Issues -     Actors and Other Stakeholders   -  Who is "on board" and why?

Wiki  Governments and their commitment to MDGs

Issue 1 - National Governments and International Organizations – their commitment to MDGs

playlist on Youtube - http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLC38E79776C9BF49E

see the Manual Chapters:

• The Millennium Development Goals and the International Development Agenda

• Who provides aid

Issue dealt in the Episode 1 - MDG 1 - Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger

Not enough progress towards the achievement of MDGs

UN monitoring of MDGs (www.mdgmonitor.org) reveals that many countries are not making enough progress and might not achieve declared targets by 2015. This is largely due to a combination of the lack of driving policy changes in these countries and the lack of consistent commitment by donor countries. In spite of official declarations to pursue the 8th MDG goal (i.e. Developing a Global Partnership for Development) by devoting at least 0.7% of GNP to development cooperation, the average contribution by donor nations is still approx 0.23%, i.e. equal to US$ 56 billion per year (EU has committed 0.7% by 2012). UN and World Bank estimate that an additional USD 50 billion donor contribution per year is still required to this end. One of the reasons for the low prioritization of commitment to International Development Agenda is the low awareness, among people in Europe, of the real development issues and on the scope and impact of international cooperation. (see The Millennium Development Goals Report 2007).

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Testimonials Catherine Ray is the Spokesperson  for Europe Aid, of the European Union.  She was interviewed by Vrinda Dar and Stefano De Santis in June 2011 in Brussels, Belgium. EuropeAid Development priorities and methodologies - How the programmes are designed and how the projects are financed Why EU uses EU tax payers money to finance development in other countries?   - We leave in an integrated world. Development of our neighbours and partners is a determinant of our development. Aid is an investment not a charity. The commitments of EU to spend the 0.7 % of gdp in development cooperation see full interview:  http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4C458E4D9E56B478

 

Testimonials Manoj Kumar  Country Director of Concern Worldwide  was interviewd  by Stefano De Santis on December 2010   in River N 2, Freetown Peninsula, Sierra Leone.  What is Concernn  (and who is Manoj): "Our prime partners are the communities themselves. The entire focus of Concern is build capacities of the most vulnerable communities" NGO role and challenges The factors creating poverty    "When we are talking about access to resources, we are talking about access to resources that are available in the country...and optimization of resources" http://i3.ytimg.com/vi/279Lxmaz3MQ/default.jpg see full interview: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB670B648F6840C29

 

Testimonials Dilip Kumar is the Founder Member of Pravah. He was interviewed on the 3rd of April 2010 by Fausto Aarya De Santis What are the factors that generate poverty? see full interview:  ttp://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1BF1E6742830DB62

 

Testimonials Danièle Smadja is the EU Ambassador to India. She was interviewed in Delhi on the 12th May 2010 by Fausto Aarya De Santis  What are the factors which create poverty?  The first two things which come to my mind, since i am in India is 'Inclusion'. What strikes me here is that even thought there is a very high economic growth for many years but they do not manage to make the benefit of this growth inclusive and as a result there are 400 million people under 1 dollar a day. The second thing is education. So many people are uneducated, the illiteracy rate is quite high. In addition to this there are also so many disparities between people. There are other factors too, but inclusion and education are the most important which come to my mind.  see full interview:   http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAD2368FBDC1A2719

