Forging regional partnership to eradicate poverty by 2015

Ngurah Swajaya Jakarta

Indonesian media continuously present bleak reports on malnourishment cases and outbreak of diseases in a number of provinces, ranging from severe malnutrition known as "busung lapar" to avian influenza ("bird flu").

From January to April 2005 alone, malnutrition cases in children under five-years old in Central Java amounted to almost 6,000 with 25 attributable deaths. The number dramatically increased to almost 9,000 malnutrition cases in June 2005. Ninety percent of these cases are closely related to the extreme poverty of their parents.

These are examples -- as suggested by Prof. Jeffrey Sachs in his Millennium Project Report -- of "pockets of poverty" that exist within countries or regions despite the overall progress achieved to reach the targets of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

In preparation for the largest gathering of world's leaders at the United Nations in New York to review the implementation of the Millennium Declaration next September, ministers of Asian and Pacific countries will gather in Jakarta this week to attend a meeting on implementing the MDGs: The Way Forward to 2015.

The meeting will provide a forum for an exchange experiences and lessons learnt on implementing MDGs and to design common strategies to develop partnership and cooperation. Why is the meeting organized? The Asia-Pacific is a region that has registered a massive and unprecedented reduction in poverty, according to the UN Secretary-General in his recent report.

Over the past 15 years, the number of poor people in the region has been drastically reduced. However, the number of poor who live on under a dollar a day in this region remains the largest compared to other regions. Two-thirds of almost one billion poor people in the world live in Asia and the Pacific.

The region's rapid economic growth helped to achieve such progress. Thus, the overall implementation of MDGs still reflects a mixed picture of both significant progress and missed opportunities. Sustained growth in China and accelerated growth in India, the two most populous countries in the world, are the main reasons for the decline of the number of extreme poor in the region.

Despite the success stories and encouraging reports on the overall progress to reduce extreme poverty in the region, a lot more need to be done in the region in particular at national levels. As with China, India and Indonesia, despite their significant achievements in eradicating poverty, the fact remains that disturbing cases of extreme poverty, malnutrition, hunger, and lack of access to basic health services and education still occur.

These cases happen not only in rural areas but also in big metropolitan cities like Jakarta.

The achievement of reaching the MDGs target also varied at the sub regional levels in Asia and the Pacific. The United Nations reported that southern Asia is the sub-region that was left behind in achieving MDG goals, particularly in eradicating hunger and malnutrition. Other sub regions are doing relatively well in most of MDGs targets.

Achieving the targets by 2015, therefore, requires extra efforts by countries in the region. Dramatic scaling-up efforts are critical to promote enrollment in primary education, reducing child mortality due to malnutrition and poverty and addressing the spread of preventable diseases. On environmental sustainability, the region is still behind compared to other regions.

Lack of access to water and basic sanitation and affordable energy, deforestation, and air pollution all require serious action by countries in the region.

On global partnership for development, the level of official development assistance (ODA) from developed countries recovered from its decline in the 1990s to reach a record high of US$79 billion in 2004. In addition, donors have also pledged to raise assistance at the global level by an additional $20 billion by 2006.

Although the increase is significant, however, the amount is still insufficient to finance the achievement of the MDGs. Even if the commitments pledged by donors to implement ODA exceeds the expected $100 billion by 2010, this amount still falls short in terms of the financial resources considered necessary to achieve MDGs.

In this context, promoting the potential of international trade and foreign investment is critical. Implementing an open, rule-based, predictable, non-discriminatory trading and financial system should complement the 0.7 percent ODA target.

As emphasized by the Millennium Declaration, one of the most important requirements for achieving the MDGs is good governance. Combating corruption, social justice, access to information, democratization and promotion of human rights including responsive and accountable government are also crucial in this regard.

The ministerial gathering organized in Jakarta this week should be able to consolidate countries in Asia and the Pacific to comprehensively assess where they are in terms of achieving MDGs. The meeting is also expected to develop concrete partnerships and cooperation to utilize the potentials of the region.

The writer is the acting director for UN economic development and environmental affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.