Gender
Poverty
Poverty has a woman’s face. Of
the more than 2 billion people in the world living in poverty, 70 per cent are
women; two thirds of the
800 million poor in Asia
are women.7
Of the 57 million deaths
worldwide in 2002, one in five was a child less than five years old – roughly
one child died every three seconds. An estimated 4 million of these deaths
happened in the first month of life, the neonatal period. Almost all child
deaths happen in poorer parts of the world, while most of the spending to
prevent child deaths happens in rich ones. This is but just one
indication.
Gender inequalities also
continue to limit girls’ education. For example, even with the narrowing of
gender gaps, on average girls can expect to receive one year less of education
than boys in African and Arab States and two years less in South Asia. In 14 African
countries girls represent less than 45 per cent of the primary school
population. In Pakistan they represent just 41 per cent – gender parity would
put another 2 million girls in the country in school. In the developing world as
a whole primary school completion rates are 75 per cent for girls but rise to 85
per cent for boys. Gender disparities are even wider at the secondary and
tertiary levels. These deep gender disparities represent not just a violation of
the universal right to education but also a threat to future human development
prospects: girls’ education is one of the most powerful catalysts for social
progress across a wide range of indicators.
Perhaps the most critical of
the issues related to women’s poverty is the many
forms of violence against women. One aspect of this
deserves urgent attention – the trafficking of women and girls. During the
past decade, this form of
trafficking has become an issue of growing concern, especially in South-East Asia. It has been
conservatively estimated that at least 200,000 to 225,000 women and children from South-East Asia are trafficked
annually, a figure representing nearly one third of the global trafficking
trade.8Women
and girls who are victims of this international trade are at an increased risk
of further violence, as
well as unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, including
infection with HIV.
International Council on
Social Welfare
Statement to
United Nations Commission for
Social Development
44th
Session
New York
8-17 February 2006
Review of the first UN Decade for the Eradication
of Poverty 1997-2006: One Decade Has Passed, Another
To Go
The International Council
on Social Welfare (ICSW) is a global, non-governmental organisation which
represents tens of thousands of organisations around the world that are actively
involved in programmes to promote social welfare, social development and social
justice. The organisation was founded in 1928.
ICSW membership consists of
global, regional, national and local organisations in more than eighty
countries, most of which are developing countries.
ICSW’s basic mission is to
promote forms of social and economic development which aim to reduce poverty,
hardship, and vulnerability throughout the world, especially amongst
disadvantaged people. It strives for recognition and protection of fundamental
rights to food, shelter, education, health care and security. It believes that
these rights are an essential foundation for freedom, justice and peace. It
seeks also to advance equality of opportunity, freedom of self-expression and
access to human services.
International Council on
Social Welfare
C/O NIZW International
Centre
P.O. Box
19152
3501 DD
Utrecht
The
Netherlands
Phone 31 30 2306
336
Fax 31 30 2306
540
Executive Summary of
Findings and Recommendations
ICSW’s Review of the first UN Decade for the Eradication
of Poverty 1997-2006:
One Decade Has Passed, Another
To Go
The analysis
made in this ICSW review
of the first UN Decade for the Eradication
of Poverty 1997-2006 leads
to some fundamental findings and recommendations. They are not new but worth
repeating.
The findings show that,
despite a decade of
poverty eradication, there remains a large gap between the commitments, goals
and targets of the Decade
and the outcomes of current trends on income and human poverty.
In summary, this
report recommends that governments – both developing and developed –
bear the primary responsibility to
create the enabling environment to eliminate poverty in all its
forms.
Developing country governments
must ensure:
- Good governance;
-
Social protection for the poorest and
most vulnerable; -
Priority on social sector spending,
especially primary education and health care; -
Economic and political empowerment of all
citizens, especially the poor; and - Efficient, transparent, and accountable
institutions.
Developed country governments
must ensure:
-
A more open and equitable system of
international finance and trade, to increase development assistance and to
enhance international commitment to good governance, development and poverty
reduction.
