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.