Help us to complete OneWorld Guides
Some developing countries are missing from our range of Country Guides. OneWorld wants to fill these gaps but we need financial help. If there is a country that you would especially like to see included, then you could make it happen...... find out more
|
Millennium Development Goals Progress Review
|
| Benin school room © Dan Gerber |
These extracts from 40 OneWorld Country Guides offer a unique snapshot of progress towards the Millennium Development Goals, now more than midway to the target date of 2015. With some exceptions, the picture is not encouraging, confirming the conclusions of the UN Report published in July 2007. Recurring problems include the failure of conventional economic growth to relieve poverty, extreme regional disparities, indequate spending on health and education, and insufficient aid. A seismic shift in political will, both domestically and internationally, is necessary to realise the ideals of the Millennium Declaration.
updated April 2008
Angola
Angola signed the UN Millennium Declaration in 2000 but the standard framework of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) presents logistical difficulties. The civil conflict that wrecked the country for almost three decades ended only in 2002, twelve years after the start of the MDG assessment period. Even now, human development data is considered to be unreliable and a full census is planned for 2010.
Uncertainties over data do not however mask the reality that poverty in Angola is severe nor that the country is unlikely to achieve any of the MDGs at the current rate of progress, regardless of the basis of assessment. Over 60% of the population lives under the poverty line with over 25% in the more serious category of extreme poverty. Barely 50% of women are literate and measures of the Gini coefficient confirm that inequality is rising.
Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan’s approach to the MDGs is encouraging. A State Commission chaired by the prime minister is responsible for preparing the 2006-2015 State Programme for Poverty Reduction and Sustainable Development (SPPRSD) which will be aligned with both the targets and the timescale of the MDGs. In a progress report published in 2005 Azerbaijan claims to be the first developing country to combine reporting of its poverty reduction strategy with MDG progress.
Significantly, the oil revenue that Azerbaijan can expect over the next 15 years, if responsibly invested, should provide the resources required to meet most of the MDGs. As well as spending oil revenues prudently, there are other major challenges to overcome if the Goals are to be achieved, in particular improving governance, reforming public services and reducing corruption.
Bangladesh
A combination of generous international aid since 1990, a dynamic civil society culture and sympathetic government policies has created a generally positive environment for development indicators, illustrated especially by the attainment of gender equality in school enrolment, a rare achievement in South Asia. The headline poverty benchmark for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of $1 per day has fallen significantly from 59% in the baseline year to 36%, whilst child mortality has come down from 151 to 80 per 1000. In these areas, progress is more rapid than in neighbouring India or Pakistan. Government budgets (as a percentage of 2007/08 national income) for health (6.3%) and education (14%) are rising whilst food and cash safety net schemes are in place for the poorest families.
Unfortunately, beneath the surface of these promising trends lies a stubborn hardcore of extreme poverty in Bangladesh which is not responding to government or NGO programmes. Possibly as many as 35 million people are in this category - 25% of the population – unable to provide themselves with sufficient food, creating widespread severe malnutrition, and overwhelming social safety nets. With nearly 50% of children underweight, the child mortality rate has not fallen in recent years. A 2007 independent civil society report describes maternal mortality as a “major blot in progress towards the MDGs” with only 9% of births attended by a qualified health-worker and rates failing to improve since 2000. Although most children take advantage of free primary education by entering schools, the combination of poor teaching quality and the pressures of poverty has rocketed the drop-out rate to an alarming 47%. Wide divergence in poverty indicators between urban and rural areas and between regions adds to the complexity of analysis.
It is abundantly clear therefore that many of the MDGs will not be achieved in Bangladesh without specific policy intervention and increased funding. The Director of the Millennium Project, Professor Jeffrey Sachs, has suggested an MDG price tag for Bangladesh of $4 billion per annum, far more than current levels of aid. An alternative perspective is the suggestion that the Goals cannot be achieved without universal access to electricity. Current coverage is barely more than 20%. The government’s target of access for all by 2020 is a vision that has been priced at $16 billion.
Benin
Benin has a very underdeveloped economy with about half of its people considered poor or extremely poor. Over a quarter of the population suffers from such extreme poverty that it cannot meet its own basic food requirements. In addition to the HIV/AIDS crisis, the country faces serious health problems particularly with malaria, poor nutrition, maternal and child health, and tuberculosis. Life expectancy is estimated at under 55 years.
Increased development assistance and better governance through reduced corruption and transfer of resources from the center to the newly created decentralized government structures are needed to help empower people and achieve MDG goals.
Brazil
Uneven income distribution combines with other inequalities to pose the main obstacle to meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in Brazil. Less than 3% of the population controls two thirds of the land available for production. 4.8 million rural families are landless and more than 80% of Brazilians are now concentrated in urban areas, where many live in favelas (shantytowns) with inadequate water supply, health facilities and educational opportunities. The inequality is also regional – the north-east of the country is the poorest region whilst research by a Brazilian NGO, Imazon, records that most MDG indicators in Brazil’s Amazon states are well below the national average.
However, there is some cause for celebration. A government report on the MDGs published in August 2007 showed that the country has already met the first MDG target, having achieved a reduction in the percentage of Brazilians living on less than one dollar a day from 9.5% to 4.2% between 1992 and 2005.
Burundi
The MDGs are most unlikely to be fulfilled in Burundi. The baseline year of 1990 coincided with the beginning of a decade of political turmoil and conflict in which GDP fell by 20% and extreme poverty increased from 33% to 67%. With almost 55% of the population still living on less than US$1 per day and 41% believed to be chronically malnourished, the outlook is pessimistic for the MDG related to extreme poverty and hunger.
Another legacy of the civil war is the weak capacity for reliable data collection which handicaps projections for a number of the Goals. Nevertheless, the decision to allow universal free access to primary education from 2005 boosts the potential to achieve targets for youth literacy which is still considerably below that of other countries in the region, despite improving from 51% to 73% between 1990 and 2004. There are worries however as to whether the education system’s capacity can be scaled up to cope with half a million extra pupils.
