The ground reality in Africa and many other developing countries led the UN to convene a high-level MDG Review Summit beginning today through Wednesday in New York to chart out a five-year action plan. The Summit will bring together all the UN member states in open discussions on how they can see what can be done to accelerate the slow progress. In the run-up to preparation to the Summit, the UN Millennium Campaign had been encouraging people through public announcement to raise their voices and demand ‘breakthrough action plans’ from their respective governments to improve the current disappointing situation especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. There is growing consensus that unless the progress speeds up, the world will be unable to achieve the MDGs.
Civil society organizations are working together to make sure that the Summit does not produce another set of empty promises. It is the right time for the Summit leaders to integrate good governance and anti-corruption measures into the MDG action plan. The International Budget Partnership has been launching the “Ask Your Government Campaign” calling on citizens in 84 countries to petition their governments for details about how much of its budget goes to key development sectors linked to the MDGs. This is also building pressure on the governments to galvanize the review Summit to take up concrete steps for greater transparency and accountability mechanisms.
CORRUPTION AGENDA MISSING
The word anti-corruption appears nowhere in the draft action plan for the MDG Review Summit. Many International non-governmental organizations and civil society organizations have been putting pressure on the UN body to inculcate some strong anti-corruption measures in a global MDG action plan. As corruption can derail or limit the desired outcomes of development programs, failure to inculcate anti-corruption and governance measures in the action plan will make it even harder to meet the MDGs.
A research by Transparency International in more than 48 countries demonstrates clear, strong and positive correlation between better MDG outcomes and greater transparency, accountability and integrity mechanisms.
A recent assessment by the United Nations Development Program, which has set out its own “MDG Action Agenda for 2010-2015”, does not address corruption or accountability in its eight recommendations. The Summit’s proposed outcome draft also dishearteningly makes no mention of anti-corruption measures except a passing reference to corruption as a social ill. The action plan should address the need to integrate anti-corruption measures into the aid programs for MDGs.
The G20 Toronto Summit in June strongly called on respective governments to implement the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC). As the Convention is the most comprehensive global legal framework that sets standards and requirements for preventing, detecting and investigating corruption, the Review Summit should also contribute to promote the recommendations of UNCAC in the development sector as well.
UNAVOIDABLE REALITIES
Findings from a study by the Transparency International (TI) in Ghana, Madagascar, Morocco, Niger, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Uganda shows that 44 percent of the parents surveyed had paid illegal fees for schools, which were actually free for the children. The TI surveys in India also shows that poor people pay over US$200 million annually in bribes to access eleven ‘free’ services, including the police, hospitals, schools and employment benefits.
Another research by the TI on more than 48 countries also demonstrates clear, strong and positive correlation between better MDG outcomes and greater transparency, accountability and integrity mechanisms. Therefore, the action plan will be a comprehensive document if it guarantees transparency and anti-corruption in aid for MDGs. The reality is that without anti-corruption measures it will be harder to track down and prevent vast sums of development money, both from donor and government coffers, from going missing. This in turn will exacerbate the problems in achieving the MDG targets.
We need to analyze where we stand today vis-a-vis MDGs. On an average, the world has made good progress in meeting targets, but such progress has been uneven. Some countries and regions are progressing while others are either stagnating or sliding back. The world as a whole appears to be presently on track to halve absolute poverty by 2015. However, dramatic poverty reduction in China has contributed to this global average progress. Over half of the population in East Asia, South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa in 1990 lived in extreme poverty. In recent times, only 17 percent, or 22 percent if China is excluded, of the East Asian population lives on less than $1.25 a day. But, 51 percent and 40 percent of the population in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia still live below poverty line with $1.25 a day.
The world’s progress on an average is largely driven by a few countries. Around 1.4 billion people continue to live with less than $1.25 a day and 2.6 billion live with less than $2 a day. Even in East Asia, where the largest reduction in extreme poverty has been achieved, 337 million live below the $1.25 poverty line. The world has made less progress on other goals. For instance, maternal mortality ratios were expected to be reduced by three-quarters, from 480 deaths per 100,000 live births to 120 by 2015. By 2005, the maternal mortality remained nearly constant at 450 deaths. Similarly, the share of the population without access to sanitation was expected to be 28 percent, but by 2005 virtually half of the population remained without access.
In the years since data on most indicators was last collected, the world experienced a surge in food prices and a global economic recession. Both circumstances have negatively affected progress on MDGs. The rise in food prices is estimated to have increased the number of chronically hungry people by 75 million to a worldwide total of nearly 1 billion while recession has contributed to the impoverishment of many more millions.
Considering that progress on MDGs has been uneven across regions, and also the quality of governance is highly variable across countries, it is important to focus on the links between governance and MDGs. Governance agenda has not received its due attention in the programs to support and monitor progress of the MDGs globally.
Achieving the MDGs is not only ambitious but also costly. The donors in 2000 pledged to increase foreign aid to 0.7 percent of their Gross National Income (GNI). By 2008, donors provided only 0.3 percent of GNI on an average, and only a fraction of this goes to the poorer countries. This decline in aid commitment and delivery is also likely to derail the MDGs. Uneven quality of governance in many countries can also be a major constraint to progress on the MDGs. Therefore, until the respective countries strictly adopt anti-corruption measures and improve their governance, the MDGs are less likely to be fully achieved. The leaders at the Summit can’t rubbish this reality under any pretext.
pbhattarai2001@gmail.com
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