 per cent of 124 countries are performing badly on transparency for implementing development goals.
There is general agreement that better accounting and monitoring is needed. The UN has already begun consulting on ways of measuring the success of the SDGs, a complicated business that includes some 300 benchmarks. Many poor countries, however, lack statistics necessary to measure success or failure.
At the UN meeting this month, the SDGs, and the countries in urgent need of them, face a daunting challenge.
Whatever the results, like the Millennium Development Goals before them, they will improve the lives of the planet’s poorest and raise the human development level of the poorest countries. At worst, they will once again fall short of their lofty goals. At best, they could create what the UN’s Ban Ki-moon calls a “revitalized global partnership for sustainable development that will leave no one behind.”