Poverty is a great challenge for Asia-Pacific countries

Poverty is a great challenge for Asia-Pacific countries

Zakki P. Hakim, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

"If poverty were a man, I would have slain him," the fourth
Islamic caliph after Prophet Muhammad, Ali ibn Abi Thalib, said
more than 14 centuries ago.

Unfortunately, Asia Pacific nations have to address a lot of
challenges and put forth a great amount of effort to halve the
number of poor people in the region.

Delegations at the Asia Pacific Regional Ministerial Meeting
on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) pointed out that the
challenges ranged from the need for a more balanced economic
growth across the region to a more transparent and participatory
global trading system.

The UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) director
of International Trade and Commodities Lakshmi Puri spelled out
nine challenges for the region to overcome, with emphasis on
trade for development, to attain the MDGs.

"It needs to be recognized that the Asia Pacific is a region
of contradictions where globalization success in terms of
development coexists with failures," Puri said at the meeting's
working group on "Challenges of the Region in Achieving MDGs".

According UNCTAD, the challenges include the need for
equitable economic growth, ensuring food security, job creation,
aid and debt relief, diversifying out of commodity dependence,
access to energy, measures to facilitate transfer of technology,
promotion of coherence at national and global levels and a sense
of ownership.

She also mentioned the need to involve the corporate community
in the development process as the agent of economic change with
the slogan of "corporate responsibility for development", not the
popular corporate social responsibility.

Puri also explained that some countries in the region were
still commodity dependent and vulnerable to commodity price
fluctuations, thus they needed support in improving the role of
commodities in their development process.

"Better and increased access to credit, development aid and
improved information needs to be addressed to effectively deal
with commodities in addressing the impoverishment of the rural
areas of the region," she added.

Furthermore, the working group also highlighted other
challenges, such as addressing the fact that the region was prone
to natural and man-made disasters as well as new kinds of
infectious diseases such as avian influenza and Severe Acute
Respiratory Syndrome (SARS).

Meanwhile, Indonesian Minister of Trade Mari E. Pangestu
argued that the challenge for the developing countries in the
region was to work toward a better balance in the global trading
system.

"Balancing the system will give the developing countries
greater economic potential, a major stake in developing
multilateral trade rules and a more effective capacity to expand
trade," said Mari, who is also a member of UN Millennium Projects
Taskforce on Trade.

"It broadly means a system that is more supportive of human
development," she added.

Mari went on to add that it included the issue of Trade-
Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) and public health,
which will require changes and a willingness by pharmaceutical
firms to discount prices of essential AIDS medicine and other
life-saving drugs.

Nevertheless, she said that to balance the system, it required
leadership from Asian and Pacific developing countries, which
were in better position to do so compared to any other region.

"This means Asian and Pacific developing countries need to
determine what they want from the global trading system," she
said, but added that many of the countries were now lacking in
clear trade strategies to channel the gains from trade into
development.

Separately, Hira Jhamtani from the Malaysia-based non-
governmental organization Third World Network (TWN) reminded the
delegates that the twelfth target of goal number eight was to
develop further an open, rule-based and non-discriminatory trade
system.

"Goal eight calls for reform and restructuring of the whole
multilateral system - political as well as trade, capital and
financial systems. Regrettably, we are not on track on this,"
Hira told The Jakarta Post.

Apparently, there is no easy way to poverty alleviation, but
no matter how hard or complicated, all stakeholders across the
globe must continue pursuing efforts to address the challenges to
achieve MDGs.

"This is no joke. This is not about lost time. It's about lost
lives as every year eight million people die from poverty," said
UN Millennium Projects director Jeffrey D. Sachs in the meeting.