PRESS CONFERENCE ON POVERTY ERADICATION

PRESS CONFERENCE ON POVERTY ERADICATION

Taking stock at the end of the first Decade for the Eradication of Poverty, one had to acknowledge that the efforts, so far, had been inadequate, correspondents were told at a Headquarters press conference today. 

Speaking to the press, in connection with their participation in a panel discussion at the Commission on Social Development, were Nancy Barry, President of Women’s World Banking; Roberto Bissio, Executive Director of Third World Institute; and Professor Sanjay Reddy of Barnard College, Columbia University.

The forty-fourth session of the Commission on Social Development, which opened today is devoted to the review of the first United Nations Decade for the Eradication of Poverty (1997-2006).  Agreed upon at the 1995 World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen, and formally launched at the fiftieth session of the General Assembly, the Decade pursued the goal of eradicating absolute poverty and reducing overall poverty, through decisive national action and international cooperation.

“I think it is fair to say that we don’t really know exactly what has taken place worldwide in this last decade,” Mr. Reddy said.  The United Nations system really needed to invest more heavily in the creation of a credible statistical system to monitor the progress in the area of poverty eradication.  The major theme that he intended to highlight today concerned the importance of policy space for countries in identifying appropriate anti-poverty strategies.

There had been much talk, he added, in particular within the framework of the Millennium Project, about the need to ensure large infusions of aid to developing and least developed countries, in order to achieve significant poverty reduction.  While very important indeed, especially in the long run, aid was not sufficient, by itself.  It was also necessary to recognize that most of the really innovative solutions -- be it microcredit projects, midday school feeding programmes, or large-scale dairy cooperatives -- were really the product of experimentation on behalf of countries.  Thus, it was extremely important to give each country room for such experimentation, while providing it with adequate support in the form of development assistance. 

Mr. Bissio focused on the work of the Social Watch coalition, which has been monitoring the commitments and efforts of Governments on poverty and gender equality in some 60 countries since 1995.  He showed correspondents a “social map” that the coalition had produced this year, and said countries that had achieved such basic goals as ensuring five-year primary education for children, providing assisted childbirth and reducing under-five mortality rate appeared on the map in blue.  All three represented commitments made by world Governments.  “The world should be blue by now and clearly it is not,” he said. 

The most worrying part of the problem was that progress on many indicators had actually slowed down in the past decade, he added.  Since 1990, the world had witnessed elimination of barriers to investment and creation of new rights for corporations, without commensurate rights for the people and Governments in developing countries to work out their own solutions.  There was also the issue of non-compliance by the richest countries of the world, with all the promises they had made, which related to increased aid, creation of fair trade conditions and solution to the debt problem of the poor nations.  While debt relief had been announced this year for some of the most heavily indebted countries, those measures had yet to be put into practice.

Ms. Barry said that the idea of Women’s World Banking had been conceived during the first United Nations World Conference on Women, held in Mexico City in 1975.  Today, Women’s World Banking was a global leader in microfinance and was the only women-led global network aiming to change the way the world works by connecting poor women to economic and financial systems.  As part of its contribution to the review of the poverty eradication decade, her organization had produced a report entitled “Building Domestic Financial Systems that Work for the Majority”.  She hoped that the document would help stakeholders to come up with country strategies that would deal with the policies, institutional infrastructure, building capacity and products needed for implementing microfinance programmes.

While agreeing with Mr. Reddy that the results of the decade were “less than stellar”, she said that microfinance had been one of the success stories in that respect.  It had grown from some 9 million to about 60 million borrowers worldwide, with at least double that in the number of savers.  Microfinance programmes focused on building income and assets, and mitigating risks for poor households, particularly women.  While not a panacea, microfinance was “not a bad leverage point”.  However, at present, the outreach of microcredit was uneven.  While Africa had provided significant leadership in the area of microfinance, many countries in other regions, including Latin America, had next to no market penetration.

Experience was showing that microfinance was a profitable and transformational business opportunity, she continued.  After the first 10,000 to 20,000 clients, it became a self-sustaining system.  Among the positive lessons learned in the past ten years, she mentioned the importance of sharing information about innovation, building performance standards and working with policymakers to build financial systems that would work for the majority.  It was necessary to create structures that would get rid of market imperfections and build institutions that would be effective in reaching the poor, backed by policies and results-oriented financing.

The aim was to put money only into things that had demonstrated their effectiveness, and in that way, make a major inroad on poverty, she said.  She hoped that, in the next decade, the United Nations would make a major leap from Governments talking to each other to actually carving out strategies, with civil society and the private sector, to make a major dent on poverty. 

To a question about the reasons for the lack of success, Mr. Reddy said that the Millennium Development Goals were not likely to be met in many countries and entire regions.  Under the circumstances, it was important to ask whether the failure to achieve significant progress in sub-Saharan Africa, for example, could be tied to the lack of resources for development and limitations on the countries’ freedom to choose the policies relevant to them.

Ms. Barry said that it was important for the banking system to meet the real needs, lending to the low-income people.

Responding to a question regarding development aid, Mr. Bissio said that the responsibility to fight poverty rested on the countries themselves, but they needed an enabling environment, which should include trade opportunities.  Not much progress had been made, in that respect.  While a decision had been made to extend debt relief to the poor, indebted countries, the story that had not reached the news was that, for every dollar those countries would not be paying in interest, there would be a $1 reduction in aid.

Mr. Bissio added that Governments could, and should, deliver services better.  However, in the globalized economy, people who started to produce more, due to microcredit or other innovations, were unable to export their goods.  With today’s unfair terms of trade, their business would fail -- not because they did not have a good business plan, but because the countries of the North would not buy their products.  For instance, raw cocoa could enter the markets of developed countries, but it was up to the Swiss and the Belgians to produce chocolate.  Chocolate produced in Ghana could not reach the consumer market.  Such conferences as Monterrey had tried to build a balance between what the national Governments and the international system had to do to rectify the situation.  However, according to the outcome of last year’s World Summit, countries were required to produce anti-poverty plans this year, but the paragraph that said that they should be supported, had been dropped out. 

Mr. Reddy said there had been great emphasis on the part of international institutions on “Governments doing better without necessarily spending more”.  However, on question remained: were such stringent measures really compatible with long-term poverty reduction or measures needed to ensure a broad and inclusive growth process?

* *** *

For information media • not an official record