Asia Pacific nations commit to action plans to end poverty

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Delegates from 40 Asia Pacific countries pledged here on Friday to translate their broad acceptance of the world's anti-poverty goals into concrete national financing plans that specify how much it will cost them to attain the targets by 2015.

"We expect to finalize combining the government's action plans and accumulating their funding needs by April next year," UN special ambassador on Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for Asia and the Pacific Erna Witoelar told The Jakarta Post.

Erna went on to add that in the next 10 years, governments must continue to pursue pro-poor growth and development policy and implement MDG-based action plans.

The pledge was put in the so-called "Jakarta Declaration", which would be presented at the 60th session of the UN General Assembly this September by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

The declaration calls for regional cooperation in the areas of trade, investment, capacity-building, technology, infrastructure development and information and communication technologies.

According to the declaration, donors must provide enhanced and more predictable financing for aid, while emerging donors of the region, such as the East Asian "tigers," should strengthen trade, infrastructure development and investment in poor countries of the region to fight poverty.

"We recognize the urgent need of Asia and the Pacific to undertake collective actions, considering that ... much needs to be done over the next ten years," Indonesian Coordinating Minister for People's Welfare Alwi Shihab read a statement.

The declaration therefore requests the special assistance of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the UN Millennium Project to support sectoral needs assessments for national governments to achieve the MDGs.

It also reaffirms the importance of enhancing cooperation in the region in fostering greater coherence and improved trade among the countries to accomplish the MDGs.

"We recognize the importance of trade as an engine of growth and development, and emphasize the need for further work in the region to promote an open, rules-based, predictable, non- discriminatory multilateral trading system, including through achieving the development objective of the Doha Round," it said.

The commitment represents the culmination of a three-day meeting in which the challenges of the region's 14 least developed countries (LDCs) have been brought to the forefront.

The meeting also recognized the health and environmental problems in this region, and the delegates expressed commitment to mobilize cooperation to address them.

Warning that the development gains of many countries in the region were now threatened by the steady rise of oil prices, the declaration calls for enhanced development of alternative energy sources, efficient energy use and sustainability of energy supplies.

Given the region's particular vulnerability to natural disasters, the countries also stressed the need for more regional cooperation and the need to speed up establishment of early warning systems for all natural hazards.

Also along with more technology transfer to avert the development of pandemics such as HIV/AIDS, avian flu and other communicable diseases.

Separately, a non-government organization coalition Global Call to Action against Poverty (GCAP) feared that the formula of free trade driving economic growth to implement MDG commitments might instead make countries move away from the goals.

"Such a formula is just the same development paradigm in place over the past 30 years that has been the root cause of the current poverty and injustice, choking the lives and human dignity of the world's poor, in which the majority live in the Asia Pacific region," it said in a statement.