PRESS BRIEFING ON DPI/NGO CONFERENCE

PRESS BRIEFING ON DPI/NGO CONFERENCE

Concluding its three day session on the eve of the General Assembly’s fifty-ninth session, the 57^th Annual DPI/NGO Conference entitled “Millennium Development Goals:  Civil Society Takes Action” had been especially significant, Mark Malloch-Brown, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Administrator and Chair of the United Nations Development Group, told correspondents at a Headquarters press conference today.

With the General Assembly’s session set to start next week, a series of meetings at the opening of the session would launch a year of international action across a range of political forums to move the world back on track towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals, Mr. Malloch-Brown said.  That process would culminate next September with a summit-level meeting to review the Millennium Declaration+5.  In that regard, much of the discussion over the last three days had centred on progress achieved in meeting the Millennium Development Goals.  Whether the world was on track for meeting the Goals drew heavily on work done by UNDP in terms of measuring progress.

He said there were structural parts of the world -- both in terms of geography and in terms of issues -- that were not going to “get right” on current benign trends or business as usual, but required a huge effort of change, both in developing countries themselves and in donor support to them.  The process of building political for the changes to get the world back on track came together at the United Nations.

Mr. Malloch-Brown said that the Conference, attended by over 1,800 NGO representatives from some 90 countries, had also been significant in that it was taking place after the publication of the “Cardoso” report, which had pushed the idea further still that civil society was a major stakeholder in United Nations processes and that its voice must be heard.

“What we are hearing this week is a sense of urgency and alarm”, he said.  Civil society was going to be a key component to the political coalition for getting back on track.  Civil society was also a key part of innovative new approaches.  Without a strong domestic private sector in developing countries, starting with microfinance but building through small- and medium-sized enterprises, there would never be the growth and job creation to meet the Millennium Development Goals.  Private sector development had come to the centre of UNDP’s agenda.  He was not surprised to learn how much of foothold it had gained in the broader NGO agenda.

Jacques Attalia, President of PlaNet Finance and founder and former President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, agreed that it was important that the United Nations play its new role in communicating and exchanging information with NGOs, which were not only new partners in democracy and development, but also a new sector of the world economy.  In the past, the economy had been divided into the private and public sectors.  Now there was a third sector, the NGO sector, which was growing very quickly and, in real figures, would account for more than 10 per cent of the global gross domestic product (GDP).

Non-governmental organizations had been behind the development of many ideas, including human rights, women’s and children’s rights and the fight against hunger, he said.  NGOs were at the core of world matters.  The fact that NGOs were among the main targets today in Iraq demonstrated the fact that terrorists understood that NGOs were a key factor in building democracy.  The fact that the Conference had sought to understand where the world stood in terms of achieving the Millennium Development Goals was crucial in that there was an interaction between violence and development.  Violence destroyed the roots of development, and a lack of development created violence.

He, too, had hoped that poverty could at least have been tamed.  That had not been the case.  Some of the Goals were not easy to quantify.  The poverty line, for example, which was based on one dollar a day, might really be based on two dollars a day.  If that figure were used, poverty was not even being eradicated in Asia.  According to more realistic goals, one might say that the world was failing in realizing the Millennium Goals.

Non-governmental organizations, in coordination with nations, could and would play a key role in that regard, he said.  Microcredit provided tremendous hope.  Looking at the very poor, out of 2 billion people below the poverty line, 500 million adults could be in a position to use microfinance.  Five years ago, only 25 million people were using microfinance.  Today, there were more than 60 million, which represented tremendous growth.  He hoped that 200 million people could be reached in the next five years.

One of the outcomes of the Conference would be to raise awareness of the need for action between governments, international financial institutions and NGOs, which had to be well managed, well controlled, professionally organized and financially transparent, he continued.  Al-Qaida was an NGO, as were some sects.  The name NGO should not be abused.

Responding to a question, Mr. Malloch-Brown said the baseline for the Millennium Development Goals had been 1990.  Measured against that, there had been a decline in poverty.  Progress was highly regionalized, however.  While most of the progress had been in East and South Asia, there had been setbacks in Africa.  Progress in Central Asia and Latin America, moreover, had not been fast enough.  Economies were not growing quickly enough to benefit the poor, and huge gender disparities undermined the quality of growth.  There had also not been enough private sector microfinance.  In general, it had been a mixed scorecard and not all bad news.

Had the Conference raised the issue of how many NGOs were accredited through a much politicized Economic and Social Council Committee?  a correspondent asked. 

Responding, the panel’s moderator, Raymond Sommereyns, Director of the Outreach Division of the Department of Public Information, noted that the Secretary-General would soon be issuing a report with comments for further action on the Cardoso report.

Asked to describe setbacks since 2000, Mr. Malloch-Brown said the most significant setback had been the overall weakening performance in Africa on the poverty goal, with its related effects on the other Goals.  More trade, growth and domestic expenditures were needed by the developing countries.  There was also a bill to be footed by the international donor community, however.

Mr. Attalia noted that exports from the least developed countries to the developed countries were declining.  The very poorest countries were exporting less than before.  It would be impossible to reach the Millennium Goals with such low performance.

Responding to another question, Mr. Attalia said he was convinced that NGOs played a tremendous role.  NGOs had a proven track record of setting global priorities in the areas of hunger, disease, and the fight against poverty, for example.  Without NGOs, the environment would not have been a global priority.  That was why NGOs were sometimes forbidden in countries.  The UNDP and the World Bank, for example, increasingly relied on NGOs to implement their activities.

There were two kinds of NGOs, Mr. Malloch-Brown added.  Some were involved in service delivery, making up for what governments could not do.  Others were issue-oriented, making a strong case for political action in areas such as debt relief, for example.  Between the two, NGOs were making a difference in the way in which the world was being governed.

Responding to a question that the NGOs were seen as part of a western alliance in the war against terror, Mr. Attalia said that while many advocacy NGOs came from the west, all countries had advocacy NGOs which played an important role in terms of institution-producing services.  Some 90 per cent of microfinance was done by NGOs in the developing world.  NGOs were not a Trojan horse of western values. 

Mr. Malloch-Brown noted that a parallel meeting this morning had discussed the issue.  It was deeply troubling that Italian NGO women working for an anti-war NGO had been targeted in such a deliberate way.  Very difficult issues had been emerging as a consequence of the global polarization around terror.  Humanitarian space had often gotten crushed in the midst of political confrontation.

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