Developed country governments
must:
-
Assist in the development of poorer
nations by opening their markets to the exports of developing
countries. -
Continue to honour their development-aid
commitments.
And multilateral institutions,
such as the United Nations’ bodies and regional commissions; the World Bank and
regional development banks must:
-
Seriously heed the criticisms of their
poverty-reduction operations, the resources they consume, and the impact of
their programmes on poverty. -
Remain at the front line in international
development efforts. -
Ensure that their international,
regional, and bilateral assistance be better coordinated, less competitive and
more committed to narrow the gap between words and institutional action on
poverty eradication.
After this ten-year review, we have another decade to go to change the
poverty trends, alter the course and achieve the human-poverty eradication
goals.
I.
Introduction
The proposal to assign a
special Decade for the
Eradication of Poverty grew from the process of the UN World Summit on Social
Development. The main objective of the Decade was to achieve the
goal of eradicating absolute poverty and reducing overall human poverty in the
world, through decisive national actions and international cooperation. This
objective includes the full and effective implementation of all agreements,
commitments and recommendations of major United Nations conferences and summits
organized since 1990 as they relate to the eradication of poverty in all its
forms.
Importantly, the commitment to
eradicate poverty made at the Social Summit and reflected in the objectives of
the Decade was strongly
reaffirmed in the Millennium Declaration, which resolved to halve, by 2015, the
proportion of people living in extreme poverty and hunger.
The Millennium Development
Goals (MDGs) have clearly strengthened efforts towards poverty eradication. But
the MDG poverty target in terms of the poverty threshold of a dollar a day
overshadows the human dimensions of poverty set out at the Social
Summit.
This position paper,
therefore, looks at various trends of human poverty, espoused in the 1990s
conferences and summits and how they have played out over the past decade. What are the
achievements and what are the remaining gaps and challenges vis-à-vis the goals
of the Decade?
The usual caveats apply.
Accurate data on many indicators are not available for many countries and
several specific goals of the decade. There are also
difficulties in reviewing trends of every aspect of the Decade’s scope.
Even so, the indications
point, without a doubt, to a large gap between the commitments, goals and
targets of the Decade and
the outcomes of current trends. A decade of poverty
eradication has gone by but still one in five persons worldwide is forced to
live on less than a dollar day. That amounts to more than one billion people.
Another 1.5 billion live on less than two dollars a day. That’s about 40 per
cent of human beings worldwide. And the full human dimensions of this poverty
are even more overwhelming.
After this ten-year review, we have another decade to go to change the
poverty trends, alter the course and achieve the human-poverty eradication
goals…what will we say then?
II. Income,
Consumption and Human Poverty – Trends to Date
Poverty cannot be adequately
measured, explained or addressed in terms of income or consumption. Poverty is a
deprivation of essential productive assets and opportunities to which every
human should be entitled. Everyone has a right and, therefore, must have access
to basic education and primary health services. The poor should have the ability
to sustain themselves by their labour and be adequately remunerated, as well as
be entitled to adequate protection from natural and social risks and
vulnerabilities.
Notwithstanding income and
basic services, people are also poor and tend to remain so if they are not
empowered to participate in making the decisions that shape their lives and
livelihoods. The poor may not have acquired essential assets because they live
in a remote or resource-poor area, or because they are vulnerable on account of
age, health, living environment or occupation. They may be denied access to
assets because they belong to an ethnic minority or a community considered
socially inferior, or simply because they are females or have a disability. At a
broader level, poverty stems from situations where gross inequality persists
because of vested interests, and entrenched power structures. This situation
translates into a lack of political will, inadequate governance and
inappropriate public policies and programmes to eradicate poverty in all its
forms.
