Can the next president meet the UN MDG deadline to end poverty in 2015?

In 2005, the UNESCO Director General Koichiro Matsuura then provided an overview of what has been achieved between 1999 and 2005 when director of nations have closed rank with him in tackling regional problems specially in the eradication of extreme poverty in developing countries with the Education For All (EFA) projects. Focused on the six goals of promoting Early Childhood Education, quality primary to secondary education, technical skills training, adult literacy, gender equity and HIV-AIDS prevention education, it is meant to meet the UN Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of 2015. Now, it is specified as the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD) 2005-2015.

The Director General went to the United Nations in March 2005 to officially receive the UNESCO assignment to be the lead agency for DESD. DESD 2005-2014 has reinforced the UN MDG.

By the time he ended his term in 2009, DG Matsuura, saw “positive and heartening new developments.” He helped much to set the pace for Bulgarian Ambassador Irina Bokova, who was elected as the new UNESCO Director General. Matsuura stated, “UNESCO is now better placed to assist the international community in addressing the challenges facing the world today.”

How we can make it happen in our lifetime

A lot of crisis in the developing world can be avoided. Fifteen thousand African mothers, fathers, farmers, teachers, nurses, and children die each day with preventable, treatable AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis (TB). If we do not treat it as an emergency – that is our crisis.

The UNESCO deadline for ending poverty is 2015. But by 2025, one more decade after, UNESCO can change the world forever. THE KEY IS NOT TO PREDICT WHAT WILL HAPPEN BUT TO HELP SHAPE THE FUTURE.

On Debt Alleviation and Equality

What is happening to Africa, as well as Asia questions man’s commitment to the concept of equality! If we are honest, there is no way one can conclude that such mass death day after day would even be allowed to happen anywhere – least of all in North America, Europe or Japan.

Jeffrey Sachs, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan’s special adviser, describes Africa as “an entire continent bursting into flames, if the well off countries would accept that Africans or Asian are equal to them, then they must put out the fire.”

The destinies of “haves” are linked to the fate of “have-nothing-at-all”. This became clear on September 11. The perpetrator maybe rich Saudis but they found their sanctuary in poverty-stricken, collapsed state of Afghanistan. “War against terror is bound with war against poverty,” stated military officer Collin Powell, US Secretary of State. Sachs concluded that in these tense and nervous times, isn’t it cheaper and smarter to make friends with your enemies than to defend your self against them?

The plan Mr. Sachs laid out to accomplish the 2015 Millennium Development Goal of cutting poverty in half – a goal signed up by all the world’s governments – is in the handbook, The End of Poverty: How we can make it happen in our lifetime. “…how we could be the first generation to outlaw that poverty of seeing a child die of hunger in a world of plenty or disease preventable by a 20-cent inoculation… how we can be the first generation that can unknot the tangle of bad trade, bad debt, and bad luck.”

The daily struggles for survival

More than eight million people around the world die each year. Every day, the newspapers fail to account the poor who die in hospital wards that lack drugs, in villages that lack anti-malarial bed nets, and in houses that lack safe drinking water. They die namelessly, without public comment.

Since September 11, 2001, the United States has launched a war on terror but neglected the deeper causes of global instability. The $450 billion the US will spend on the military will never bring peace if it spends only 1/30 of that (or $15 billion) to address the plight of the world’s poorest of the poor whose societies have become havens of unrest, violence and even global terrorism.

The ‘doctor’ of nations

Jeffrey D. Sachs was Director of Earth Institute of Columbia University before he became special adviser to UN Sec-Gen Kofi Annan. For 20 years, he has worked with heads of state, finance and health ministries so that he has visited more than a hundred countries with about 90 percent of the world population. He says, “I have been fortunate to have contributed to some real success – the end of hyper-inflation, the introduction of new stable national currencies, the cancellation of un-payable debts, the conversion of communist economies to dynamic market-based economies, the start-up of Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, malaria, modern drug treatment for impoverished HIV-infected peoples.

His book recalls what he has witnessed and learned in societies of Bolivia, Poland, Russia, China, India, and Kenya. UNESCO commissioners from these countries I have been meeting in the General Conference these days are either educators, scientists, communication or culture experts who have helped pushed their countries forward.

One can say that Jeffrey Sachs has helped express UNESCO Director General Matsuura’s challenge to the world to have a chance to join the age of prosperity built on science and technologies and market. Moreover, some parts of the world are caught in the downward spiral of impoverishment, hunger, and diseases. It is the common task of mankind to help them up to gain a foothold (even on the bottom rung) of the ladder of development so they can eventually proceed on their own.

The safety of the world depends on a collective decision to fight diseases, promote science and quality education, as well as provide critical infrastructure to help the poorest of the poor. Without this precondition, markets can cruelly bypass a large part of the world leaving them impoverished and suffering without end.

The formula: collective action through effective government, provision of health education and infrastructure as well as foreign assistance when needed spells economic success.

Economic possibilities for our grandchildren

“Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren” is the title of the 1930 book written by British economist John Maynard Keynes as he reflected on the Great Depression. He envisioned the end of poverty in Britain and other industrial countries in his grandchildren’s day, toward the end of the 20th century.

Keynes emphasized the dramatic march of science and technology to be the basis of continued economic growth at compounded interest. Keynes got it just right, of course, extreme poverty no longer exists in today’s rich countries.

Today, we can invoke the same logic to declare (thanks to UNESCO) that extreme poverty can be ended not in the time of our grandchildren but in our time.

God give us men!

God, give us men! A time like this demands. Strong minds, great hearts, true faith and ready hands.

Men whom the lust of office does not kill; Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy; Men who possess opinions and a will…

…Tall men… sun-crowned… who live above the fog.

In public duty and in private thinking;

For while the rabble with their thumb-worn creeds, Their large profession and their little deeds, Mingle in selfish strife;

Lo! Freedom weeps

Wrong rules the land and waiting, Justice sleeps!       (“If” by Rudyard Kipling)

(For more information or reaction, please e-mail at [email protected] or [email protected])