Lagging behind
Photo: Quddus Alam / Driknews
Ten years ago, world leaders agreed at the UN on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), 8 goals to significantly reduce extreme poverty, disease and illiteracy by 2015. World leaders met to take stock of progress at the mid-point. The first nine years have seen some important successes at the aggregate level, 40 million more children are in school, hundreds of millions of people have come out of extreme poverty, some deadly diseases like tuberculosis and measles have been contained, and fewer people are dying from HIV/AIDS. But the UN Secretary General warned that if the world has to meet the MDGs by 2015, the speed of implementation needs to be substantially accelerated. Paradoxically, foreign aid levels have actually fallen in the last four years and some of the richest countries are cutting back even further. It is no surprise then that virtually every leader from a developing country spoke during the summit about rich countries breaking their aid promises to the poor with the consequence being schools and health centres left without staff and equipment. But turn our attention to the street conversation from Dhaka to Dakar, from Manila to Mexico City and we shall hear a different discourse on why the MDGs are not being met. For the poorest people living in rural Africa or Asia or the sprawling slums of Latin American cities, their daily experience is of being powerless in the face of being denied basic public services. I would like to add the quote from our Nobel Laureate-- Dr. Muhammad Yunus told the right word: “I was teaching in one of the universities while the country was suffering from a severe famine. People were dying of hunger, and I felt very helpless. As an economist, I had no tool in my toolbox to fix that kind of situation. In fact, solidarity is not a matter of sentiment but a fact, cold and impassive as the granite foundations of a skyscraper. If the basic elements, identity of interest, clarity of vision, honesty of intent, and oneness of purpose, or any of these is lacking, all sentimental pleas for solidarity, and all other efforts to achieve it will be barren of results.”
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