Income/consumption
poverty1
Worldwide, and over the last
decade, the extreme
income poverty trend, measured by the $1 a day poverty line shows a positive
indication. Extreme poverty fell from 28 per cent in 1990 to 21 per cent
currently. 2 This represents a reduction in absolute numbers of about
130 million people. To the extent that economic growth has contributed to income
poverty reduction, the indicators are also positive. Average per capita income
growth in developing countries in the 1990s was 1.5 per cent, almost three times
the rate in the 1980s.3 Additionally, since 2000, average per capita
income growth in developing countries has increased to 3.4 per cent – double the
average for high-income countries. Even Sub-Saharan Africa, after a two-decade record of declining
average income, showed an increase of 1.2 per cent a year since
2000.
But trends in income poverty
must take into account large variations across regions and between countries, in
order to make sense and show real numbers. Global poverty reduction has been
driven largely by the well-known success of East Asia, particularly
China.4 But at the other end of the spectrum, Sub-Saharan Africa had
almost 100 million more people living on less than $1 a day in 2001 than in
1990. South Asia reduced the incidence
of poverty, though not the absolute number of poor people. Latin America and the
Middle East registered no progress, while Central and Eastern Europe and the
Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) experienced a dramatic increase in
poverty. The number of people living on less than $2 a day in Central and
Eastern Europe and the CIS rose from 23 million in 1990 to 93 million in 2001,
or from 5 per cent to 20 per cent.
In other words, income-poverty
reduction has advanced in East Asia, reversed in
Sub-Saharan Africa and stagnated almost everywhere else. The worrying world-wide
trend for the future is that overall progress is slowing. Much of the success in
pushing back poverty over the past two decades was achieved in the 1980s and the
first half of the 1990s – before the UN Decade in question. Since
the mid-1990s $1 a day poverty has been falling at one-fifth the 1980–96 rate.
This is despite the fact that average growth for developing countries picked up
in the 1990s, increasing at more than double the per capita rate of the previous
decade.
In conclusion, progress in
poverty reduction has been partial. One in five people in the world – more than
1 billion people – still survive on less than $1 a day, a level of poverty so
abject that it threatens survival. Another 1.5 billion people live on $1–$2 a
day. In effect, after a decade of poverty
eradication measures, more than 40 per cent of the world’s population are faced
daily with the direct reality or the impending threat of extreme
poverty.
Human
poverty
How has the world fared in
terms of human poverty eradication? How has the world’s poor population
benefited in terms of health, education, sanitation, social situation, etc.?
Again, average figures in the long-run trend show progress. As the UNDP 2005
Human Development Reports: “On average, people born in a developing country
today can anticipate being wealthier, healthier and better educated than their
parents’ generation. They are also more likely to live in a multiparty democracy
and less likely to be affected by conflict.” (UNDP 2005:19). Average life
expectancy in developing countries has increased by two years in a little more
than a decade. Currently,
there are 2 million fewer child deaths than in 1990, and the chance of a child
reaching age 5 has increased by about 15 per cent. Improvements in access to
water and sanitation have contributed to the child survival rate by reducing the
threat of infectious disease. Another 1.2 billion people have gained access to
clean water over the past decade. The rapid scale-up
in global immunization since 2001 through the Global Alliance for Vaccines and
Immunization has also brought down the death toll, saving an estimated half a
million lives.
Human poverty in terms of
education has also shown impressive average reductions; despite the fact that
there are still 800 million people in the world lacking basic literacy
skills.5 And women accounting
disproportionately for two-thirds of the total. Even so, literacy levels in
developing countries have increased from 70 per cent to 76 per cent over the
past decade, and the
gender gap is narrowing. Compared with the position in 1990, there are 30
million fewer primary school–age children out of school, and the average number
of years in school has climbed by half a year. The gender gaps in primary school
enrolment, although a limited indicator for gender equity, have narrowed, though
girls still account for more than half of children out of
school.
But the numbers also show
large gaps in opportunities for education. Despite a decade of poverty
eradication, there are about 115 million children still denied even the most
basic primary education. Most of the children who are not enrolled in school are
in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
Human poverty in terms of
health is discouraging. In this regard we look at life expectancy – an indicator
of how healthy one can expect to be and one way of measuring risk of avoidable
mortality. Another measure is the greater risk of dying before a specified age
in comparison with a population group in another country. Taking the high-income
country average as a point of comparison, over half of mortality in developing
countries is avoidable. Latin America, the Middle East and Asia have been converging
with rich countries, in terms of life expectancy. In South Asia life expectancy has
increased by a decade in
the past 20 years. By contrast, the countries of the former Soviet Union and
Sub-Saharan Africa have been falling further behind.
