'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.