Susilo urges region to fight poverty
Susilo urges region to fight poverty
Zakki P. Hakim, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta
Asia-Pacific nations, from Japan to Afghanistan and Samoa,
should work closely together to reach shared goals such as
halving the number of poor people, thus making the region more
stable, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said on Wednesday.
He was addressing delegates, including ministers from the
region's 40 countries at the three-day Asia-Pacific Regional
Meeting on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
"We may find it ironic that while our region is gaining a
reputation for economic dynamism; at the same time it is still
home to the majority of the world's poor," he said in his opening
speech.
"Our success or failure in alleviating poverty will determine
whether our global home will be stable or unstable. After all,
poverty and security are interlinked in many ways," he said.
Indonesia is among 189 countries whose leaders in 2000 adopted
the UN Millennium Declaration setting out eight goals. The first
is the halving by 2015 of the proportion of people suffering from
hunger and those living on less than US$1 a day.
Asia-Pacific nations, Susilo said, should also take the lead
in addressing issues such as debt relief and making trade work
for development.
The meeting is expected to provide input for the plenary
meeting of the UN General Assembly in New York from Sept. 14 to
Sept. 16, which will review the progress toward reaching the
goals made over the past five years.
Other regions have already organized themselves into
partnerships with the industrialized countries to help them meet
all the targets.
Assistant UN secretary-general for economic development Jomo
Kwame Sundaram cited various encouraging developments, including
commitments by members of the European Union to achieve the
target of donating 0.7 percent of GDP in aid, and debt relief by
the world's industrialized countries grouped in the G-8.
However, "While 18 highly indebted poor countries (in Africa)
have had their debt reduced (by the G-8), the poorest nations in
Asia continue to be bypassed when it comes to debt relief," he
said.
State Minister for National Development Planning Sri Mulyani
Indrawati also said that although the most severe cases were in
Africa, the largest number of poor people was in Asia-Pacific.
"We sympathize with Africa ... But the G-8's commitment is
very minimal ... it will not solve poverty in Africa," she said.
For countries to escape the debt trap, Mulyani added, they
needed additional aid or grants to compliment debt relief, with
flexible conditions allowing them to allocate the funds according
to their own national development priorities.
Wednesday also witnessed the launching of the Asia Pacific
Least Developed Countries Report on MDGs titled: Voices of the
LDCs of Asia and the Pacific.
The report recommended that LDCs receive debt relief, tripled
aid, trade facilitation and wider market access.