In the countries of the former
Soviet Union life expectancy has dropped dramatically, especially for males. In
the Russian Federation life expectancy for males has dropped from 70 years in
the mid-1980s to 59 years today—lower than in India. Non-communicable ailments –
such as cardiovascular disease and injuries – account for the greatest share of
the rise in deaths, though infectious diseases are also resurgent. If the death
rate remains constant, about 40 per cent of 15-year-old Russian males today will
be dead before they reach age 60.
There is no more powerful – or
disturbing – indicator of human poverty than child mortality. More than 10
million children die each year before their fifth birthday. Sub-Saharan Africa’s
share of child mortality is growing. The region accounts for 20 per cent of
births but 44 per cent of child deaths. Almost all childhood deaths are
preventable. Every two minutes four people die from malaria alone, three of them
children. Most of these deaths could be prevented by simple, low-cost
interventions. Vaccine-preventable illnesses—like measles, diphtheria and
tetanus—account for another 2–3 million childhood deaths. For every child who
dies, millions more will fall sick or miss school, trapped in a vicious circle
that links poor health in childhood to poverty in adulthood. Like the 500,000 women who die each year of
pregnancy-related causes, more than 98 per cent of children who die each year
live in poor countries. They die because of where they are
born.
But numbers are dying
elsewhere. HIV/AIDS is at the heart of the problem. In 2004 an estimated 3
million people died from the virus, and another 5 million became
infected6. Almost all of these deaths were in the poorer parts of the
world, with 70 per cent of them in Africa. Some 38 million people are now
infected with HIV – 25 million of them in Sub-Saharan
Africa.
Looking to the future, Africa
faces the gravest HIV/AIDS-related risks to human development. But new threats
are emerging. Serious epidemics have emerged in other regions. In Tamil Nadu
state in India, for example, HIV prevalence rates higher than 50 per cent have
been found among female sex workers, while both Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra
have passed the 1 per cent prevalence mark. The incidence of HIV/AIDS is also
growing in the countries of the former Soviet Union. Ukraine now has one of the
fastest growing rates of HIV infection in the world, while the Russian
Federation, with the second fastest growth rate (and 1 million infected), is
home to the largest epidemic in that region. The vast majority of people living
with HIV are the young.
Gender
Poverty
Poverty has a woman’s face. Of
the more than 2 billion people in the world living in poverty, 70 per cent are
women; two thirds of the
800 million poor in Asia
are women.7
Of the 57 million deaths
worldwide in 2002, one in five was a child less than five years old – roughly
one child died every three seconds. An estimated 4 million of these deaths
happened in the first month of life, the neonatal period. Almost all child
deaths happen in poorer parts of the world, while most of the spending to
prevent child deaths happens in rich ones. This is but just one
indication.
Gender inequalities also
continue to limit girls’ education. For example, even with the narrowing of
gender gaps, on average girls can expect to receive one year less of education
than boys in African and Arab States and two years less in South Asia. In 14 African
countries girls represent less than 45 per cent of the primary school
population. In Pakistan they represent just 41 per cent – gender parity would
put another 2 million girls in the country in school. In the developing world as
a whole primary school completion rates are 75 per cent for girls but rise to 85
per cent for boys. Gender disparities are even wider at the secondary and
tertiary levels. These deep gender disparities represent not just a violation of
the universal right to education but also a threat to future human development
prospects: girls’ education is one of the most powerful catalysts for social
progress across a wide range of indicators.
