PRESS CONFERENCE ON INTERNATIONAL DAY FOR ERADICATION OF POVERTY
Press Briefing
PRESS CONFERENCE ON INTERNATIONAL DAY FOR ERADICATION OF POVERTY
19961017
FOR INFORMATION OF UNITED NATIONS SECRETARIAT ONLY
At a Headquarters press conference marking the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, the Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), James Gustave Speth, told correspondents the international community needed to launch a global crusade to eliminate the scourge of poverty from the planet. The resources, technology and delivery capacity were available for such a campaign; the momentum, political support, and the financial support were needed.
He said the Day provided a chance to increase understanding of the depth of the world poverty crisis, and assess whether or not sufficient efforts were being made to address it. Currently 1.3 billion people lived in absolute poverty, according to the World Bank's definition, and 1.6 billion people lived in "capacity poverty", which defined poverty by many types of deprivation, including an absence of health care at the time of childbirth.
The United Nations had responded to a series of conferences on poverty by creating an unprecedented framework for attacking poverty at the country level. The UNDP and other United Nations programmes and funds, the Bretton Woods institutions and the specialized agencies would work with governments and civil societies to provide basic social services, health and education for all, livelihoods for the poor, enhance the status of women, and strengthen the capacity of governments to deliver anti-poverty strategies.
A correspondent asked about the efficacy of strategies and programmes in light of the ever-widening gap between rich and poor. Mr. Speth confirmed that poverty had grown as rapidly as population, and that the gap between rich and poor continued to widen. However, some countries, including Malaysia and Indonesia, had seen major achievements in the reduction of poverty. In Singapore, poverty had been virtually eliminated.
Behind the "Asian miracle" was a long period of successful development cooperation, he said. Foreign investment did not impact on the need for development assistance. Some 80 per cent of direct foreign investment in the developing world was going to 12 countries, of which 11 were middle-income countries. Today there was not a correlation between direct foreign investment and real need.
The international development assistance community was committed to the goal of poverty eradication. The Secretary-General had said today that the challenge of eradicating the worst forms of poverty and deprivation should more than ever be at the centre of the Organization's agenda. The UNDP placed poverty-elimination at the centre of its programmes; 90 per cent of core resources were allocated to countries with less than $750 per capita income.
Poverty Press Conference - 2 - 17 October 1996
Asked about the impact on developing countries of the United Nations debt, Mr. Speth said that resource constraints placed severe limitations on UNDP work. It was difficult to launch initiatives on a scale commensurate with problems, and difficult to help countries develop the capacity to absorb internationally available resources. Official overseas development assistance had decreased globally about 25 per cent in four years, and UNDP unrestricted funds had declined at about the same rate. Dramatically reduced resources had resulted in the loss of good staff people, as well as stop-start programme planning.
The United Nations needed to be reformed, he said, but the UNDP had suffered cuts that affected basic service. With resources slashed, and bills unpaid, some Member States felt that the Organization's effectiveness was being reduced rather than enhanced. The UNDP had a broad mandate with 134 offices in every developing country, and every country in transition. About a billion dollars in restricted funds was made available by other governments to implement particular projects, such as facilitating the return of Rwandan refugees, capacity-building in the least developed countries of Africa, and implementing the Montreal Protocol.
Asked to explain the assertion in the latest UNDP report that most countries were better off 10 years ago than today, Mr. Speth said there had been a sustained depression in the developing world. This was due to the debt crisis, destabilizations, violence, poor government policies in many countries, corruption, the failure of the international community to act with sufficient generosity in terms of development aid, and the distortion of bilateral development assistance during the cold war. One and a half billion people in more than a hundred countries were worse off than 15 years ago. Decades of concerted efforts would be needed to get many countries back to levels where they once were. Those facts underscored the importance of revitalizing development cooperation.
Asked about the debt crisis in sub-Saharan Africa, Mr. Speth stated that UNDP assistance was grant-based and did not increase indebtedness. The debt crisis in the developing world amounted to almost 2 trillion dollars. Sub- Saharan Africa paid more in debt payments than for the health and education of its people. Despite efforts to reduce and reschedule the debt, the problems persisted. The World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) had recently launched a new initiative on multilateral debt. The Paris Club had taken new initiatives on debt reduction, but greater efforts were needed. The crushing burden of debt must be removed from the backs of the very poorest countries.
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