Cambodia
UNDP has placed Cambodia in the 32 top priority countries where urgent action must be taken in order to overcome slow progress towards the deadline of 2015 for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The latest World Bank Poverty Assessment shows that 35% of Cambodia’s population live below the national poverty line, down by only about 10% over the last decade. With nearly 80% of the population surviving on less than $2 per day whilst a small elite enjoys a business boom in the capital city, Cambodia has become one of Asia’s most unequal countries, especially between its rural and urban communities.
Cambodia’s health care system is struggling. Both maternal and child mortality rates are exceptionally high for the region, the latter having increased since the baseline year of 1990, quite the reverse of MDG intentions. Two thirds of the population do not have access to clean water. In the past two decades, the country has received immense financial aid and technical assistance from various international financial institutions, governments and NGOs. The most recent pledge totalling $690m will cover half of Cambodia’s national budget for 2008.
Cameroon
The heart of the strategy for achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in Cameroon, as articulated in the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) approved by development partners in 2003, lies in the assertion that strong national economic growth will leverage better lives for the poor. As in so many countries, this presumption is failing; whilst Cameroon has indeed performed reasonably well in recent years by conventional measures of economic prosperity, poverty indicators are stagnant or moving in reverse, with the notable exception of HIV prevalence which has dropped significantly.
The main poverty benchmark for the purpose of the MDGs in Cameroon is the level of income deemed necessary to meet basic living needs. 40% of the population fall below this poverty line, a figure unchanged nationally since 2001 which implies that poverty in rural areas is increasing. There are inevitable doubts about meeting the target of 25% by 2015.
The core problem is not hard to identify; the World Food Programme describes Cameroon as a food insecure country and has further demonstrated that food intake is lower now than in the early 1980s. The result is that over 30% of young children are classified as suffering from “moderate chronic malnutrition” and the child mortality rate is rising rather than falling. Despite the improved picture for HIV/AIDS, the broader measure of life expectancy has fallen below 50 years from a high of 59 years.
China
There has been spectacular achievement in human development in China over the last 30 years and the country claims to be on course to achieve most of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015. According to the 2005 China Human Development Report, only 26 million Chinese live in absolute poverty, a reduction of nearly 225 million over the preceding 26 years. However, these figures are based on China’s own definition of the poverty line which is barely one quarter of the UN’s figure of $1 per day purchasing power; by this latter benchmark there are almost 220 million Chinese living in extreme poverty. Furthermore, the broad progress in human development is offset by regional unevenness, gender, HIV/AIDS and environmental issues which lag behind in progress and priority.
For example, the large investment in production and infrastructure has been concentrated on the developed urban eastern regions of Shanghai, Tianjin, and Guangdong. The majority of poor Chinese live in the underdeveloped western regions of Shaanxi, Guangxi, Sichuan and Gansu. In Tibet, 50% of the population is illiterate. These regional disparities are creating a new category of poverty through migration to the eastern cities where 150-200 million workers grapple with the constraints of the hukou system of household registrations which expose them to exploitation in the cities.
Colombia
Colombia has reduced the proportion of people living below the poverty line from 53.8% in 1991 to 45% in 2006, and extreme poverty from 20.4% to under 16%. That over twenty million people should live in poverty and that the overall rate of progress has been so slow in a country generously endowed with natural resources is testimony to the inability of its government to give adequate priority to the MDGs.
The years of internal conflict have not only diverted resources – over 80% of US aid is channelled to the military – but also devastated the rural economy isolating it from progress made in the cities. For example, the capital city, Bogotá, has similar development indicators to the cities of former Eastern Europe while Choco, a department on the Pacific coast, has indicators comparable to sub-Saharan Africa. The conflict has also disproportionately affected people of Afro-Colombian and indigenous origin, accentuating inequality between these groups and wealthy families of Spanish descent.
Eritrea
Where armies are assembled on either side of a disputed border, the countries involved are unlikely to allocate high priority to pursuit of the MDGs. The Eritrean government concedes that resources diverted to “national security” have acted as a brake on human development. Indeed poverty has increased over the period of the MDG programme, rising from 53% in the baseline period of the early 1990s to 66% at the most recent point of assessment in 2003.
During 2007 the government published a progress report for the MDGs which acknowledged that Goals for poverty, universal education and the environment are very unlikely to be achieved. Net enrolment for primary education is only 44%. Schools are short of classrooms and materials with teacher retention compromised by inadequate pay levels. Poor standards of sanitation are no help – in a recent “national rapid assessment” Unicef judged that only 1.5% of people in rural areas have access to safe sanitation and only 58% to a source of clean water.
Ethiopia
Ethiopia is consistently positioned close to the bottom of the annual UNDP Human Development Index. An interesting feature of the government’s progress report for the MDGs published in 2004 is its willingness to place an estimate on the public spending cost necessary to achieve the Goals. The figure quoted is a staggering $37 billion. The improbability of raising such a sum alone provides the telling answer to questions about the likelihood of achieving all of the Goals by 2015. Indeed one of Ethiopia’s major bilateral donors, the UK government, has said in 2006 that the country is “unlikely to meet any of the MDG targets by 2015”. The specialist UK charity WaterAid says that efforts to achieve the Goals for water and sanitation are “way off track” with access in rural areas still below 20%.
Georgia
The price of freedom has been high for many poor people across the countries of the former Soviet Union, nowhere more so than in Georgia where a combination of civil wars and economic liberalisation caused a collapse in the economy through the 1990s. Due to these exceptional circumstances, the baseline for the MDGs has been moved back from 1990 to 2000 at which point the measure of extreme poverty was 14.3% whilst the proportion below the poverty line was 51.8%. These figures became worse rather than better in the years immediately following the millennium but the basis for calculating the poverty line has changed and the latest figure is believed to be around 35%. Of particular concern in the context of the MDGs is that the extent of extreme poverty may still be increasing, especially in rural areas where 40%-50% of the population is dependent on subsistence agriculture. The elderly form another particularly vulnerable group.
