| |
Contributions from
the Column
Monitor
UN Summit: saving what could be saved
UN summit press review
Commodity exporters enjoy high demand
UNCTAD: Happy times for commodity exporters
Taxing air travel to fund development
Japan to increase aid
Roads and development
Alternative health report for WHO reform
Women have higher crop yields
World Bank: inequality blocks development
10/2005
|
|
[ Human Development Report ]
UNDP calls for more and better aid
In the first week of September, just in time for the UN World Summit in New York, the UN Development Programme (UNDP) appealed to the international community to scale up efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. In its 2005 edition, the organisation’s Human Development Report finds the state of affairs disappointing so far: “The promise to the world’s poor is being broken.” The document identifies three areas in need of revision: development aid, trade policy and human security.
Aid has in fact increased somewhat in recent years but there is still a long way to go to make up for the reductions in the 1990s, according to the UNDP. The per-capita income in the rich countries has increased by $ 6000 since 1990, while development assistance has decreased by one dollar per capita. Furthermore, the report suggests that quality and efficiency of aid must be increased. Some governments still tie their aid to the condition that the money must be used to purchase goods from the donor country. The UNDP estimates that this practice costs low-income countries five to seven billion dollars a year. In the view of the UNDP, not only recipient countries should have to live up to binding targets and conditions. Rather, donors should commit to disbursing at least 90 percent of development aid in line with multiyear schedules by 2010 in order to stay credible.
If Africa had the same share of world exports today as it did in 1980, its proceeds from exports would be eight times higher than development aid, according to UNDP data. However, the report warns that trade does not automatically lead to less poverty. Mexico and Guatemala opened their economies in recent years and increased their exports but they have made little progress in respect to human development, a term that includes indicators for average education and health. The WTO Ministerial Conference in December must make a breakthrough in cutting back subsidies and removing trade barriers, the UNPD demands, while poor countries must be accorded the right to protect their farm sectors from cheap imports from Europe and the USA.
According to the 2005 UNDP, 22 of the 32 countries with particularly low levels of human development have experienced violent conflict since 1990. The report is critical of the fact that development aid does not focus sufficiently on the connection between security and development. War tends to break out again within five years in half of all countries that emerge from violent conflict. Nonetheless, the supply of humanitarian aid is said to often dry up shortly after a given conflict is over.
Two years ago, the UNDP argued that the Millennium Development Goals made sense, even if they were not fully attained in the end. This year’s Human Development Report is more pessimistic: “To put it bluntly, the world is heading for a heavily sign-posted human development disaster”, the report sums up with a directness seldom encountered. (ell)
|
