'No-strings aid needed if poor states to achieve UN goals'

'No-strings aid needed if poor states to achieve UN goals'

Indonesia is hosting the Asia Pacific Ministerial Meeting on
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) beginning Wednesday through
Friday. Erna Witoelar, the United Nations Special Ambassador for
MDGs, spoke to The Jakarta Post's Riyadi Suparno about the
region's progress and challenges in achieving its MDGs.

Question: Would you describe briefly the region's performance
with regards to achieving its MDGs?

In the Asia-Pacific region, we have a very diverse situation
with regards to countries' achieving their MDGs. First, we have
the developed countries, such as Japan, South Korea, Singapore,
Australia and New Zealand, who have achieved their MDGs. So,
their main responsibility now centers on Goal No. 8 -- supporting
developing and the least-developed countries achieve their MDGs
through partnerships.

Then, we have countries that are termed the MDG-plus
countries, meaning that they have achieved some or most of their
MDGs long before the 2015 target date.

After that, we have countries which are on track in achieving
their MDGs but are not moving as quickly as the MDG-plus
countries. These include China, Indonesia and India.

Then we have countries that will likely have difficulties in
achieving their MDGs like Nepal, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Laos.

This is the range. But even in countries which are on track in
achieving their MDGs, there are disparities between regions. In
the Philippines, for example, the disparity between the north and
the south is large; also in Cambodia, between the capital and the
border regions; Indonesia, between the central and outlying
regions like Papua and Aceh; China between western China and the
eastern coast.

There are also disparities in achieving certain goals. For
instance, in South Asia, there are still wide disparities related
to gender issues and maternal mortality.

Also regarding the environment, our capacity to rehabilitate
the environment is much less than the rate of environmental
destruction.

You said Indonesia is on track in achieving its MDGs but it
has problems of disparity. Could you elaborate more on Indonesia?

Indonesia published its MDG report in 2004. However, it's very
general in nature and does not touch on problems at the local
level. Indonesia needs to disaggregate the data down to the
district and regional levels to see which areas have difficulties
in achieving MDGs and how and where the government can help them
out.

Also, the data needs to be split up and based on gender
because there are problems regarding poverty, education, access
to water and diseases like malaria that are more severe in women
than men but these are not shown on Indonesia's MDG report.

Also, as I said before, there are pockets of poverty as well
as disparities in terms of access to education and health. In
terms of malaria, for example, even in a rich province like Riau,
there are people dying from malaria. There are also places where
HIV/AIDS is getting worse, like in Papua.

Indonesia and many other developing countries, and especially
least-developed countries, are facing problems of financing in
terms of achieving their MDGs. People are complaining that
developed countries are not doing enough. What's your opinion?

I think there are enough pressures from the public in
developed as well as in developing countries for developed
countries to fulfill their commitments a long way before 2015, by
increasing official development assistance (ODA), opening up
trade opportunities, and improving the quality of aid, or giving
debt reductions, debt restructuring or even canceling debt to the
poorest countries. These commitments have to happen now, rather
than later.

You speak about increasing the quality of aid. What do you
mean by this?

Many developed countries, including those in Asia, are giving
a lot of ODA to developing countries. But it is not the right ODA
as it is still tied to conditions, and the money is still
returned to the donating countries to buy their equipment, their
goods, their consultants, and so on. Such practices need to be
stopped. MDG-driven aid must be aid given without strings
attached. This aid should be used to buy products, pay
consultants and for technology from the recipient countries. Only
when they cannot be found in the receiving countries, should they
be imported from the aid-giving countries.
The ministerial conference is themed 'The Way Forward 2015.'
What is the way forward?

The way forward for us in the Asia-Pacific region is to look
how and where we can cooperate, like among neighboring countries
working to open up jobs and with developed countries in our
region to open up markets and to make trade cooperation and
technology transfer agreements.

Even among developing countries there are also ways to
cooperate, like the South-South cooperation on technology,
regarding jobs and so forth. It is always possible for us to help
each other, for example, China helping Nepal, Singapore helping
us, Indonesia, and Indonesia helping Timor Leste.

In this meeting, we will be talking about the three most
important goals for the region -- the environment, health, and
trade. Regarding the environment, which includes environmental
disasters like the tsunami, we can cooperate on disaster
alleviation or in the creation of early warning systems.

On health, countries with similar problems like malaria, bird
flu and HIV/AIDS, can help each other. Thailand, for example, has
been able to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS, so other developing
countries can learn from Thailand on this issue.

Regarding trade, we are looking at ways to boost trade between
neighbors, such as the South-South cooperation I mentioned
earlier and of course agreements between developed and developing
countries.