Georgia's ranking in the UNDP Human Development Index remains significantly below most of the transitional countries in the region and it is clear that the government has given greater priority to headline economic growth than poverty reduction strategies - indeed there is no formal long term plan for achieving the MDGs. In his re-election speeches in early 2008 the President has promised immediate pro-poverty actions associated with the slogan “Georgia Without Poverty”. There is reference to an accountable new commission but none of these initiatives yet refers to quantifiable targets which might be recognised as consistent with the MDGs.
Ghana
Ghana is often praised for one of the fastest rates of poverty reduction in Africa, the figures claiming a fall in poverty from 52% in 1991 to 28% in 2005, almost sufficient to achieve the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of halving poverty. The World Food Programme plans to exit Ghana in 2010, describing the country as one of few to have met the 1996 Food Summit commitment of halving its number of undernourished people. No fewer than 17 donor countries have scrambled to embrace a success story in Africa, signing up to a joint funding strategy. The normally reticent Millennium Challenge Corporation has lavished its largest grant on Ghana, $547 million over 5 years.
Closer analysis of the figures throws an element of doubt on these superlatives. The MDG Progress Report published in 2003 defines the poverty line as the “proportion below national basic needs” without further elaboration. The statistics themselves are drawn from a periodic census known as the Ghana Living Standards Survey (GLSS), but it is difficult to ascertain the basis for threshold levels of income poverty or how they evolve. Even the 177-page Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategy 2006-2009 (GPRS II) fails to provide an explanation of how poverty is calculated in Ghana. Most telling of all, the internationally recognised threshold for extreme poverty, $1 per day of purchasing power, is assessed by the 2007 UNDP Human Development Report to capture 44.8% of Ghana’s population, effectively unchanged from the 45.5% recorded in the baseline year of 1990. And the proportion of underweight children has reduced only to 22% from the baseline 27.4%.
Guatemala
The 36-year civil war in Guatemala ended just over a decade ago in 1996, its detrimental economic impact overlapping with the 1990 baseline for assessment of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Restoring social indicators has proved a volatile process and the country remains one of the poorest in Latin America with over half the population living below the poverty line, currently valued as $2.30 per day. Extreme poverty has reduced from 20% in 1990 only to about 15%; achieving the 10% target by 2015 will be a formidable task. There has been progress towards universal enrolment in primary education for both boys and girls but ingrained cultural gender roles lead to a high drop-out rate of girls. 60% of indigenous women are illiterate.
Rural and indigenous populations experience high infant and maternal mortality with less than convincing progress towards MDG targets. 48% of children suffer chronic malnutrition, the highest incidence in Latin America. A significant share of the population lacks access to affordable health services, largely down to inequitable targeting of public money, with highly-subsidised public facilities almost exclusively used by the non-poor.
Guinea-Bissau
Despite recent improvement in a number of areas, the pace of post-conflict rehabilitation in Guinea-Bissau looks to fall short of achieving the MDGs by 2015. Indeed the country remains close to the very bottom of the UN Human Development Index. The civil war that ended in 1999 caused a 28% drop in GDP in that year alone, and subsequent chronic political instability alongside a fracturing of civil society have severely limited the progress of successive governments in improving citizens' lives.
The MDGs 2 and 3 pose particularly difficult benchmarks for Guinea-Bissau, owing to a permanent crisis within the public sector. The state is rarely able to pay its public service employees to achieve even a minimum functioning, meaning that schools are routinely disrupted or non-operational for months at a time. It is not surprising therefore that illiteracy rates in the country are estimated at 50% of men and 83% of women – significantly higher than the regional average.
India
Beneath the veneer of the affluent Indian middle class, about 15% of the world’s population face a daily struggle for essentials, including the 300 million Indians who survive on less than $1 per day. The global challenge of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) therefore rests disproportionately on the fight against poverty in India.
Large socio-economic regional disparities greatly complicate the picture. Almost half of India’s most severe poverty is concentrated in just 5 states: Bihar, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. These poorest states also have to contend with the largest and fastest growing populations. In some pockets of the country, reports suggest that poverty indicators are even moving in a negative direction; indeed in many areas, the reliability of human development data is itself questionable. No national MDG progress report was produced for the Millennium+5 World Summit in September 2005. A report was eventually announced in February 2006 but it has not been lodged with the other 179 reports in the UN online library.
The government has given assurances that the resources necessary to achieve the Goals will be forthcoming and that the targets will be reached in advance of the 2015 deadline. More cautious civil society observers might however point out that water table levels throughout India have collapsed, that teacher absenteeism in primary schools is 25% with pupil drop-out rates of 40% and that the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food reported in March 2006 that “food insecurity is growing”.
Indonesia
The Indonesian Government has formulated reasonable poverty frameworks to work toward the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). But the latest progress report discloses that 16.6% of the population lived below the national poverty line in 2007, more than in 1990, the MDG baseline year. Another indicator which is rising rather than falling is the 8.8% of children under age 5 assessed to be severely underweight. In this context the impact of rising food prices is bound to be worrying, given that almost 35% of the population have incomes which place them only marginally above the poverty line and therefore vulnerable to adverse change.
More positive progress features in education for which the government is committed to allocating an increasing share of the national budget, currently 17%. Net enrolment in primary education has reached 95% with no significant bias against access for girls. However, nationally aggregated statistics for any of the MDGs fail to capture the degree of underdevelopment among “pockets of poor”. For example, whilst only 4.6% of people living in Jakarta fall below the poverty line, the comparable figure in Papua is 40.8%. Although the Goal to reduce extreme poverty (inability to buy sufficient food) to 10.0% has already been achieved at national level, this is largely due to development gains in a few wealthier regions.
Jordan
Jordan is classified as a middle-income country whose government conveys a sense of genuine concern for poverty issues, allocating financial resources for social development at a proportion of national income which its regional peers rarely match.