Perhaps the most critical of
the issues related to women’s poverty is the many
forms of violence against women. One aspect of this
deserves urgent attention – the trafficking of women and girls. During the
past decade, this form of
trafficking has become an issue of growing concern, especially in South-East Asia. It has been
conservatively estimated that at least 200,000 to 225,000 women and children from South-East Asia are trafficked
annually, a figure representing nearly one third of the global trafficking
trade.8Women
and girls who are victims of this international trade are at an increased risk
of further violence, as
well as unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, including
infection with HIV.
Hunger
Income poverty is closely
linked to hunger. In a world of plenty, millions of people go hungry every day.
More than 850 million people, including one in three preschool children, are
still trapped in a vicious cycle of malnutrition and its effects. Malnutrition
weakens the immune system, increasing the risk of ill health, which in turn
aggravates malnutrition. Around half of the deaths of preschool children are
directly attributable to interactions between malnutrition and infectious
disease. Children who are moderately under weight are more than four times more
likely to die from infectious disease than are well-nourished
children.
Lest we
forget
There’s a Third World in the
First World. Let’s look at one important indicator again – child poverty – this
time in rich countries.
No matter which of the
commonly-used poverty measures is applied, the situation of children in rich
countries has deteriorated over the last decade. Over the last decade, the proportion of
children living in poverty in the developed world has risen in 17 out of the 24
OECD nations9 for which data are
available.10
Most progress in reducing
child poverty has been made in the Nordic countries, which have rates below 5
per cent. Next is a broad band of middle-ranking nations with rates between 5
and 15 per cent, including all of the most populous European countries except
Italy. Italy has the highest child poverty rate in Europe. There are four other
OECD countries with exceptionally high rates of child poverty (15 per cent to 17
per cent) – United Kingdom, Portugal, Ireland and New
Zealand.
At the bottom of the OECD
countries’ ranking in this regard are six non-European nations – Australia,
Canada, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, and the United States. In terms of relative
income poverty, the Czech Republic and Hungary have lower child poverty rates
than Germany or the Netherlands; Poland has a lower rate than Canada, Japan, or
the United States.
In terms of numbers, it is
estimated that about 40 to 50 million children living in some of the world’s
wealthiest countries, are growing up in poverty. 11
Risks &
vulnerabilities
The reversals suffered in the
Decade against poverty are all the
more significant because of the extreme vulnerability of populations in many
countries in the face of shocks of different kinds, varying from natural
calamities such as droughts, floods, earthquakes and tsunamis to man-made shocks
such as the so-called 1997 Asian financial crisis. Most natural calamities,
whether they are inter-continental tsunamis, typhoons in the Pacific, hurricanes
in the US, floods in Bangladesh or earthquakes or droughts in India, adversely
affect the poor the most. They are the ones who are located in the most
calamity-prone areas, live in the most vulnerable shelters, are prone to low
crop prices and unemployment in times of crisis and have no safety nets to fall
back on when adversely affected. Furthermore, since they are already at the
margins of subsistence, even a small external shock is sufficient to push them
into a situation where their survival is threatened. For these reasons, poverty
and vulnerability are inextricably intertwined.
However, as the 1997 crisis demonstrates, it
is not just the extremely poor who are vulnerable.
In turn, vulnerability to
infectious disease is exacerbated by inadequate access to clean water and
sanitation. More than 1 billion people lack access to safe water and 2.6 billion
lack access to improved sanitation. Diseases transmitted through water or human
wastes are the second leading cause of death among children worldwide, after
respiratory tract infection. The overall death toll: an estimated 3,900 children
every day.
And if the widely predicted
outbreak of avian flu were to materialize, it would have devastating
implications for vulnerable populations, as well as for public health across all
countries. Similarly, the full consequences of global warming and other
ecological pressures on food systems could dramatically affect the food security
of millions.
Conflicts are another window
of vulnerabilities. The UN Decade on Poverty
Eradication has witnessed genocide in Rwanda, violent civil wars in the heart of
Europe, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and setbacks in the Middle East. The
conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has claimed almost 4 million
lives – the greatest death toll since the Second World War. In Sudan a peace
settlement in one of Africa’s longest running civil wars served as a prelude to
a new humanitarian crisis in Darfur, with more than 1 million people displaced.
