Progress on MDGs Requires Focus on Human Dignity, Equality and Equity

By Mary Robinson

The following blog represents the views of the blogger only, and may not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations Millennium Campaign.

Earlier reviews of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have concentrated on the need for increased and predictable aid flows, and this is crucial.  But making faster progress also requires greater attention to issues that reflect the broad vision contained in the Millennium Declaration, which highlighted our collective responsibility to uphold the principles of human dignity, equality and equity.

What can make a difference? First, identifying and actively addressing issues of discrimination and marginalization that result in unequal access and outcomes relative to all the MDGs. Second, implementing measures that reduce gender inequalities across each of the MDGs. Third, strengthening mechanisms that enable people to hold their own governments accountable for delivering on the MDGs. Increasing people’s access to information, transparency in government budgeting, access to justice and legal empowerment measures like providing legal identity and protecting the property rights of poor people, are all important.

MDG 1 emphasizes “full and productive employment and decent work for all, including women and young people” as central to achieving all of the MDGs. A breakthrough here is possible if concerted efforts are made to eliminate discrimination and marginalization in labor markets and to support programs to increase competitiveness without compromising labor standards or wages — such as infrastructure investments, education and training. It is also important that investment is scaled-up in employment-intensive sectors such as agriculture and low-carbon “green” technologies. In all of these areas, policy-makers need to actively incorporate the perspectives, rights and interests of workers in the informal economy.

Limited progress on MDG 5 – reducing maternal mortality and morbidity – constitutes a global health emergency that aggravates cycles of poverty and deprivation. A breakthrough is possible if governments and civil society join efforts to strengthen health systems and ensure universal access to health care, including access to maternal health care. One important way to do this is to enable non-physician clinicians to provide routine and emergency obstetric services. In addition, action on MDG 5 must go beyond health ministries to address broader discrimination against women that prevents them from claiming – or their families from prioritizing – obstetric services and pre- and ante-natal care. We must support women’s organizations to demand reforms to reduce maternal mortality rates. Legislation that reduces early marriage, expands availability of contraception and tackles gender-based violence is also critical.

The UN should present the September 2010 Development Summit with an analysis of successful national strategies which draw on international human rights standards and obligations to advance the MDGs. This in turn will help achieve the vision that Member States agreed in the Millennium Declaration, and will make further breakthroughs possible.

Former Irish President Mary Robinson has also served as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Aid Must Be an Input

By Hugh Beevor

The following blog represents the views of the blogger only, and may not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations Millennium Campaign.

I’m just back from 3 weeks in the beautiful, delightful but poor and badly run Union of Myanmar. Returning to a cold, inward-looking UK worried only about how the next Government will cut the deficit. Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)??? People have to be first weaned off their cynicism about badly spent foreign aid capable of producing bad, unintended effects. The Development Community talking to its self does not seem to appreciate the lack of interest and support for the MDGs, maybe even their relevance. Goals must not start from inputs, inputs that lack credibility in the eyes of many decision makers and most of the electorate. To win hearts and minds you must start with outputs and deliver a convincing narrative on how to get there. One narrative that does not work is about attempts to improve governance. If a country has a bad government it is almost impossible for outsiders to work to improve it unless that government asks for the help. Their own people are the only ones who can do that. Even when they cannot, as in Myanmar, outsiders still cannot achieve a change. General trade sanctions just hurt the poorest and take too long. The Development Community must just limit itself to where it can make a difference. Basket bad governance cases must be left until a chance incident opens up the possibility of change, and then help must be rapidly organized. I have just been watching Rory Stewart on Lawrence of Arabia, full of the hubris when trying, unasked, to help other countries.

Returning to the 0.7% GDP goal for Official Development Assistance (ODA), I keep remembering an Institute for Development Studies presentation where the theory of the Fiscal State was expounded, which shows the tendency for Governments to treat their citizens well only when dependent on them for the majority of public revenues. States like Uganda, where too much of government finances regularly come from foreign aid, are likely to treat their sponsors better than their citizens. There is also that cynical aphorism of C. Northcote Parkinson that “foreign aid is a method of taking money from the poor of rich countries to give it to the rich of poor countries”. So, on the one hand, ODA should not be a goal but an input. Secondly, citizens of the first world need examples of the type of foreign assistance that has worked, if they are to support a limited, focused amount of it in the future, especially in these fiscally straightened times.

Hugh Beevor is Chair of the Royal Mint Board, UK and a member of the Institute for Development Studies Board of Trustees.

The Millennium Development Goals: Two Priorities for 2010

By Richard Manning

The following blog represents the views of the blogger only, and may not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations Millennium Campaign.

