Global IssuesMILLENNIUM GOALS: A Question of Political Will
'I am not pessimistic, but I am realistic. Under present conditions and the prevailing system of world government, the Millennium Development Goals simply cannot be achieved,' Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Abelardo Moreno said in an interview with IPS.
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Summit taking place Sept. 20-22 at United Nations headquarters in New York is assessing progress towards the targets just five years ahead of the deadline.
The MDGs, adopted by the U.N. General Assembly in 2000, are to halve the proportion of hungry and extremely poor people, guarantee universal primary education, promote gender equality and reduce child and maternal mortality, all by 2015 and taking 1990 levels as the baseline.
They also include combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, ensuring environmental sustainability and creating a world partnership for development.
But for many countries in the developing South, meeting the MDGs is still a distant and uncertain prospect, while aid promised by industrialised nations has shrunk in real terms.
Cuba sent a delegation led by Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez and deputy Foreign Minister Moreno to attend the meeting in New York, although the govenment is critical of the MDGs, which it regards as overly modest.
Moreno said it is 'almost a mockery' to propose halving the percentage of people living on incomes of less than one dollar a day, when there are now at least 150 million more hungry people in the world than there were in 2000.
'What about the other half: are they doomed to continue to live in poverty and suffer hunger?' he asked.
'We live in a world in which extreme poverty is increasing instead of declining, and where millions of children die each year around the world because they lack access to medicines and health care,' he said.
Moreno contrasted this dire reality with the billions of dollars the world spends on arms, while in spite of the urgency of the human problems and 'the pursuit of these meagre goals, the resources industrialised countries are supposed to devote to development aid have declined in real terms.'
'The rich nations say they have increased their aid, but they have done so only nominally. In 1970 they committed themselves to giving 0.7 percent of GDP in the form of official development aid, but they are not living up to that promise,' he said. The eighth MDG, 'developing a global partnership for development,' includes among its targets 'addressing the special needs of least developed countries, landlocked countries and small island developing states,' and 'dealing comprehensively with the debt problems of developing countries.'
'If the 'haves' are not committed to fulfilling what they themselves approved, what's left? The issue is one of political will, not of technology or methodology,' stressed Moreno, who said that the fault lies not in the MDGs themselves, but in the system that makes them necessary.
Moreno insisted that 'the problems of hunger, disease, poverty and lack of basic services will not be solved as long as today's unjust international economic order remains,' in which once poor countries have paid off their debt, they find themselves more indebted than ever.
'This order needs to be changed. We need to get rid of selfishness, and devise policies for real solidarity,' he said.
Moreno added that Cuba is on track to achieve most of the MDGs, and is attending the U.N. meeting as an example of what can be done by a developing country that is being blockaded by the United States and is poor in natural resources, but which has social policies that benefit the population.
'The few countries that have made real progress towards fulfilling the MDGs have done so by their own efforts, impelled by their own motivation,' the deputy foreign minister said.
© Inter Press Service (2010) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service