Levels of acute poverty in Jordan are therefore low with reasonable prospects of further reduction. However, large numbers of families find themselves just above the poverty line where they remain exposed to volatile regional politics which have caused sustainable damage to Jordan’s development strategies in the past. This is broadly the message of Jordan's first MDG Report published in October 2004 which expresses confidence in varying degrees that each of the Goals will be achieved but warns of the dependence on economic stability in the region.
For the present, Jordan can boast an impressive health system and almost full primary school enrolment for both boys and girls. Gender inequality is however apparent in employment opportunities where women are at a marked disadvantage. Despite Jordan being a front runner amongst Arab countries in supporting political participation of women, poor representation in parliament (under 10%) is recognized as a problem which will be difficult to rectify by 2015. A recent poll conducted in Jordan revealed a clear majority in support of increased representation by women in local government.
Kenya
The prognosis for Kenya to meet its MDGs is bleak. Measured by the Human Development Index (HDI), Kenyans are worse off today than in 1980.
Progress toward attaining universal primary education is the one bright spot on an otherwise disappointing record. Beginning in 2003, Kenya instituted free primary education which has had the effect of increasing school enrolment by 2 million children. There is a further proposal for free tuition for secondary education. Recent enrolment gains at primary level have benefited girls, resulting in near gender parity. Despite these gains, regional inequalities are pronounced, particularly in the enrolment of girls in arid and semi-arid regions.
Poverty remains an enormous challenge for Kenya. Indeed current trends indicate significant growth rather than reduction in the number of people consigned to the margins of economic activity. The Kenyan government has defined the poverty line as $17 per month in rural areas and $36 per month in urban areas. In 1994, 47 percent of Kenyans fell below this line; today that figure has grown to 56 percent. Presently, 22.8 percent of the population lives on less than $1 a day and 58.3 percent live on less than $2 per day.
Sadly, child mortality levels have kept pace with the swelling numbers of destitute. Due to the increasing paucity of immunization against curable diseases, child mortality has climbed steadily from 90 per 1000 in 1990 to 115 per 1000 in 2003. Likewise, infant mortality shows a similar trajectory during this same period, increasing from 60 to 77 per 1000 in 2003.
Laos
Laos is the poorest and least developed country in Southeast Asia. Almost three-quarters of the population live on less than US$2 a day and food security is an ongoing problem faced by subsistence farmers in the northern mountainous region. The majority of rural communities lack access to safe water and sanitation and development plans are challenged by projections that the population will double in less than 25 years.
Laos ranks as a low income, highly indebted poor country, centrally managed by a state that has demonstrated a weak capacity for public service delivery and infrastructure development. While the Lao government has ambitiously committed itself to shedding its "least developed country" status by 2020, the country remains heavily dependent on assistance from multilateral agencies, with over 70% of public investment sourced from aid.
Malawi
Malawi’s progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) has been limited by the spread of HIV/AIDS, and the failure of structural adjustment programmes implemented in the 1980’s and 1990’s. In 2006 45% of the population lived below the poverty line which for Malawi is assessed by reference to the household cost of basic food and essential non-food requirements. While this figure is down from 54% in 1998, the government admits that it is unlikely that the poverty target of 32.7% will be achieved by 2015.
UNICEF estimates that 22% of under-5 children are underweight and 53% suffer from stunting. Up to 35% of the total population does not have an adequate calorific intake in their diet and the maternal mortality rate of 1100 per 100,000 live births is one of the highest in the world and a massive increase over the MDG baseline 1992 figure of 620. The 2015 target is a 75% reduction. However, the under-5 mortality rate has fallen in recent years and life expectancy has risen sharply, reversing some of the declines brought by the AIDS pandemic. Another success is in the field of education, with substantial progress towards achieving universal access and removing gender imbalances, albeit at some cost to quality with class sizes approaching an average of 100 children.
Malaysia
Malaysia is one of the wealthiest and most developed countries in Southeast Asia, outranked only by Singapore and oil-rich Brunei. Since 1970, the percentage of the population living below the poverty line has fallen from 50% to 5%, extreme poverty is rare, infant mortality has dropped from 40.9 to 7.9 per 1,000 live births, and adult literacy has increased from 60% to 94%. Assessed by UNDP as already having achieved 7 of the 8 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the Malaysian experience is being presented as a model for the Asia-Pacific region. The government points in particular to its focus on agricultural productivity, development of labour-intensive exports, and investment in health and education.
Encouraging as these statistics are, they fail to identify underlying inequality and the Gini coefficient for Malaysia is the highest in the region. Poverty mainly occurs in rural areas amongst indigenous groups, especially in the Eastern Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak – in Sabah 23% of households live below the poverty line and 20% of its population have never been to school. The 9th Malaysia Plan, covering the period 2006-2010, does acknowledge that economic growth alone is insufficient and that pro-poor policies should be introduced. The Plan aims to further reduce the poverty rate to 2.8% and to eliminate the most extreme form of poverty by 2015.
Mali
A 2004 Government and UNDP report held little prospect of achieving the MDGs by 2015, though there was some hope for food self-sufficiency, universal primary education and access to potable water. Despite what most would declare a gloomy picture, there has been real progress since 1991. This is due to better, though certainly not perfect, governance. Problems in this area remain - such as widespread corruption and political parties being more concerned with personalities than policies. Decentralization and empowerment of local people holds out the best hope. Fairer terms of trade for Mali’s export crops and more development assistance to help Malians address health, education, food and water problems are necessary conditions for meaningful progress to be achieved.
Mexico
Most assessments suggest that extreme poverty in Mexico is falling although the World Bank reports that the figure remains as high as 18% in 2005. The latest progress report for the MDGs dated April 2005 expresses confidence that the Goals will be achieved, with doubts conceded only in relation to some individual targets for health. There has been high investment in education over the last 10 years, with spending now reaching over 6% of GDP, and the number of children out of school has been halved since 2000.