The Millennium Declaration was a landmark piece of international consensus-building about how to tackle key global issues around human security and poverty reduction. Its incorporation of quantified, time-bound commitments to a small number of key targets, subsequently formalised into the Millennium Development Goals, has led to some real and positive consequences. These include a much stronger international focus on outcomes, linked to a multi-dimensional view of poverty; a substantial increase in real investment in areas such as health and education by both donors and implementing countries; and a considerable improvement in the quality and availability of data. But even in these areas, there is much room for improvement, and the positives need to be balanced against such weaknesses as lack of attention to rights-based approaches and relative poverty, to the need to invest in infrastructure, and to key global public goods; and the problems inherent in setting targets at the international level without a clear policy on how they can best be translated to the regional, national or sub-national level.

Let’s put the existing framework to the best effect in the five years that remain to the key target date of 2015. This means:

• Encouraging all countries to set their own objectives for development with a focus on improving the lives of the poor, and to make maximum effort to move forward on these by 2015
• Monitorable commitments by the donor community to invest in activities that support MDG targets from now to 2015
• Greater investment in real-time monitoring of progress against MDG targets, with implementing countries, not donors, in the lead, and using competent, locally-owned information systems wherever possible.

Richard Manning is an independent development consultant, Chair of the Board of the Institute of Development Studies, and Vice-Chair of the 2010 Replenishment of the Global Fund for AIDS, TB and Malaria. He served in the UK’s Department for International Development and its predecessors from 1965-2003, and as Chair of the OECD Development Assistance Committee from 2003-2007. His comments are made in an independent capacity, and do not purport to reflect the views of the IDS or the GFATM.

To beat poverty we must support families to stay together

by: Anna Feuchtwang

The following blog represents the views of the blogger only, and may not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations Millennium Campaign.

In any discussion about what kind of big push is needed to secure maximum progress towards the MDGs and the framework that will replace them after 2015 we must pay particular attention to identifying and protecting especially vulnerable groups.  In particular, steps could be taken to recognise that special measures are needed to protect the rights of children who are without parental care. This is a much neglected area and the current failure of governments and multi lateral donors to adopt a child rights based approach to development has serious consequences for our ability to deliver against the MDGs and the post MDG framework.

The MDGs are all about making efforts for children and future generations, however arguably some of those most vulnerable children are not sufficiently considered or represented in any of the goals. There are at least 24 million children without parental care globally representing as an absolute minimum 1% of the global child population, though in several African countries this figure is between 12-34%. A lack of parental care can have a devastating impact on children’s rights, increasing exposure to malnutrition and disease, damaging or withholding children’s education and development, and making boys and girls more vulnerable to exploitation, abuse and violence.

Factors leading to a rise in the number of children without parental care affect developing countries disproportionately.  In particular, the AIDS pandemic, the impacts of climate change and the poverty and instability exacerbated by the current recession will all have a greater impact on poorer parts of the world. Unlike in many western countries, a loss of parental care in the developing world is not usually the result of children being taken away from parents to protect them. Instead, research suggests a complex range of factors place children at risk of losing parental care which cut across many sectors of international development including social protection, childcare practices, healthcare systems and education.

The negative impacts of a loss of parental care suggests that in order to make progress against the MDGs, more work must be done to reduce the number of children without parental care, and to protect those who are already separated from their families. There are multiple links between a loss of parental care, and the associated rights abuses, and each MDG. These include increased vulnerability to malnutrition and extreme poverty (MDG 1), poor access to education (MDG 2) and increased  infant mortality rates (MDG 4). It is clear that by considering children’s rights abuses and targeting the most vulnerable groups of children and their families progress towards the MDGs will be more equitable.

World leaders, UN partners and CSOs involved in the 2010 MDG review and working towards the post 2015 development agenda, must explore the possibility of new development indicators that reflect the need to protect children from violence, abuse and exploitation, and the central importance of family support and parental care in overcoming poverty.

Anna Feuchtwang, a citizen of the United Kingdom, has almost twenty years of experience as a communications professional in international development, including heading up the communications department at Oxfam and chairing the board of ActionAid UK. Anna is Chief Executive of EveryChild and currently Chair of BOND (British Overseas NGOs for Development).

WHAT SHOULD THE 2010 UN MDG REVIEW DO?

by: Andy Sumner

The following blog represents the views of the blogger only, and may not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations Millennium Campaign.

2010 is a big year for the UN and for the MDGs. The UN meets in September with the participation of Heads of State and Government to review the MDGs and create a plan to reach them.

Maintaining global and national political momentum on the MDGs in difficult times for

aid and public expenditure will be important. Amid the numerous discussions, what should the UN MDG review actually try to do?

Four aspects of the MDGs and pro-poor policy need attention and rethinking.

1. Lessons learnt: The review should take stock by assessing the impact of the MDGs so far – good and bad

The MDGs have had significant positive impacts, but have faced some criticisms. There is clear evidence of the impact of the MDGs at the global level and amongst donors, but at the country level impacts are less clear.

