Mbeki: Rich not helping enough

2007-09-21 20:09

Cape Town - Developed countries are not living up to the promise to help alleviate poverty, hunger and under-development elsewhere, President Thabo Mbeki said on Friday.

At its Millennium Summit in 2000, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) identified various Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to be achieved by 2015, which gave hope to billions of people, Mbeki said in his weekly online newsletter.

"It communicated the message that the international community, combining both developed and developing countries, had, at last, resolved to make poverty history, everywhere in the world."

It was now generally agreed that during the remaining period to 2015 a lot more would have to be done than was the case during the first half.

"In reality, therefore, the 2007 UNGA [currently under way] will have to make the honest admission that the world community of nations has so far not lived up to the solemn undertakings it made to the poor in Africa and the rest of the world," he said.

Few countries to meet goals

The UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) estimated that only 13 countries were likely to halve extreme poverty and hunger by 2015, and 14 to achieve universal primary education, in line with MDGs.

Only seven were likely to achieve gender parity in secondary schools, eight to reduce child mortality, nine to reduce the maternal mortality rate, eight to meet HIV and Aids reduction targets, and 13 with regard to reducing malaria.

Only 11 countries were likely to meet the water requirements in the rural areas, and seven to meet the urban sanitation requirements.

"Thus the ECA tells the dismal and distressing story that the overwhelming majority of countries on our continent will, for the foreseeable future, remain mired in a deeply dehumanising condition of poverty, misery and underdevelopment," Mbeki said.

Western strategies

Driven by its strategic objective to defeat the former Soviet Union after World War Two, the United States used the strength of its economy and the interventions of the US government to guarantee the development of Western Europe, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.

Similarly, for their own strategic reasons, the most powerful countries in Western Europe had done the same thing to ensure the development of various European countries, within the context of the European Union.

"However, the response of the developed countries of the North to the MDGs and the needs of the billions of poor people in Africa and the rest of the South... suggests that these countries see no strategic threat to themselves in the failure to achieve the MDGs," Mbeki said.

- SAPA