Testimonials A.K. Shiva Kumar  is a development economist and Adviser to UNICEF, India. He was interviewed in New Delhi, India on the second week of February 2011 by Stefano De Santis Introduces the MDGs and traces their History     When you talk about the MDGs you have to trace back to in the history of ideas what started in the 1990s as the idea of human development movement. So you had 10 years of a human development movement, influencing strongly the articulation of the MDGs. It was an idea promoted by UNDP, it was led by led by Prof. Amaratya Sen and the late Mahbub-ul-Haq and a lot of other social scientists. You should recall that the period 1990, or 2-3 years proceeding that, were very important years in world history. You saw the collapse of the Soviet Union, the break-up of Eastern Europe, the unification of Germany, so a lot of changes were taking place in the world. And people came to realize that all the material prosperity that you saw in terms of building in terms of comforts of living, were important but were not capturing the essence of human progress. India is growing 8-9% every year. You are coming to Delhi after a few years and you must be amazed by the transformation of the city… but does that really capture the essence of human progress. The MDGs were influenced by this very important question “what is progress in society - across the countries, across the world”. The human development idea suggests that you have to look at freedoms, you have to look at opportunities, so you may find that there is a lot of growth happening. But if economic freedoms are not expending, if political freedoms are not expanding… even as we are talking today you saw the situation in Egypt. it is not that over 30 years Egypt has not seen any economic progress, but the revolt there was much more for political freedoms. Political reasons are as important as economic freedoms.  When the world leaders got together in 2000, it started with endorsing a Millennium Deceleration, and the deceleration talked about 6 fundamental values (that is where the importance of the UN comes in, when in moments of crisis, that in moments of difficulties, some voice that brings together all nations and all societies is absolutely critical) and the 6 fundamental values that the Millennium Declaration talks about starts with freedoms. The big shift that the Human Development reports and UNDP made to global thinking and to national policies, is that all this material wealth is important but you have to answer the question “are women and children in India enjoying greater freedoms? “ “Are political freedoms expanding? Are social freedom expanding?” The second emphasis of the Millennium Declaration was equality. You cannot have societies where certain sections are doing exceptionally well and others are not. Equality is ingrained in the MDGs and so is solidarity, tolerance, respect for nature and shared values, shared experiences. If you look at the MDGs there was a lot of scepticism: who decided these goals? For all the goals seemed for developing countries. Some people from the developing countries said “these are all meant for poor countries, what are the obligations for the developed world? What are they planning to do?”. Some said “why doesn’t the developed world argue for nuclear disarmament? Why don’t the developed countries say that they will reduce the manufacture and production of arms and ammunition? In fact most of the members of the security council are the manufacturer of small harms, which has contributed to a lot of violence. So there was a bit of the tension at the begging, but there was no deny of the fact that these seven goals were fundamental to least for the developing world and that there has to be a collective effort. And the lesson that the world had leaned was the interconnectedness of these goals. --- A.K. Shiva Kumar  Poverty as Income Opportunities, the Power of the MDGs & Human Rights Discourse What is poverty? If you look at it only as income deprivation then you are missing the whole point. Because you have to look at the poverty of opportunity. We always say that income is an outcome, so if I find that this person is earning I need to know why. I have to ask the question why you are earning less and this you will always trace it back to income opportunities. Did not have adequate education, you did not have adequate command over resources, health. Examples of how development and progress is not just per capita income indicators, gdp, etc.  Delhi where below poverty line is 8% but malnourishment under 5 is 33%. One of the biggest concern in Delhi is security of women (not just at night but public spaces, work place, etc.) Under 5 mortality rate is a very strong indicator of development. This depends on income but also on education. When women are literate under mortality rate drops. It depends also on the quality of water, sanitation. So when you say you will reduce under 5 mortality rate you are fundamentally talking about major changes in the standard of living. In India it is also about women position of women in society; so comes when women do paid work outside, a change in the thinking of society is created. Income gives a greater voice, changes power relations, possibility to talk to many other people. It is the opportunity that she gets with the income. What I really like about the MDGs is that it has thrown up a lot of discussions and what you find in terms of a follow through of the MDGs, is that there is no one solution. What works in Nicaragua may not work in Mexico, may not work in South Africa.  Thailand said, we have already achieved Universal Education, our Mortality Rate is very low, what do you expect Thailand to do? So they launched MDG +, which said we have to achieve more. Bhutan added MDG 9 and said “zero tolerance for corruption” and they said that by 2020 Bhutan must be free from all types of corruption. So the nice thing about the MDGs was that, the UN said that all the countries must adopt it and must adapt it and localize it. So when you localize the MDGs then the debate becomes not at a global level of ideas but much more practical in terms of policies and programs and what are you doing about it. The news papers cannot just cover the growth story of India, you also have to look at what is happening to the lives of people. Can we confidently stand up and say the environment is better in India.? Can we confidently stand up and say the quality of schooling has improved? Can India confidently say that access of drinking water is much better? Because progress in society has to be measured by these indicators of human development. The other very important idea that is slowly gaining in is the idea of Human Right. When you talked about human rights the idea would focus largely on civil and political rights. But with the MDGs the economic, social and cultural rights gained importance and now they have to be put into the same level. You cannot say that economic and social rights are more important than civil and political rights. So what that you don’t have the right to vote, like in Myanmar, but the state is providing for everything… it is not, it is not sustainable. If you ask today why have many development projects or poverty alleviation projects suffered. They will tell you it was top-down and the community level, whose life it was supposed to influence and change, had very little say. There was no sense of ownership, there was no participation. So now with the Human Rights discourse , and saying that both economic and social rights, cultural right as well as civil and political have to be taken together, there is much greater recognition in the world of adopting a rights based approach to development.   see full interview:  http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLF5005627AE37A91A

