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| EDITORIAL |
| HUNGER AND POVERTY |
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A recent commentary by one of our columnists
indicated that the recently unpublished Poverty Assessment
Report (2007) on St. Kitts and Nevis by the Caribbean
Development Bank “is not flattering to the government.
The Report identifies 23.5% of the population of St.
Kitts as being poor. “With a population of 38,000,
this means that 8,903 persons can only afford a plate
of food daily. In addition the report stated that 53.5%
(4,770 persons) of those classified as poor are 125%
poorer than everyone in that category. In plain language
they are desperate.”
Despite persistent calls by the United Nations over
the past year, gains made in the achievement of the
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have begun to slip
backwards and downwards in a spiral that could spell
even worse hunger and poverty in the world than what
obtained prior to the targets being set. Not all eight
of the goals are threatened at present, but as it has
been proven, if there are no advances in the fight to
end poverty and hunger or at least take a bite out of
them, all of the others will eventually be affected
as they are all linked. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon,
who launched the 2009 MDGs report in Geneva, Switzerland
on Monday, noted that one of the major bugbears was
the higher food prices, which really began to take effect
last year, and “have reversed the nearly two-decade
trend in reducing hunger.” In plain language, one
year of the current crisis has set back the anti-hunger
moves by nearly twenty years.
In addition, he noted the slowing of the momentum to
reduce overall poverty in the developing world. Entire
industries, shot down by the global financial crisis,
have simply folded leaving tens of millions of people
jobless and hopeless. This is a mirror of what has also
been happening in developed countries. The UN Secretary-General
has always advocated that having the correct policies,
adequate funding and political will would yield results,
and the gains made in the past have proved him to be
correct. It is for this reason that he has been consistently
pleading with donor countries and organisations not
to fall back on their pledges and let aid become a fatality
of the financial crisis. But this is precisely what
has happened.
The G8 and G20 nations, which made specific commitments
to increase financial and technical support to developing
countries by 2010 to help them achieve the MDGs have
been slow in doling this out. The disbursement of aid
to Africa, where poverty and hunger are at perhaps the
highest levels of all the continents, is at least $20
billion below the targets set and pledges made. This
year’s MDGs report, which has pulled data from
over 20 organisations both within and outside the UN
system, is considered the most comprehensive global
MDG assessment to date. It must have been a disappointment
although it could not have been surprising; the slippages
were obvious.
But the report was not all gloomy, there have been promising
gains in universal primary education and in the provision
of safe drinking water; fewer people are dying of AIDS
and strategies to combat malaria and measles have been
working, which could see a concomitant decrease in child
mortality as these are among the major killers of children.
The report also found that “the number of people
living on less than $1.25 a day decreased from 1.8 billion
to 1.4 billion in the period from 1990 to 2005.”
The concern now is that this could all go south if current
trends continue. The crisis is not yet past and recovery
in some countries will be slow. If efforts are not made
to halt delays in the delivery of aid and ramp up programmes
like aid for trade the effects of the financial crisis
will be more far reaching than is envisaged at present. |
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