In the recent UNDP (2009) study of 30 countries, 25 countries had added, expanded or modified indicators and 10 had added local goals. However, other studies have found the MDGs less systematically integrated into national developments strategies (and donor country plans) than one might expect.

What are the strengths and weaknesses of the MDGs?

Strengths

• as a ‘rallying call’ for development actors;
• as a common/shared understanding of what development is seeking to   achieve (and the placing of poverty reduction at the centre of development rather than GDP growth alone);
• as a set of useful targets and indicators to guide and motivate development policy decisions, and at the same time – in principle –  the accountability that flows from saying you will do something and then measuring whether you have done it;
• the pressure they have exerted for more data on poverty;
• their legitimacy because they are UN-based, and have an in-built sense of global solidarity and ability to galvanize the international community in development as a joint project.

Weaknesses

• their struggle in defining poverty and development as incomplete human development outcomes alone rather than capabilities/opportunities to achieve those outcomes, and inter-related; their lack of pathology (or conceptual rigour) in that they have no unifying theory on the underlying or structural causes of poverty and thus lack a pathology/means for poverty reduction beyond inputs/outcomes;
• their weakness on social justice underpinnings. The MDGs are implicitly inter-generational (note the 25 year timeline 1990-2015; and many of the MDGs are about children) – but there is very limited attention to intra-generational or inter-generational equity and rights issues such as inequalities, marginalization, vulnerability and exclusion.
• a perception that they are a donor-led agenda that pays little attention to locally defined and owned (and richer, fuller) definitions of progress and  development;
• their overemphasis on material wellbeing  - and their lack of attention on how what people feel and think in part determines what they can do and be;
• their potentially distorting impacts – i.e. targeting of the near poor (easier to help and reach) rather than the most poor;
• the world has changed since the MDGs were first launched.  We now need something more in tune with vulnerability and resilience to contemporary issues such as climate adaptation, and volatile markets for food and fuel.

2. The ‘Mega-MDG Plan’: The review should develop a credible, funded, five

year plan with clear roles and mechanisms at the country level, to

make the MDGs “unmissable”

President Obama has said: “We will support the MDGs, and approach next year’s summit with a global plan to make them a reality. And we will set our sights on the eradication of extreme poverty in our time.” This is exactly what the 2010 MDG review must do. Far less ideal would be to focus on 1-2 goals and try to make real progress on plans to attain those goals with real money and policy coherence. The contents of that plan would include:

Real-time poverty monitoring systems via the UN GIVAS platform. Currently MDG data is at least two to four years out of date; this also needs to take much more account of equity and the poorest groups and gender equality systematically.

Clear mechanisms for much greater MDG country-level localisation in

governments in public expenditure planning, policy formation, policy implementation, and so on. UNDP is preparing improved country level  implementation plans and an MDG index of policy effort.

Clarity on global and national roles and the division of labour - who’s going to do what and what is the role of different actors; who’s funding what, and so on.

A spotlight on the inter-connectedness of policy intervention. There is limited success in health if there’s poor nutrition and water. Sending poor, malnourished children to school won’t achieve too much. Institute of Development Studies research has found that cross-cutting issues matter but they have had limited emphasis to date – for example, gender, rights, livelihood and resilience.  The MDGs need to track the poorest 20% and gender equality needs to be applied systematically across all of the goals.  Also, the MDGs are mostly about children so why not put them at the centre?

3.  Build political momentum for 2015: The review should create a global process for a new development consensus – via the establishment of an independent global commission led by someone like Brazil’s President Lula da Silva.

The MDGs took ten years – a decade of momentum – and a small group of

‘insiders’ backed by powerful actors to get off the ground. The context has also changed – there are more middle-income countries and a much greater range of funders and opportunities to raise funds through alternative and innovative sources of finance; a rise in the importance of the G-20; a difficult context post-crisis for aid/public expenditures; the risks of climate change to the achievement of many MDGs; demographic change; and a growing recognition of both the benefits and the challenges posed by technology.

We need a truly global participatory process which might have several strands. But what would a process of this kind do?

• Co-ordinate a genuinely global process of roundtables, voices of the poor, blogging, and multimedia communications of critical issues.
• Convene an international meeting on a ‘new development consensus’ that would become an evidence-base for what works and how to proceed with global poverty reduction in a changing climate in a much more holistic way.

• Conduct a review on the economics or cost of global poverty – in which the story would be that it’s cheaper to address the causes of poverty now than the cost of the consequences later.

If there is to be a framework for after 2015 that is based on a global discussion, it needs to start soon.

Andy Sumner is a fellow of the Vulnerability and Poverty Research Team at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), UK. He is a cross-disciplinary economist, and focuses primarily on childhood poverty and wellbeing; poverty and vulnerability during economic crises and pro-poor policy processes. Dr. Sumner is a co-organiser of “The 2010 UN MDG Review: What to do differently? What to do the same?,” an event to be held jointly with IDS and UNDP on Monday 25^th January in New York.