However, such analyses fail to convey a true picture of poverty in Mexico where pressures of a population in excess of 100 million combine with the faultlines of a largely deregulated open market economy to create extremes of inequality. Bottlenecks of poverty are particularly found amongst rural indigenous groups and in the overcrowded shanty towns of the country’s vast cities. In 2005 45% of the population had difficulty in providing for basic needs and there is increasing consensus that the National Development Plan (2007-2012) currently under consideration must include more pro-poor policies to counter the shortcomings of the economic model.
Nepal
The official position articulated in the MDG progress report published in 2005 recognises the constraints of social and regional inequality but nevertheless insists that, apart from difficulties with the Goals for education and HIV/AIDS, prospects for success are reasonably good. For example, the key poverty indicator for extreme poverty ($1 per day) has reduced from 33.5% in the baseline year of 1990 to 24.1% in 2005, suggesting that the Goal of halving poverty by 2015 could be achieved. A rather more sobering MDG Needs Assessment Report published towards the end of 2006 estimates that attainment of the MDGs requires development funds of $12.6 billion over the period to 2015, necessitating not only a doubling of the level of current aid but also pro-poor spending by the government, especially on education which in 2006 attracted a budget of only 3.4% of GDP.
Predictions of future progress should also draw attention to the underlying risks to human development. A 2007 report by the World Food Programme (WFP) and the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation describes Nepal as “chronically food insecure”, its inefficient production further undermined by natural disasters and climate change. WFP is already targeting over one million people with food aid. Regions that are the focus of poverty alleviation programmes tend also to be those most affected by the Maoist conflict and successful implementation of the peace agreement is critical to the MDG programme in Nepal.
Nigeria
The Nigerian Ministry of Finance boasts of impressive 5% economic growth in 2006; but this is growth without a human face, as it is not reflected in the life of the ordinary citizen. The world’s 8th largest oil exporter continues to languish in the bottom quartile of the Human Development Index, with over 70 percent of its population surviving on less than $1 a day. The international agency, ActionAid, estimates that one third of the population is hungry, in spite of adequate food production. Given that the population of about 140 million is the largest in Africa, Nigeria’s failure to make inroads into the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) significantly influenced the conclusion reached in the 2007 UN mid-term progress report that the Goals are very unlikely to be achieved in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Health figures reveal the most serious problem with indicators for infant and child mortality worse than they were in the baseline year of 1990. - one in five children is expected to die before age five. Maternal mortality is also extremely high. A contributory factor is undoubtedly the corresponding failure to provide access to improved sources of drinking water, another statistic which at 48% has moved in reverse since 1990. Although 7 million children remain out of school, enrolment is rising slowly and there is a slightly more positive outlook on the Goal for universal primary education.
Poor coordination of development plans within the Federal government together with incompetent delivery of services at State and local government levels have greatly hampered progress towards the MDGs. An unusual government post of Special Adviser to the President on Millennium Development Goals has been established to address these administrative bottlenecks and to be accountable for directing proceeds of debt relief to MDG sectors. The holder of the post, Mrs Amina Ibrahim, has estimated that the cost of achieving the Goals in Nigeria exceeds $5 billion pa, a figure far above current resources.
Pakistan
Pakistan is home to a significant proportion of the world’s poor. Over 30% of the country’s 150 million people survives beneath the poverty line. In rural areas, literacy of women is as low as 20%. A history of high government spending on military and business interests has been at the expense of health and education facilities. Little more than 1.5% of the national budget is allocated to education and the drop-out rate from primary schools is thought to be the highest in the world, leaving many runaway children on the streets in major cities whilst others approach adulthood through the inappropriate experience of factory labour.
On a more positive note, there are signs of structural change in moves towards decentralisation of government powers – a shift which development agencies have recommended as a means for health services in particular to reach areas where they are most needed. The Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) and the Medium Term Development Framework 2005-2010 have both been realigned with the MDGs and Pakistan continues to attract generous aid programmes.
Peru
Like many of its neighbours in South America, Peru is ranked in absolute terms as a "middle income" country, a status which has led to the UK Department for International Development (DFID) withdrawing its aid operations from Peru. Yet even DFID concedes that it is unlikely that Peru will achieve some of the MDGs, especially that relating to poverty, such is the degree of socio-economic inequality.
Recent years of relatively high economic growth have failed to make significant inroads into poverty reduction. By the government's own criteria, 48% of the population lives below the poverty line. In rural areas this figure rises to over 60%, illustrating how poverty particularly impacts indigenous people as opposed to those of Spanish descent who dominate the urban business economy.
The impact of poverty is most evident in health indicators - about one quarter of the population has no access to health services despite the apparent introduction of free healthcare in 2002. The rate of maternal mortality is one of the highest in the region. Malnutrition is another inevitable consequence and children especially find themselves caught in the poverty trap, unable to benefit from economic growth.
Philippines
The Philippines is classed as a middle income country, but suffers major development problems. Commitment to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) has come under painful scrutiny with the publication of results of the 2006 Family Income and Expenditure Survey which show that poverty increased in the 3 years since the previous survey. This was a period in which the Philippines boasted success by conventional measures of economic growth and in which neighbouring countries in Southeast Asia took enormous strides in lifting people out of poverty. By contrast, extreme poverty (assessed by inability to buy sufficient food) in the Philippines increased from 13.5% to 14.6% between 2003 and 2006 whilst the broader measure of poverty (assessed by inability to buy food and other basic essentials) increased from 30.0% to 32.9%. These reverses raise doubts as to whether the respective 2015 MDG targets (12% and 22.5%) for these two measures of poverty can be met.
The government has integrated the MDGs into the Medium-Term Philippine Development Plan (MTPDP) 2004-2010 but its underlying commitment is questioned in an unusually frank 2007 MDG Midterm Progress Report which observes that “expenditures for social and economic services as a percentage of the total budget had been declining for the past seven years”. The funding gap to achieve the Goals by 2015 is estimated at around $15 billion, a figure well beyond current resources, and the report encourages discussion of innovative mechanisms to exchange the country’s substantial external debt for ringfenced MDG programmes.
