POVERTY NOT ONLY MUST BE DEFEATED, IT CAN BE, SECRETARY-GENERAL TELLS

GENERAL ASSEMBLY HIGH-LEVEL MEETING ON DEVELOPMENT FINANCING

Following is the text of remarks today by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to the General Assembly High-Level Dialogue on Financing for Development:

It is a pleasure to welcome you to the United Nations.

I think we can all sense that this is a period of extraordinary promise -- a moment when your decisions can make history.

Let me be more precise.  You can help make poverty history.

Many years of hard work have brought us to the threshold of a breakthrough in our pursuit of development and human dignity.

Not so very long ago, many feared that development in the world’s poorest countries was in danger of being given up as a lost cause.  Some held that extreme poverty was a sad but inescapable aspect of the human condition.  Quite rightly, that view is now seen as intellectually indefensible and morally untenable.  Today, it is widely recognized not only that poverty must be defeated, but that it can be.

There is real hope today because, first and foremost, many developing countries have succeeded in lifting millions of people out of impoverishment and despair.

And there is real momentum because the international community has banded together in a sustained, unprecedented effort.

United Nations conferences and summits have mapped out a vision.

The Millennium Development Goals have become a rallying point of unparalleled scope -- the globally accepted benchmarks by which our policies should be fashioned, and by which our progress should be judged.

The Monterrey Consensus has brought rich and poor countries together in partnership.

The Millennium Project has given us a plan of action.

And all along, the tenacious advocacy of leaders, citizens, civil society groups and the occasional rock and movie star has boosted public awareness, creating a popular groundswell of pressure on you and your colleagues in government.

The question now, just 12 days before the G8 summit, and less than 12 weeks before the 2005 World Summit here at the United Nations, is whether we can close the deal.

The decision taken this month, as we heard earlier from the President of the General Assembly, by the finance ministers of the Group of Eight is very encouraging.  For too long, some of the world’s poorest countries have faced an unpalatable choice between serving their peoples and servicing their debt.  Now, it is the debt that will be written off instead.

It is also an enormous boost to know that the European Union has agreed to a clear timetable for reaching the 0.7 per cent target for official development assistance (ODA) by 2015.  This will offer a chance to finally overcome the resource shortfalls that have kept so many millions of people mired in squalor.

Such steps make up for lost ground.  They need to be accompanied by similarly dramatic action on the unfinished parts of the agenda.  Rich and poor alike must do their part.  Responsibility flows both ways.

Developing countries have pledged to uphold the rule of law, fight corruption and build up their institutions.  They have promised to invest in their human capital, mobilize their domestic resources, and open their doors more readily to business activity.  Many are doing just that.

Developed countries have promised to support them.  They should, for example, launch an international finance facility, and double aid to Africa.   Beyond aid and debt, they should also strive to reduce the damaging effects of volatile private capital flows, and to increase the voice and participation of developing countries in global economic decision-making.

Developed countries must also take the lead in creating a development-friendly trading system.  If developing countries could compete on fair terms, and not have to contend with unfair subsidies and unduly high tariffs, they would reap dividends far beyond what aid and other measures could generate.

Until very recently, the poor and vulnerable have had to settle for too many small steps -- mere blips on the vast radar screen of need -- when what they hoped for were bold and meaningful advances.  Today, we can and must do better.

Despite new commitments on debt and ODA, the overall deal is not done.  The new money for both is not yet there.  The commitment is not yet universal -- either among donor or developing countries or on so central an issue as trade.

Never, perhaps, have a few weeks mattered so much for the world’s poor as the next few.  The decisions you make, and the action you take in 2006, will set the course for development over the coming decade.

Mutual interest should guide you.  All countries would benefit from efforts to build stable societies, strong markets and a rule-based global economy.

Mutual accountability should dispel doubts.  A cardinal principle of the Monterrey Consensus -- indeed the very essence of the global partnership of the global partnership for development -- is that States are accountable not only to their own peoples, but to each other.

So let us work together for a successful World Summit.  Let us grasp this opportunity to advance the cause of development, as well as the security and human rights agendas that are so closely bound up with it.  Let us show that needless, senseless human misery shall have no place in our world.

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