New threats to collective security have emerged. Yet despite the challenges
posed for human development by violent conflict, there is some positive news.
The number of conflicts has fallen since 1990. The last 15 years have seen many
civil wars ended through negotiation under UN auspices. From Timor-Leste to
Afghanistan, El Salvador and Sierra Leone peace has brought new opportunities
for human development and democracy. Violent conflict poses one of the greatest
barriers to accelerated human development. But the barrier can be
lowered.
III. Policy
Recommendations
The objectives and goals of
the UN Decade for the
Eradication of Poverty are reflected in the 2015-targeted MDGs. What this means
is that we have another decade from now to improve
on the human poverty trends of the previous decade.
The UN Decade for poverty reduction
called for eradicating absolute poverty and reducing overall human poverty in
the world, THROUGH DECISIVE NATIONAL ACTIONS AND INTERNATIONAL
COOPERATION. In this regard, the UN Decade has seen many
countries worldwide developing national poverty reduction strategies and
programmes in consultation with international agencies. Many Governments have
established inter-ministerial coordinating committees aimed at formulating and
implementing strategic national poverty-reduction plans and
actions.
But, translating poverty
reduction strategies into effective policies and programmes to tackle the
various dimensions of human poverty, simultaneously with limited resources, has
become a challenging task for all the stakeholders. In other words, national
governments, their regional inter-governmental bodies, donor governments,
international agencies – especially the United Nations, the World Bank, the IMF
and their regional arms – the private sector and civil society organizations
everywhere must increase efforts to make their partnership work.
Developing country
governments, however, bear the primary responsibility to create the enabling
environment to eliminate poverty. This environment is characterised
by:
- Good governance;
-
Social protection for the poorest and
most vulnerable; -
Priority on social sector spending, such
as primary education and health care; -
Economic and political empowerment of the
poor, including microcredit and other small credit or grant programs that
raise the status of women, build from the
bottom up, and have a ripple effect in families and society; and - Efficient, transparent, and accountable
institutions.
What other steps would it take
to close the gap between the trend projections of the last decade and what the MDG
targets represent?
The answer lies in policy
lessons from practices that have worked. Briefly put:
-
Sustained poverty reduction cannot be
achieved unless socio-political dimensions are incorporated in a comprehensive
strategy. Policies that address the inequalities in access to basic social
services can increase the capacity of the poor to improve the quality of their
lives; the provision of basic social services should be incorporated in
poverty strategies. This is particularly important in primary health care and
basic education that reduce mortality and enhance the quality of life.
-
Education is one of the most important
investments that a country can make. Not only does it fulfil people’s right to
knowledge, but the benefits are both economic and social. Education is one of
the most powerful ways of accelerating economic growth and reducing poverty.
And education, particularly for girls, has important spill over effects for
the society as a whole, helping to empower women, improve their
status and enable them to exert greater influence at both the household and
community levels. This not only tends to improve children’s nutrition and
health; it also results in a decline in fertility, as educated women tend to have smaller
families. However, people need to be educated to a sufficient level: only if
children have moved beyond a certain threshold of learning, in good-quality
primary and lower secondary schools, can they fully capitalise on education
through increases in productivity or in their social contributions.
-
Higher standards of health are also
important both for society and the economy. Good health is one of the most
vital components of human development. There are also important linkages
between improved health – of both mothers and children – and better
performance at school. Good health also reduces population growth: when fewer
children die in infancy, parents tend to have smaller families. And a healthy
workforce is also essential if countries are to achieve the highest levels of
productivity. The interventions that could prevent or effectively treat the
conditions that kill children and women of reproductive age
are well known. Most are low cost—and highly cost-effective. Two in every
three child deaths could be averted through provision of the most basic health
services. Yet a health catastrophe that inflicts a human toll more deadly than
the HIV/AIDS pandemic is allowed to continue. Nothing more powerfully
underlines the gap between what we are able to do to overcome avoidable
suffering and what we choose to do with the wealth and technologies at our
disposal.