South Africa
A symptom of the inhumanity of the apartheid era was the exclusion of the black majority from surveys of social and economic status. Measuring progress of the MDGs in the new South Africa is therefore a challenge because no data exists for the baseline year of 1990. The starting point for poverty indicators has been shifted forward to 2000 at which point the measure of extreme poverty (less than $1 per day) was 11.3%, with a target of 5.7% by 2015.
By UN classification South Africa is a middle-income country with ample resources and by far the most developed country in Africa. In its “Vision 2014”, the government sets out a strategy for fighting poverty through high rates of economic growth in parallel with direct welfare payments to the poor and high investment in education. The Mid-Term MDG Progress Review published in 2007 offers no update of the extreme poverty indicator but claims that incomes of the poorest households have risen strongly in this period and that the Goal is likely to be achieved. However, the most recent UNDP Human Development Report presents a figure of 10.7% for extreme poverty in 2005, almost unchanged from the baseline position. Over 43% of the population remains under the poverty line which is assessed as R3,000 per annum at 2000 values.
Nevertheless, the Goals for education are already close to being achieved and the country has made impressive strides in the area of gender equality with over 30% women’s representation in both parliament and in the cabinet. Considerable progress has also been made in the provision of safe water and sanitation and the government promises universal access to these services by 2008 and 2010 respectively, far beyond the MDG targets.
Syria
Syria does not experience extreme poverty by the standard $1 per day measure adopted for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) – fewer than 0.5% of the population fall below this threshold. However, in a country where military spending exceeds the budgets for health and education combined, progress in human development is constrained. A UNDP report published in 2005 found that the percentage living below a poverty line defined as the cost of basic food and non-food needs dropped only from 14.3% to 11.4% in the period 1997-2004 with unemployment rising throughout those years. Furthermore, a wider definition of poverty captured over 30% of the population.
The problem is particularly acute in the rural northeastern region which seems trapped in a spiral of poor or non-existent education, low enrolment for girls and absence of employment opportunities. University enrolment is falling countrywide and reform of education is acknowledged to be a priority.
Statistics are more favourable in the health sector where both child and infant mortality rates fell by about 50% in the 1997-2004 period. Nevertheless, the dual pressure of a high rate of population increase and lack of investment ensures that the majority of Syrians endure poor quality of health services, the middle classes often resorting to private prescriptions and treatment.
Tanzania
Tanzania is one of the poorest countries in the world, with 58% of the population living below the $1 per day threshold for extreme poverty adopted by the UN. Based on Tanzania’s own assessment of the minimum income for basic needs, the percentage is less acute, just under 36% in 2004. The equivalent figure for 1990 was 39% implying a disappointing rate of progress. The same is true for the percentage surviving below the more extreme food poverty line. The latest position is awaited in results of a Household Budget Survey conducted in 2007 but it appears likely that, taking into account population growth which continues at about 3% pa, there are more people now living in poverty in Tanzania than in the baseline year for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
This gloomy picture is greatly cheered by the phenomenal progress in getting children into school that has occurred since 2004, thanks to the lifting of fees and the construction of hundreds of new schools. Net primary school enrolment has rocketed from 65% in 2001 to 96% in 2006; with girls benefiting as much as boys, key MDG targets are close to fulfilment. Given that the number of primary pupils has almost doubled to 8 million in this 5 year period, there are inevitable problems of capacity and the government has conceded that over 5,000 additional teachers are needed.
In a country which offers only one doctor per 20,000 people, child mortality is not improving fast enough to meet the MDG targets and, in common with many African countries, maternal mortality appears to be worsening. Data is unreliable but maternal mortality in 2005 has been estimated at 578 per 100,000 births, higher than the rate in 1996. Only 27% of births in rural areas were attended by a qualified health worker.
Thailand
Thanks to the strong performance of its economy during much of the 1990’s, Thailand has already achieved, or is on its way to achieving, most of the MDGs. The percentage of people living in poverty has been reduced from 38% in 1990 to 11% in 2004 and, with literacy rates at 96 percent for men and 91 percent for women and almost universal primary education enrolment, the country is now concentrating on improvement of secondary education. Whilst divisions of wealth between rich and poor, and between rural and urban communities are deepening, overall health indicators for child and maternal mortality are progressing well and the threat of malaria is limited to endemic regions and is under control. Thailand has also done unexpectedly well to achieve near universal access to safe water and sanitation due to well-financed government programs.
The country has therefore set itself new targets, dubbed “MDG plus”, including the aim to further decrease its poverty level to 4% by 2009. Thailand has also produced regional MDG Reports for two provinces, a rare examination of the potential of decentralised MDG policymaking. As the MDG 2004 progress report on Thailand notes, people in the hills of the north and in the three Muslim majority provinces in the south bordering Malaysia tend to be marginalised - poverty in one southern province is as high as 23%. Further problems lie in MDG 7 (sustainable development) because of the damage the environment has suffered through the period of rapid economic growth over recent decades and in MDG 3 (gender equality) due to the exceptionally low number of women in politics and in government employment.
Turkey
Turkey’s progress towards achieving the MDGs is moderate. The latest government reports for 2005 disclose that extreme poverty is rare with under 1 per cent of the population living on less than US$1 a day. Yet, over 20 per cent of the population falls below a broader definition of poverty and is vulnerable to any economic instability. This rate is even higher in rural areas due to a stagnating agricultural economy and slow labour transition to non-agricultural activities. Infant and child mortality rates are very high and life expectancy is low by European standards, in part due to difficulties in meeting the costs of medical attention.
As for education, the adult literacy rate is 85 per cent, with a significant gap between the literacy rates of men (94 per cent) and women (78 per cent). There are serious disparities at the regional level too. Literacy is as high as 98 per cent in the western and north-western parts of the country, while it goes down to as low as 40 per cent (for women) in the eastern part. Turkey also needs to improve in the area of women's empowerment and entrenched gender discrimination. The level of female economic activity is also significantly lower than that of males. Only half of the female population over 15 years of age is economically active and mostly working in the agricultural sector at low levels of productivity.
