United Nations on Development Issues

Effects of Debt

According to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP⁴), and nicely summarized by this article⁵:

if the external debt of the 20 poorest countries of the world, many of them African, was written off today, it could save the lives of 21 million children before the year 2000. Or, read the other way, this figure means uncancelled debt may be responsible for the deaths of 130,000 children each week until the year 2000 [since May 1998]

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Human Rights

The UN has shown that debt affects human rights⁶.

(Democracy and human rights often go hand in hand with economic rights. Without the rights and ability to develop economically, other rights which often follow, are often lost. Visit the Institute for Economic Democracy⁷ for more information on this perspective.)

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Progress of Nations

The Progress of Nations, 1998⁸ report from UNICEF⁹ is a compilation of information and statistics that measures how developed a nation is with regards to the state of the children rather than the state of the economy.

One of these statistics citing other UN and OECD data shows the percentage of a developed nation’s GNP that goes into aid — which country came out as the most stingiest? The richest. USA. See the 1998 report for the stats¹⁰. (The term stingiest is what former U.S. President, Jimmy Carter himself described¹¹ about U.S. aid.)

And even when they did provide aid, a lot of this — more than half in 1997¹², for example — went into military aid¹³ and trade.

(Note that another issue with regards to aid is that even when substantial aid is provided, if the programmes are not appropriate, the effect can be disastrous. The US and other nations should not be cutting back their promised aid and their obligations. However, they should also change some of their aid programs so that the aid works to the best advantage of the recipient, not the donor. For such a vivid example of this, refer to this site’s section on food dumping/aid¹⁴ and the disastrous effects that has had on many countries.)

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Debt and the Effect on Children

The Progress of Nations, 1999¹⁵ report by UNICEF, suggests that debt is killing children¹⁶.

It is pointed out that as countries are diverting resources away from social provisions to repay debt, those most affected are the poor, especially women and children.

The State of the World's Children 2000¹⁷ report, also by UNICEF, points out that in 1960 the income gap between the richest one-fifth of the world's population and the poorest was 30-1. In 1997 it was 74-1.

According to UNICEF's Progress of Nations 2000 report, 30,000 children die each day.¹⁸ Yet, they "die quietly in some of the poorest villages on earth, far removed from the scrutiny and the conscience of the world. Being meek and weak in life makes these dying multitudes even more invisible in death." That is just under 11 million children each year dying from poverty.

UNICEF defines these as children under the age of 5. The numbers would be even higher if they considered children to be those under the age of say 6, or 7, for example.

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Human Development

In 1990, the United Nations started the Human Development Reports¹⁹. These reports attempted to measure human development using values such as life expectancy, literacy, equality, gender equality, and many other indications other than overall monetary wealth of a nation to determine how nations faired. Each year, the report has a different theme but always the Human Development Index, a ranking of nations on how they do in various development related categories as mentined above.

Some of the reports have been controversial, others very detailed and accepted by even those who are criticized in the report.

For example, the 1997 Human Development Report drew criticism along with the World Bank, for distorting the figures²⁰ on world poverty, basing all examples off one dollar per day as the international poverty level. It is estimated that 1.3 billion people live in absolute poverty (defined by that one dollar per day assumption). But what does that mean when half the world — nearly three billion people — live on less than two dollars a day²¹?

Despite the criticism, as Nobel Laureate Amartaya Sen comments²², the HDI, which is inescapably a crude index, must not be seen as anything other than an introductory move in getting people interested in the rich collection of information that is present in the Human Development Report. These reports are not the end statement, but a continuation monitoring and improving itself and sparking off often intense debates which should help get more and more thinking about these issues.

(See the UNDP’s Human Development Report web site³² for previous and subsequent reports.)

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Corporate Involvement/Influence

The UN has been trying to get corporate involvement in some of its projects so that corporations can also become more responsible and a more healthy and sustainable process³³ can be established.

However a United Nations Development Program (UNDP) project, the Global Sustainable Development Facility (GSDF), has come under some stern criticism because some of the corporations involved in this partnership are known to have had negative impacts³⁴ on human rights and the environment. It is feared that this project offers the ability for these corporations to obtain a cheap way to improve their image³⁵ by portraying themselves to people as conscientious and accountable (it would just cost $50,000 for a corporation to take part in the project). It is also feared that this will mean that the UNDP is effectively selling itself off³⁶ to these corporations and shareholder interests, rather than following their primary humanitarian objective of helping the poor people of the world. A year long campaign by many NGOs has seen the UN cancel this for now, but these NGOs are still working on this issue of corporate partnership with the United Nations, such as the Global Compact.

The issue is not so much that the UN should not be involved with corporations. It should; it should work to ensure that corporations also abide to universal human rights principles that nation states and citizens are obliged to observe. However, the choice of multinational corporations that the UN has started with, and that many of them have had very bad human rights records, is what is causing the controversy, as well as a debate over whether the UN should partner with such companies, or monitor and report, in similar ways that it reports on issues pertaining to countries.

The huge arrears in UN payment by the United States (about $1.6 Billion at the time of writing) is perhaps a factor as it makes the UN try to find other ways to fund their activities, and corporate collaboration, while obviously a potentially valid partnership, could also affect the UN’s ability to operate in certain circumstances.

For more information about this, you could start at the following links:

• From Corporate Watch:
  • Campaign for a Corporate-free UN³⁷
  • Greenwash +10³⁸
  • Tangled up in blue³⁹
• From the United Nations:
  • The Global Compact⁴⁰
  • Business Council for the UN⁴¹ from the United Nations Association of the USA

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