Who cares for our poor?
Who cares for our poor?
It is unfortunate, if not incomprehensible, that Indonesia
paid scant attention to last week's UN Conference on Financing
for Development in the Mexican city of Monterrey. This is an
important issue in which Indonesia wants to make its voice heard.
Not only did President Megawati stay away, she also failed to
dispatch an official of significant stature to join the more than
50 other heads of state in Monterrey.
The "Monterrey Consensus" calls on wealthy nations to work
towards allocating at least 0.7 percent of their gross national
product for foreign aid, the promotion of investment in poor
countries and to allow access to goods from developing countries.
The poor countries were urged to promote good governance and
democratic processes as they work to meet their challenges,
particularly in tackling poverty. The consensus tallies with the
UN Millennium Goal of halving the number of poor people by 2015.
Where was Indonesia while all these key deliberations among
government leaders took place in Monterrey? The low-key
representation suggests that the administration in Jakarta was
aloof to the theme. Yet, foreign aid and how it is spent is
important to us, more so these past four years in the midst of
the economic crisis.
Indonesia is one of the world's largest recipients of foreign
aid, to the tune of between $3 billion and $4 billion a year. It
was the subject of a massive international bailout in 1998, and
given the near state of bankruptcy, it will continue to count on
the generosity of wealthy nations to help it stay afloat.
While Indonesia does not fall into the World Bank's
classification of poorest countries, the absolute number of
people in abject poverty dwarfs even some of the poorest
countries in Africa simply because of the huge population.
The 15.2 percent of people classified by the government as
living below the poverty line translates into 33 million. The 7.8
percent of people who live on less than $1 a day (the
international measurement of poverty) translates into 17 million.
And, 58 percent of the population, or 127 million, live on less
than $2 a day and are therefore considered as "near poor", making
them highly vulnerable to another economic crisis.
Indonesia's weak representation in Monterrey mirrors the
prevailing attitude within the government towards the problem of
poverty. The issue is not even on its radar screen. In the
ongoing struggle to bring the economy back on its recovery path,
poverty reduction is treated more as an after-thought, on the
assumption that it would be taken care of automatically once the
economy picks up again.
How long can the government really neglect the problem of
poverty the way it has been doing all this time? Looking at some
of the demands by aid donor countries in Monterrey, it won't be
long before they require that Indonesia get serious on its
poverty reduction campaign.