Yet another conference is discussing the problems of the Third World. But Liz O'Donnell, who is at the Conference on Financing and Development in Monterrey, Mexico, is optimistic
My heart sank when I was asked to attend the global Conference on Financing and Development. The past decade has seen many international meetings where the great and the good have gathered to debate global issues. These conferences have cost a small fortune and resulted in progress which has been frustratingly slow.
The Conference on Financing and Development which I am attending in Monterrey, Mexico, promises, however, to be different. Firstly it is the first meeting to be prepared jointly by all of the major global organisations - the UN, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organisation. The fact that these bodies co-operated in preparing the conference is an achievement in itself. It shows a new willingness on their part to work together in dealing with the crucial issue of global poverty.
Secondly, the conference takes place in the aftermath of September 11th. The terrorist attacks in the US have focused attention on the despair and hopelessness of people living in extreme poverty. While poverty is not in itself a cause of terrorism (the hijackers in the US came, by and large, from well-off families), it helps create the conditions under which fundamentalism and terrorism breed.
And lastly, the conference is dealing with a relatively clear and simple issue. How will the world raise the money to meet the internationally agreed goal of lifting at least half the 1.2 billion people who live on less than $1 per day out of poverty by 2015? While there has been a great deal of rhetoric spoken about the immorality of a world in which so many live in extreme poverty, the hard issue of increased development aid from rich countries to poor countries has not been seriously addressed. The sad fact is that over the past decade, despite all of the pious talk, aid from the developed world has been in steady decline. On average rich countries now give just 0.22 per cent of their GNP to poor countries. This is less than half the average in the early 1990s. Aid per capita to the poorest people in sub-Saharan Africa has declined from over $30 to less than $20. At Monterrey, I have stressed three points - the need to reaffirm the humanitarian impulse behind development aid, Ireland's leadership role in setting a national timetable to reach the UN aid target (0.7 per cent of GNP) and more debt relief. The primary motivation for development aid is not to protect our own contented societies, but humanitarian solidarity and the vindication of the rights of the poor. Development aid should be one of the hallmarks of our civilisation, an expression of our fundamental human values.
The World Bank has estimated that aid from donor countries will have to double to $100 billion if we are to meet our commitments to the poor. This is an issue on which Ireland is setting an international example.
In September 2000, we gave the UN Millennium Summit a commitment that we would reach the UN development aid target of 0.7 per cent GNP by 2007 and an interim target of 0.45 per cent by 2002. We were the first donor to adopt such a timetable and to reflect this commitment in the national budgetary process. In 2002 Ireland's development aid will increase by 55 per cent to €455 million.
Others are beginning to follow. Belgium has announced it will reach the UN target by 2010. The EU has made a commitment to increase EU aid to a collective average of 0.39 per cent of EU GNP by 2006 or an additional $7 billion per annum. The US will increase its development assistance by $5 billion over the next three budget cycles.
At Monterrey, I said Ireland is not convinced that the current international debt relief process is succeeding in its objective of helping poor highly indebted countries to make a sustainable exit from the debt treadmill. The debt relief process does not take into account the impact of HIV/AIDS on the economies of the indebted countries. The conference at Monterrey has already produced tangible results. But the increases announced are not enough. Much more needs to be done if we are to lift millions of people out of desperate poverty and reflect the fundamental values of our civilisation through solidarity with the poor.
Liz O'Donnell is Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs