Posted on 11-7-2003
The
Lost Decade
By Larry Elliott, The Guardian, 9 July 2003
The widening gulf between the global haves and have-nots was
starkly revealed last night when the UN announced that while
the US was booming in the 1990s more than 50 countries suffered
falling living standards.
The UN's annual human development report charted increasing
poverty for more than a quarter of the world's countries, where
a lethal combination of famine, HIV/Aids, conflict and failed
economic policies have turned the clock back. Highlighting the
setbacks endured by sub-Saharan Africa and the countries that
emerged from the break-up of the Soviet Union at the end of
the cold war, the UN called for urgent action to meet its millennium
development goals for 2015. These include a halving of the number
of people living on less than a dollar a day, a two-thirds drop
in mortality for the under-fives, universal primary education
and a halving of those without access to safe drinking water
and improved sanitation.
The report said the 90s had seen a drop from 30% to 23% in the
number of people globally living on less than a dollar a day,
but the improvement had largely been the result of the progress
in China and India, the world's two most populous countries.
Despite some sporadic successes such as Ghana and Senegal, there
was little hope of Africa meeting the UN's 2015 development
goals; on current trends it would be 2147 before the poorest
countries in the poorest continent halved poverty and 2165 before
child mortality was cut by two-thirds. Thirty of the 34 countries
classified by the UN as "low human development" are
in sub-Saharan Africa.
Taking issue with those who have argued that the "tough
love" policies of the past two decades have spawned the
growth of a new global middle class, the report says the world
became ever more divided between the super-rich and the desperately
poor. The richest 1% of the world's population (around 60 million)
now receive as much income as the poorest 57%, while the income
of the richest 25 million Americans is the equivalent of that
of almost 2 billion of the world's poorest people. In 1820 western
Europe's per capita income was three times that of Africa's;
by the 90s it was more than 13 times as high. In Norway,
top of the UN's league table for human development, life expectancy
at birth is 78.7 years, there is 100% literacy and annual income
is just under $30,000 (about £18,200). At the other end of the
scale, a newborn child in Sierra Leone will be lucky to reach
its 35th birthday, has a two in three chance of growing up illiterate
and would have an income of $470 a year.
Overall human development, measured by the UN as an amalgam
of income, life expectancy and literacy, fell in 21 countries
during the 90s. By contrast only four countries suffered falling
human development in the 80s. "Though average incomes
have risen and fallen over time, human development has historically
shown sustained improvement, especially when measured by the
human development index," the report said. "But the
1990s saw unprecedented stagnation, with the HDI falling in
21 countries. "Much of the decline in the 1990s
can be traced to the spread of HIV/AIDS, which lowered life
expectancies, and to a collapse in incomes, particularly in
the commonwealth of independent states."
The UN said the events of September 11 had created a
"genuine consensus" that poverty was the world's problem,
but urged the west to abandon the one-size-fits-all liberalisation
agenda foisted on poor countries. Mark Malloch-Brown,
administrator of the UN development programme, said many countries
in Africa and Latin America held up as examples of how to kickstart
development were among the stragglers in the global economy.
"The poster children of the 1990s are among those who didn't
do terribly well," he said. "There are structural
restraints on development. Market reforms are not enough. You
can't just liberalise; you need an interventionist strategy."
The report added that: "Over the past 20 years too much
development thinking and practice have confused market-based
economic growth with laissez faire."
The west needed to tear down trade barriers, dismantle
its lavish subsidy regimes, provide deeper debt relief and double
aid from $50bn to $100bn a year. This would provide the resources
for investment in the building blocks of development - health,
education, clean water and rural roads. "Poor countries
cannot afford to wait until they are wealthy before they invest
in their people," said Jeffrey Sachs, special adviser to
Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general, on the UN's millennium
development goals.
Economic growth alone would not rescue the world from
poverty, the report said. "Without addressing issues like
malnutrition and illiteracy that are both causes and symptoms
of poverty, the goals will not be met. "The statistics
today are shaming: more than 13 million children have died through
diarrhoeal disease in the past decade. Each year, over half
a million women, one for every minute of the day, die in pregnancy
and childbirth. More than 800 million suffer from malnutrition."
It added: "For many countries the 1990s were a decade of
despair. Some 54 countries are poorer now than in 1990. In 21,
a larger proportion is going hungry. "In 14, more
children are dying before age five. In 12, primary school enrolments
are shrinking. In 34, life expectancy has fallen. Such reversals
in survival were previously rare."
Matthew Lockwood, head of UK Advocacy Team, ActionAid,
said: "The shocking truth is that the poor are getting
poorer. Leaders, in rich and poor countries alike, are not taking
poverty seriously enough. "You don't solve this problem
by making the leaders of poor countries accountable to their
rich-country counterparts. They need to be accountable to their
own citizens. Poor people must have a voice. "We
agree with much in the report but we would have liked to see
more about grassroots participation."
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