-
One of the primary objectives of
government policy should be to reduce inequality. The nature and extent of
inequality will, of course, vary considerably from one country to another. But
for poverty reduction, some types of inequality matter more than others. The
most important are those concerned with the distribution of assets, especially
land, human capital, financial capital and access to public assets such as
rural infrastructure.
-
Economic growth could be reduced for any
number of reasons: for example, declining terms of trade, shocks in the global
economy, natural disasters, financial instability or regional conflicts.
Individual countries may also have to deal with social and political
instability and the impact of HIV/AIDS. However, the outcomes will be better
if Governments integrate social and economic policies. And a key policy must
be to take specific steps to reduce inequality, particularly those forms that
arise from corruption. Governments should try to distribute the ‘growth
dividend’; using the gains from economic growth to offset some of the rises in
inequality, by offering broad access to social development and by protecting
the most vulnerable.
-
Measures that help mitigate risk and
vulnerabilities arising from armed conflict, violence and natural
disasters are essential in addressing both transient and chronic poverty.
These measures include the provision of social safety nets to cushion the
impact of social and economic crises, a lesson learned in the wake of the
Asian financial crisis and the extensive natural disasters of recent years.
Poverty reduction strategies that do not incorporate risk mitigation and
vulnerabilities of the poor are likely to fail given the realities of
disasters and conflicts that are often beyond their control.
-
Poverty is not just a matter of
deprivation but also of vulnerability and macroeconomic crisis is only one
kind of shock that can trigger downward mobility for the poor. People living
in low-income countries, whether in Asia, Africa or Latin
America, are regularly exposed to risks, uncertainties and shocks including
social instability, loss of markets, crop failures, droughts, floods,
hurricanes, tsunamis and other natural disasters. Individual households can
also be hit by the sickness of a key family member. Any of these events can
wipe out savings and assets and thus reverse poverty reduction or reduce its
pace. This means that countries need to explore different forms of social
protection. Clearly only a few developing countries will be able to offer
extensive welfare provisions similar to those in developed countries. However,
even poorer countries can experiment on a smaller scale with programmes that
fit within their financial constraints and work alongside existing patterns of
informal insurance. These include simplified social insurance schemes for the
self-employed; support for informal insurance; formal title for informal
assets; and health insurance for the poor.
-
Empowerment of citizens and civil society
organisations to take responsibility and initiative in programmes to relieve
poverty is essential. Several cases abound of social protection schemes that
are the result of non-governmental intervention rather than public policy.
These include health care schemes, access to credit and the provision of legal
services facilitated by civil society organisations. And in many more
instances, the progress in poverty eradication is due in no small measure
partnerships of governments with non-governmental organizations. An active
civil society is key component in any poverty-reduction strategy, given the
role of civil society in keeping the state accountable, promoting necessary
reforms, and complementing state efforts to protect the most
vulnerable.
-
Finally, although the prime
responsibility for poverty eradication ultimately rests with the individual
countries, human development is a shared responsibility – because the roots of
poverty are as much global as local. The United Nations Millennium Declaration
recognised this fact and urged for ’strong partnerships’ to promote a more
open and equitable system of international finance and trade, to increase
development assistance and to enhance international commitment to good
governance, development and poverty reduction. International partners can and
must support and enhance individual countries’ commitments to the
above-mentioned pursuits. In this regard, the private sector has
responsibilities and a role in creating broadbased growth and furthering
opportunities for the poor to move up. Developed country governments, on their
part, must assist in the development of poorer nations by opening their
markets to the exports of developing countries. International donors and
institutions must continue to honour their development-aid commitments. And
multilateral institutions, such as the United Nations’ bodies and regional
commissions; the World Bank and regional development banks, have to heed the
criticisms of their poverty-reduction operations, the resources they consume,
and the impact of their programmes on poverty. These institutions should
remain at the front line in international development efforts but their
international, regional, and bilateral assistance must be better coordinated,
less competitive and more committed to narrow the gap between words and
institutional action.
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Categories: Releases