Uganda
Uganda presents both successes and failures in its progress towards attainment of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Most creditably the country can claim great progress towards the target to halt and reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS. Also admired is the Universal Primary Education (UPE) programme which started in 1997 and which has increased enrolment from 3.1 million to 7.6 million (92%) in 2006 by allowing free attendance. The MDG target for gender equality in primary schools is regarded as already achieved. There are also moves to allow free secondary education for selected pupils.
By contrast, infant and maternal mortality rates give cause for much concern, the latter being amongst the highest in the world. Absolute poverty continues to be a nightmare, increasing by the day and unalleviated by the economic liberalization which has otherwise led to a remarkable economic recovery. Macro-economic indicators cannot hide the disturbing reality that the proportion of Ugandans living below the national poverty line has been static at around 35% throughout the period 2000-2005, falling to 31% in 2006.
Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan is one of the three poorest countries in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), with 28% of the population unable to meet their basic needs and 46% living on less than the equivalent of 2 dollars a day. The majority of the poor live in rural areas and rely on a struggling welfare system. 23% of under five-year-olds were estimated to be malnourished in 2006, and women of reproductive age have the highest anemia rates in the region.
The Uzbekistan government has officially recognized that poverty is widespread and has committed itself to reaching the MDGs. Its Welfare Improvement Strategy for 2005-2010 integrates the MDGs and envisages a reduction in poverty to 20% by the end of that period. The sharp fall in living standards that followed independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 greatly adds to the challenge of achieving the MDGs in Uzbekistan, given that the baseline year for the Goals is 1990.
Venezuela
The government of Hugo Chávez has made major efforts to tackle poverty and social exclusion, especially through programmes known as misiones. Financed by oil revenues, these programmes include healthcare and education for poor communities, employment creation, reforestation, energy saving and measures against social exclusion.
In spite of the country’s abundance of natural resources, 37.9% of Venezuelan households live below the poverty line, notably the rural poor and indigenous people. The Venezuelan government has declared that it will be able to accomplish some of the MDGs before 2015, particularly those related to the eradication of illiteracy. However, progress is slow in other areas and clear policies are necessary to accelerate the process.
Vietnam
Vietnam has the remarkable record for a developing country of achieving the first of the MDGs – halving poverty over the period 1990-2015 - more than a decade in advance. Although the collection of accurate data is often constrained by local conditions, there is no question that key social indicators show spectacular improvement over recent years. The percentage of poor households has fallen from 58% in 1993 to less than 24% in 2004, whilst extreme poverty has dropped from 18.5% to below 7%. Over this same period child and infant mortality rates have halved and access to safe water has trebled. School enrolment at primary level is almost universal. More demanding goals for reducing poverty have been set for the period to 2010 - these are known as the Vietnam Development Goals.
This success is widely attributed to the doi moi (open door) policy introduced by the Vietnamese government in 1986 and which signalled a move away from central planning and collectivist agriculture towards the beginnings of a market economy and farm ownership. However, the characteristic weaknesses of a more modern economy inevitably lurk beneath these aggregate statistics, in particular the widening divisions between the Western-oriented, infrastructure-rich south and the more populated but impoverished northern regions. Gaps in wealth are also emerging between the urban and rural areas. These divisions manifest themselves especially in the quality of education which tends to be linked to the ability to pay suitable fees and in the provision of safe water and sanitation. Despite major government spending to support people living under the poverty line, illiteracy in remote areas or among ethnic minority groups remains a thorny issue and many international organizations focus their activities in this field.
Yemen
Over 40 per cent of the Yemeni population lives in poverty, the majority concentrated in rural areas. The country is presently in the midst of a food crisis where approximately one-third of its population remains undernourished rising to 46 per cent of children under-five. Almost 18 per cent of Yemenis exist below the food poverty line and the World Food Programme is actively assisting about one million people. A financially starved health sector has severely jeopardized maternal and child health, particularly in remote areas of the countryside where underdeveloped infrastructure restricts access to basic services.
Yemen’s adult literacy rate of only 49 per cent is indicative of the low average net enrolment in primary education which at 72 per cent is one of the lowest in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Furthermore, this average figure conceals the vastly lower enrolment rates for girls, which sinks to 30 per cent in rural areas. The 2005 Arab Human Development Report cites poverty and cultural attitudes to women, such as early marriage and segregation between the sexes, for the gender gap in education. In a recent effort to boost girls’ primary enrolment and to meet the MDG goal of education for all by 2015, the Ministry of Education announced its decision to waive primary school tuition fees for female students. With approximately half the population under the age of 15 and a population growth rate ranking sixth in the world, education needs to be a top priority for development policy in Yemen. Increasing evidence that as many as 400,000 children under 14 are engaged in child labour adds fresh concern.
Inappropriate allocation of public funds is considered the primary reason for the lack of human development. In 2002, only 1.0 per cent of GDP was spent on the health sector compared with a massive 7.1 per cent on assorted military acquisitions. The government however proclaims a quite different interpretation, attributing poor progress to inadequate aid support from the donor community. Official development assistance (ODA) was 8.4 per cent of GDP in 1990 falling to a low of 2.2 per cent in 2003. A recent donor conference has raised hopes that more aid will be forthcoming but not on the scale of the vast sum of $48 billion estimated as the cost of attaining the MDGs in the Needs Assessment report for Yemen published in 2005.
