2005 is the year we were to make poverty history.

Many have billed ours as the “opportunity of a generation.” We have the opportunity to alleviate suffering and eradicate hunger while increasing the chances for human development globally if we take decisive action now. This prospect presented itself recently at the high-level events on the international political agenda in 2005.

This year’s G-8 meeting in Gleneagles, Scotland and the consequent Live 8 concerts held around the world rallied support for establishing a new relationship between the developed and the developing world on the issues of debt, foreign aid and trade. There has been a decisive and far-reaching effort on behalf of civil society organizations to raise awareness and activism based around these issues.

This momentum continued when, from 14-16 September, the largest gathering of world leaders ever amassed – 170 in all – came together at the United Nations Secretariat for high-level meetings aimed at, among other things, a review of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The MDGs are eight goals agreed upon at the UN Millennium Summit in 2000 with the underlying objective of halving hunger and extreme poverty globally by the year 2015.

The Millennium Development Goals The following eight goals were the agreed outcome of the 2000 United Nations Millennium Summit, as enshrined in the Millennium Declaration. 1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger --Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people whose income is less than $1 a day. --Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger. 2. Achieve universal primary education --Ensure that by 2015 children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling. 3. Promote gender equality and empower women --Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005, and to all levels of education no later than 2015. 4. Reduce child mortality --Reduce by two-thirds, between 1990 and 2015, the under-five mortality rate. 5. Improve maternal health --Reduce by three-quarters, between 1990 and 2015, the maternal mortality ratio. 6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases --Halt and begin to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS by 2015. --Halt and begin to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases. 7. Ensure environmental sustainability --Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programs; reverse the loss of environmental resources. --Halve by 2015 the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation. --Achieve significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slim-dwellers by 2020. 8. Develop a global partnership for development --Develop further an open trading and financial system that is rule-based, predictable and non-discriminatory. Includes a commitment to good governance, development and poverty reduction – nationally and internationally. --Address the least developed countries’ special needs. This includes tariff- and quota-free access for their exports; enhanced debt relief for heavily indebted poor countries; cancellation of official bilateral debt; and more generous official development assistance for countries committed to poverty reduction. --Address the special needs of landlocked and small island developing States. --Deal comprehensively with developing countries’ debt problems through national and international measures to make debt sustainable in the long term --In cooperation with the developing countries, develop decent and productive work for youth. --In cooperation with pharmaceutical companies, provide access to affordable essential drugs in developing countries. --In cooperation with the private sector, make available the benefits of new technologies – especially information and communications technologies.

In light of the high hopes placed on this UN Summit, it is understandable why many have been disappointed by its lackluster outcome. While the review of progress towards achieving the MDGs – albeit paltry – was originally to be the main focus of the Summit, the development agenda was ultimately sidelined by diplomatic disagreement on a host of other issues. Reform of UN operations, a renewed commitment to disarmament and non-proliferation, the establishment of a new human rights council, and the creation of a peace-building commission to help stabilize countries emerging from armed civil conflict were among the other issues tackled in the Summit’s 35-page outcome document.

Indeed, there is a strong linkage between the issues of global security and development. These linkages include the promotion of official development aid and global commerce through the encouragement of free and just trade policies. But to emphasize either development or security in isolation from the other is a sure course to failure in an increasingly interdependent world system.

United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan recognized this when he in March published his report titled "In Larger Freedom: Towards Development, Security and Human Rights for All," which outlined a set of proposals ahead of the September Summit.

The lofty vision outlined in this report was very nearly put in peril when John Bolton, the new U.S. permanent representative to the UN, proposed nearly 750 changes to the 38-page draft document just three weeks before the Summit was to open.

Among the changes Mr. Bolton proposed was the excision of all references to the MDGs, including the agreed upon target for every wealthy country to donate at least 0.7 % of their GDP to the developing world by 2015. Fortunately, the Bush administration later back-stepped and explicitly supported the realization of the MDGs as an effective roadmap to poverty alleviation and essential to fighting terrorism and other global threats.

Despite the political wrangling and the muting down of the original Summit objectives, several leaders recognized the interdependence of nations and stressed the growing importance of collaborative work on the international scene. The successful agreement to take collective, decisive action against situations of impending genocide is one major step forward achieved at the Summit.

“Whether our challenge is peacemaking, nation-building, democratization or responding to natural or man-made disasters, we have seen that even the strongest among us cannot succeed alone,” Mr. Annan said.

Increasingly, the strongest and the weakest among us must band together for survival. As president John F. Kennedy said, “If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.”

We live in a time when we are not lacking in resources to accomplish the MDGs. Yet, the United Nations’ 2005 Human Development Report, which was presented to the international organization’s 191 Member States one week before the September Summit, gave a bleak prediction on the road ahead for “the many who are poor.”

“Today, the world has the financial, technological and human resources to make a decisive breakthrough in human development,” the report says. “But if current trends continue, the MDGs will be missed by a wide margin. Instead of seizing the moment, the world's governments are stumbling towards a heavily sign-posted and easily avoidable development failure.”

The ability to capitalize on the present political and civil society momentum to effect positive change for those now living in extreme poverty is the greatest opportunity of our generation. The failure to do so would constitute one of the greatest wasted opportunities of modern times.

Political posturing aside, the real issue at the heart of the poverty debate is people. We need to promote the idea that people deserve to lead meaningful, healthy, and dignified lives in both a just social environment and a sustainable natural environment. We have the means and the know-how to provide this.

Sadly, despite growing civil society concern and an increased amount of campaigning for the realization of the MDGs, the political will to remain focussed on these goals is flagging. Earlier agreements get (and "get" is the right word, as it is an ongoing treatment of agreements made in the past) mere lip service at high-level international conferences, while the reality on the ground changes little, or indeed worsens, for the world’s most impoverished people.

We need to do our utmost to channel the wealth, will and technological know-how of the richest nations into the restructuring of a more just and more inclusive world.

The economist Jeffrey Sachs, in his book The End of Poverty speaks to the harsh reality of our failure in the developed world to take action on eradicating extreme poverty.

“Every morning our newspapers could report, ‘More than 20,000 people perished yesterday of extreme poverty,’” Sachs writes. “The stories would put the stark numbers in context – up to 8,000 children died of malaria, 5,000 mothers and fathers dead of tuberculosis, 7,500 young adults dead of AIDS, and thousands more dead of diarrhea, respiratory infection, and other killer diseases that prey on bodies weakened by chronic hunger. The poor die in hospital wards that lack drugs, in villages that lack anti-malarial bed nets, in houses that lack safe drinking water. They die namelessly, without public comment. Sadly, such stories rarely get written. Most people are unaware of the daily struggles for survival, and of the vast numbers of impoverished people around the world who lose that struggle.”

It is time for us all to take on that struggle as our struggle. More than ever, after the recent UN Summit, we need to send the message to political leaders that politics as usual are not sufficient to allow the realization by 2015 of the MDGs. We need to do our utmost to channel the wealth, will and technological know-how of the richest nations into the restructuring of a more just and more inclusive world, giving hope to the hundreds of millions living in extreme conditions that the shackles of poverty, which keep them from productive, active and dignified lives, will soon be removed.

Most of all, we need to put an end to the needless, nameless deaths of 20,000 people a day who had the misfortune of being born into extreme poverty.

2005 is still the year we can decide to make poverty history.




Conor Fortune is a freelance journalist and former Rotary World Peace Fellow who currently lives in Dublin, Ireland.

To read another Global Envision article about the Campaign to Make Poverty History, see What Did the G8 Deliver in Edinburgh?



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