South Asia Watch on Trade, Economics & Environment (SAWTEE)

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Whom are we fooling?
Published: The Kathmandu Post, 23 April 2004
By: Navin Dahal

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are numerical and time bound targets that express key elements of human development. They include halving income poverty and hunger; achieving universal primary education and gender equality; reducing under five mortality by two thirds and maternal mortality by three-quarters; reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS; and halving the proportion of people without access to safe water. These targets are to be achieved by 2015, from their level in 1990 (United Nations, 2000).

The Millennium Declaration was adopted by the UN General Assembly in September 2000 and was strengthened politically by the presence of an unprecedented number of heads of states. It updates many of the development goals originally set, and not met, for the year 2000 and reformulates them for the year 2015. The UN has been setting development goals since the first 'Development Decade' in the 1960s.

But due to weak mechanism of accountability scattered into different commissions and bodies that do not communicate with each other, monitoring progress on achieving these goals was missing. The UN also realised that there was a need to develop a coherent set of basic indicators and strengthen the capacity of the UN system and countries to collect and analyze statistics. Due to these reasons, the Secretary General of the United Nations has assigned UNDP the role of global 'Campaign Manager' in implementing the Millennium Declaration and 'scorekeeper' for the eight goals.

Many question the feasibility of the MDGs. As most of the global targets are easily set but hardly met, there are no compelling reasons to believe that the MDGs will be a detour from the past. If we are to go by the progress on MDGs so far, there are not enough reasons to believe otherwise.

In developing countries, the average proportion of people living on less than US $ 1 a day declined from 30% in 1990 to 25% in 1999 (World Bank, 2002). The simple extrapolation of this trend will indicate that the world is in track to halving poverty by 2015. Unfortunately, most of the global progress was due to the rapid decline in Asia, particularly China. Progress in Latin America and the Caribbean, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Middle East and North Africa combined was merely a tenth of what was required to meet the agreed target. Global poverty projections will be valid only if they are based on country specific projections.

In 1990, the goal was set to provide basic education to all children by the year 2000. Sadly, the 1990s saw only one fifth of the global progress needed. The goalpost has now been sifted to 2015, but this promise will also not be kept if progress does not accelerate two fold between 2000 and 2015.

If the global trend of the 1990s were to continue at the same rate until 2015, the reduction in the under-five mortality rate will be about one-quarter, far less than the agreed target of two-thirds reduction. Meeting the global target will require that the rate of reduction increase more than five-fold between 2000 and 2015, an extremely unlikely scenario.

In 1990, the target was set to halve the proportion of children suffering from malnutrition by 2000. Data show that moderate and severe underweight declined from 32% to 28% respectively. Thus only, one quarter of the promise was kept. As part of MDGs, the goalpost was pushed to 2015; but the current rate of progress will have to increase three-fold if the malnutrition in developing countries is to be halved by 2015.

Two decades after it was first reported, AIDS is the most serious threat to human development in many developing countries. It is the leading cause of death in Sub-Saharan Africa. Globally, no progress has been made towards reducing HIV prevalence among people in the developing countries.

In 1990, target was set to reduce maternal mortality by half by the year 2000. In developing countries proportion of births attended by skilled health personnel increased from 42% to 53%, respectively. If we assume a proportionate change in maternal mortality ratio and percentage of births attended by skilled health personnel, this was just a third of the agreed target. Not surprisingly, the goalpost was changed to reduce the maternal mortality ratio by three-quarters by 2015. But the current rate of progress will have to increase three-fold if the target is to be met by 2015.

In developing countries, coverage of improved drinking water sources increased from 71% in 1990 to 78% in 2000. This was far short of the goal set in 1990 to reach universal access to safe water by 2000. Not only was the goalpost moved to 2015, the new MDG target was lowered from universal coverage to halving the proportion of people without access to safe water. Thus the new target is not only less ambitious than the initial one but also looks doubtful given the progress so far.

Why are the promises not being kept? Many reasons account for this and are often country-specific. But one reason stands out in virtually all countries; under investment in basic social services. Experiences of high achieving countries such as Botswana, Costa Rica and Republic of Korea show that a minimum of 20% of the national budget has to go to basic social services. The developing countries with an average 12-14% of the national budget spent on basic social service, fall far short of the requirement.

Given the financial constraints being faced by most of the least developed and low-income countries, official development assistance (ODA) becomes indispensable if they are to increase spending on basic social service, which is vital to achieve the MDGs. It is however disheartening that ODA dropped from 0.33% of the combined gross national income of developed countries in 1990 to 0.22% in 2000 (OECD/DAC 2001). It now stands at less than one third of the agreed target of 0.7%.

In 2001, Nelson Mandela asked, 'Will legacy of our generation be more than a series of broken promises?' If the declining ODA is a testimony of 'global partnership for development', the MDGs will become yet another set of 'broken promises'.

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