subscribe: Posts | Comments

Civil society groups wary of UN-endorsed plan to lift millions out of poverty

0 comments

Ban Ki-moon, UN General Secretary

Summary of story from the Guardian 13 May, 2011

A UN conference on the world’s poorest countries adopted a plan of action on Friday stressing the importance of foreign investment and the private sector in lifting millions from poverty.

The ambitious programme set out in Istanbul, Turkey, foresees halving the number of least developed countries (LDCs) to 24 during the next decade through a significant rise in aid, favourable market access for all LDCs and building up their productive capacity.

The emphasis on productive capacity – energy, infrastructure and agriculture – marked the most significant difference from the last LDC action plan in Brussels, which concentrated on health, education and other social areas.

Cheick Sidi Diarra, UN undersecretary general and high representative for the LDCs has said that said the future lies more with foreign direct investment and the private sector as the world is still struggling to shake off the greatest financial depression since the 1930s.

Civil society groups, however, were scathing about the conference’s focus on the private sector and condemned the “cynical” way in which commercial and financial interests had ridden roughshod over development.

The civil society forum at the conference said the approach adopted by the Istanbul plan was a repackaging of economic liberalisation policies.

WVoN comment:The world’s 48 poorest countries have 800 million people, half of whom live in extreme poverty. But even in poverty, men and women are not equal. Facts compiled by the UN Development Group speak for themselves.

The lifetime risk of maternal death is 300 times greater for women living in the least developed countries than it is for those from industrialized countries.

In the least developed countries, one in three women do not receive any antenatal care during pregnancy.

Africa and Asia account for 95 per cent of the world’s maternal deaths.

Women in rural areas of developing countries report no antenatal care.

In the least developed countries nearly twice as many women over the age of 15 are illiterate compared to men. (Source: UNFPA)

The devastating list just goes on. It points its accusatory finger at society’s greatest shortcomings.

The historic promise of ending poverty by 2015, which 189 world leaders agreed on at the UN Millennium Summit in 2000, is still far from being achieved.

The Millennium Development Goals were created as a road map to guide us to where we want to be as a global society and many of them referred to the necessity of improving the lives of women.

Women around the world have every right to feel badly let down by their governments as well as international political and business communities.

Sometimes it is hard to believe that those exact forces of capitalism, which in many ways have greatly contributed to the ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor, can now be successfully utilised as a vehicle of positive transformation.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *