Realizing millennium goals

The Asia and Pacific meeting on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) here starting today is an opportune moment to start meaningful dialog between developing and developed countries in the two regions about the best ways to accelerate the achievement of global poverty-alleviation targets.

This is the first five-year juncture for the MDGs -- which were declared by leaders from 189 countries at the United Nations in September 2000 -- and the recommendations from this meeting will be useful input for the global summit at the UN next month, which will assess how the pledges have thus far been realized.

There is no question about the political will of developed and developing countries to support the MDGs, which address in a single package all most all the issues related to peace, security, human rights, development and fundamental freedoms. The MDGs not only reflect global justice and human rights but also are key to international and national security and stability. The rationale, as the latest UN report on the MDGs asserts, is that poor and hungry societies are much more likely than high-income peoples to fall into conflicts over scarce vital resources.

World leaders reaffirmed their commitment to achieving the global poverty amelioration goals at their meeting in Monterey, Mexico, in March 2002. The ministerial meeting of the developed countries grouped in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, in Paris last May also reiterated their commitment to the MDGs.

Yet, as the latest UN report on MDGs points out, the progress towards the MDG deadline of 2015 could have been faster. While in many countries the headway had been quite significant, in others, especially sub-Saharan Africa, the process is still far off- track.

More than one billion people still subsist on less than US$1 a day, the UN said in its latest report.

Indonesia, meanwhile, still has almost 40 million people in absolute poverty and twice as many on the verge of poverty, with spending of less than $2 a day.

The senior officials of the 53 Asia-Pacific countries meeting here should, however, avoid the mistake the participants of such international meetings often make -- of blaming each other -- or this gathering will degenerate into pointless finger-pointing.

There are still, it should be remembered, another 10 years remaining for the realization of the MDGs.

The global partnership for development requires developed countries to help create a more enabling international trade and aid environment in which developing countries can also thrive.

However, the role of developed nations in the realization of MDGs is complementary at best. The blunt reality remains: Each developing country has the primary responsibility for its own economic, social and environmental development. This means that the achievement of the MDGs depends mainly on a country's good governance system -- the ability of a government to facilitate and establish the framework for economic growth through sound macroeconomic policies and providing such public goods as basic infrastructure, public health and education.

The experiences with poverty-alleviation programs in many countries point to several main barriers to achieving MDGs: Bad governance or corrupt government, poverty traps, poor economic policies and denials of human rights.

Sound macroeconomic policies are crucial to poverty alleviation because it is private investment that should be the locomotive of economic growth. Although growth does not always automatically reduce absolute poverty, it is impossible to alleviate poverty without economic growth. And there will never be growth without public and private investment.

Good governance is vital for achieving MDGs because the market mechanism is not by itself effective for reducing poverty, especially in areas trapped in absolute poverty -- such as villages that lack access to paved roads, vehicular transportation and are acutely short of electricity and clean water.

Market forces tend to bypass such poverty pockets because they don't generate consumer demand and thus have little prospects for commercial interests. Hence, the government has to intervene in many ways to create a more equitable distribution of income and increase public investment in such key areas as health, education, infrastructure and environmental management-- areas that are key to lifting people out of absolute poverty.

Obviously, governments controlled by a corrupt political leadership have neither the will nor the ability to realize their country's MDGs. In this case, no amount of international assistance will help.

However, most of the developing countries, including Indonesia, which signed the UN Millennium Declaration on MDGs, have well-intentioned governments, which are strongly committed to reducing poverty. But they lack the capability to empower their poor people because of heavy debt-servicing burdens or inadequate institutional capacity to implement good governance practices.

It is these governments -- too poor or unable to make meaningful public investment in human capital and physical infrastructure -- that deserve more aid, technical assistance and debt-relief from developed countries to realize their MDGs.

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