Testimonials Jyoti Sapru was interviewed by Fausto Aarya De Santis in May 2010  in New Delhi, India Factors which Create Poverty see full interview: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8D888077C6583305

 

 

Testimonials P. Krishna is the Rector of the Krishnamurti Foundation India, Varanasi. He was interviewed in Delhi on the 24th of March 2010 by Fausto Aarya De Santis Education for the MDGs Making a Difference to the Poorest in the World Role of Educators in achieving Universal Primary Education see full interview: :http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL19CD1F8E78885101

 

 

Testimonials Silvia Costa is an European Parlamentarian from Italy. She was interviewed in Brussels by Francesco Brancatella and Fausto Aarya De Santis on the 13th of July 2011 Perchè' e come la Unione Europea  finanzia e promuove la cooperazione internazionale allo sviluppo La vocazione europea e la dignita' dei diritti della persona di tutte le persone Cultura dell'integrazione e incultura dell'isolamento see full interview: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE5B4D9EB8DECFFE4

 

 

 

 

Testimonials Zulfiquar Haider is the National Programme Coordinator for the Planning Commission (GoI) - UN, Joint Programme on Convergence. He was interviewed in Delhi on the 13th of April 2010 by Fausto Aarya De Santis What is your opinion on the MDGs As part of the role of the UN as a kind of global governance arena, this is a wonderful thing which has happened in consensus building between such a large number of countries. But i have certain concerns with how the MDGs are being pushed. You say there must be universal right of education, so every country should have an X number of schools and teachers. Now you have countries which don't have sufficient internal revenue to do that. So what does the international community say: "We will take care of that through aid". But, would you like a country to be completely depended on aid to actually cater to something which is so fundamental? Aid has not always been benign; it has come with riders. Now, the teacher's lobby is one of the biggest unions which exists in every country. And once you have teachers you cannot fire them easily, you have to sustain them. But ,until there is an internal revenue mechanism which can support that, to except a country to say "yes, we will ensure this, even if it means taking aid" is Bad Idea! Rightly countries are now setting their own targets. At the same time it is unforgivable that in today's age when globally the kind of resources and wealth that the world has generated; to accept hunger as a reality of life is unacceptable, there is no reason why one can go hungry today! And if it requires aid transfer then those aid riders should not come there.   see full interview:  http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL77195325F4994608

 

 

 

Testimonials Montek Singh Ahluwalia is the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, Government of India. He was interviewed in Delhi on the second week of April 2010 by Fausto Aarya De Santis Why do you think certain governments are steadfast in their commitments towards MDGs while others aren't? We are committed to our goals. MDGs is an UN terminology; if you want to describe our goals as MDGs that is a different issue. I'm making this distinction because in our program we acknowledge the importance of MDGs but we don't call this a commitment because of MDGs... this has been a been part of our planning process for years. Across the world some governments are commitment some our not; in our own country also some state are committed and some are not. Ultimately in a democratic environment whatever a government does is because that is what the people who elected it wanted it to do... because if the government recognizes that if carries on doing this it won't be elected again, it won't do it What are the factors which generate poverty?   Low productivity, low access to resource, not having education and the economy not generating productive jobs. This is what underdevelopment means.     Do Resources play a role? And how would you define resources?  In a broader sense resources includes human resources, natural resources, land resources and to the extent the government has to play a role it has to be financial resources, since the government has to spend money. A system that has a lot of resources in the private sector, a financial system that delivers the resources where they can be most productive and a government that can generate resources through the fiscal system... put together can put in place a lot of programs that can address the factors which create poverty. What is the Government of India doing to address the factors which create poverty?    Anything which promotes growth is surely also going to remove poverty. We are trying to improve access to education, to health services... Health is a key element in human welfare. Poverty is not to be just defined in income earning possibility, it is also access to essential service… like health, electrification, clean drinking water, sanitation. These are very important part in the efforts to remove poverty and the Government is involved in all of them. Is the health sector being looked from the private prospective or in the public? India spends about the same proportion on Heath as other countries do, but the Government spends much less and much more expenditure is done on the private sector. Our feeling is that the Government needs to spend much more in order to strengthen health services... which is why we have launched the National Rural Health Mission and Rashtriya Swasth Bima Yojana (a government subsidized insurance)   see full interview:   http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL073E7C62882137D9