Zambia
The Zambian government has committed itself to achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the Fifth National Development Plan for 2006-2011 gives reassuring priority to poverty reduction. Determined multi-sectoral initiatives seek to raise public awareness of the importance of the Goals. The task will nevertheless be formidable as Zambia has so far failed to make significant progress on the eradication of poverty and hunger (MDG 1). The majority of the population (64%) lives on less than $1 a day, and 87% have less than $2, figures that are worse than in the MDG baseline year of 1990. Although harvests have been good for the last three years, the World Food Programme describes food insecurity as widespread due to sensitivity to local rainfall patterns; food aid remains in place for 370,000 beneficiaries. There is a growing gap between the rich and the poor. The elite (in the cities) have adopted a Western standard of living and put great emphasis on material wealth.
Nevertheless, Zambia has the potential to achieve nearly all of the MDGs, according to the Progress Report published in 2005. One important exception is maternal mortality (MDG 5) which has been increasing in recent years. This worrying trend is also true of literacy rates (MDG2) which have declined since 1990. Today one third of the adult population is illiterate. However, free primary education was introduced in 2003, and 95% of children are now going to primary school.
|
| MSF treatment in Angola © Juan Carlos Tomasi |
Uncertainties over data do not however mask the reality that poverty in Angola is severe nor that the country is unlikely to achieve any of the MDGs at the current rate of progress, regardless of the basis of assessment. Over 60% of the population lives under the poverty line with over 25% in the more serious category of extreme poverty. Barely 50% of women are literate and measures of the Gini coefficient confirm that inequality is rising.
Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan’s approach to the MDGs is encouraging. A State Commission chaired by the prime minister is responsible for preparing the 2006-2015 State Programme for Poverty Reduction and Sustainable Development (SPPRSD) which will be aligned with both the targets and the timescale of the MDGs. In a progress report published in 2005 Azerbaijan claims to be the first developing country to combine reporting of its poverty reduction strategy with MDG progress.
Significantly, the oil revenue that Azerbaijan can expect over the next 15 years, if responsibly invested, should provide the resources required to meet most of the MDGs. As well as spending oil revenues prudently, there are other major challenges to overcome if the Goals are to be achieved, in particular improving governance, reforming public services and reducing corruption.
Bangladesh
A combination of generous international aid since 1990, a dynamic civil society culture and sympathetic government policies has created a generally positive environment for development indicators, illustrated especially by the attainment of gender equality in school enrolment, a rare achievement in South Asia. The headline poverty benchmark for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of $1 per day has fallen significantly from 59% in the baseline year to 36%, whilst child mortality has come down from 151 to 80 per 1000. In these areas, progress is more rapid than in neighbouring India or Pakistan. Government budgets (as a percentage of 2007/08 national income) for health (6.3%) and education (14%) are rising whilst food and cash safety net schemes are in place for the poorest families.
|
| Bangladesh girl in school © Ron Gilling/Panos Pictures / People & the Planet |
It is abundantly clear therefore that many of the MDGs will not be achieved in Bangladesh without specific policy intervention and increased funding. The Director of the Millennium Project, Professor Jeffrey Sachs, has suggested an MDG price tag for Bangladesh of $4 billion per annum, far more than current levels of aid. An alternative perspective is the suggestion that the Goals cannot be achieved without universal access to electricity. Current coverage is barely more than 20%. The government’s target of access for all by 2020 is a vision that has been priced at $16 billion.
Benin
|
| Young child in Benin © Dan Gerber |
Increased development assistance and better governance through reduced corruption and transfer of resources from the center to the newly created decentralized government structures are needed to help empower people and achieve MDG goals.
Brazil
Uneven income distribution combines with other inequalities to pose the main obstacle to meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in Brazil. Less than 3% of the population controls two thirds of the land available for production. 4.8 million rural families are landless and more than 80% of Brazilians are now concentrated in urban areas, where many live in favelas (shantytowns) with inadequate water supply, health facilities and educational opportunities. The inequality is also regional – the north-east of the country is the poorest region whilst research by a Brazilian NGO, Imazon, records that most MDG indicators in Brazil’s Amazon states are well below the national average.
However, there is some cause for celebration. A government report on the MDGs published in August 2007 showed that the country has already met the first MDG target, having achieved a reduction in the percentage of Brazilians living on less than one dollar a day from 9.5% to 4.2% between 1992 and 2005.
Burundi
The MDGs are most unlikely to be fulfilled in Burundi. The baseline year of 1990 coincided with the beginning of a decade of political turmoil and conflict in which GDP fell by 20% and extreme poverty increased from 33% to 67%. With almost 55% of the population still living on less than US$1 per day and 41% believed to be chronically malnourished, the outlook is pessimistic for the MDG related to extreme poverty and hunger.
|
| Burundi food distribution © International Committee of the Red Cross |
Cambodia
|
| Bananas to market, Kompong Thom, Cambodia © Thnam Kanha Net |
Cambodia’s health care system is struggling. Both maternal and child mortality rates are exceptionally high for the region, the latter having increased since the baseline year of 1990, quite the reverse of MDG intentions. Two thirds of the population do not have access to clean water. In the past two decades, the country has received immense financial aid and technical assistance from various international financial institutions, governments and NGOs. The most recent pledge totalling $690m will cover half of Cambodia’s national budget for 2008.
Cameroon
The heart of the strategy for achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in Cameroon, as articulated in the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) approved by development partners in 2003, lies in the assertion that strong national economic growth will leverage better lives for the poor. As in so many countries, this presumption is failing; whilst Cameroon has indeed performed reasonably well in recent years by conventional measures of economic prosperity, poverty indicators are stagnant or moving in reverse, with the notable exception of HIV prevalence which has dropped significantly.
The main poverty benchmark for the purpose of the MDGs in Cameroon is the level of income deemed necessary to meet basic living needs. 40% of the population fall below this poverty line, a figure unchanged nationally since 2001 which implies that poverty in rural areas is increasing. There are inevitable doubts about meeting the target of 25% by 2015.
The core problem is not hard to identify; the World Food Programme describes Cameroon as a food insecure country and has further demonstrated that food intake is lower now than in the early 1980s. The result is that over 30% of young children are classified as suffering from “moderate chronic malnutrition” and the child mortality rate is rising rather than falling. Despite the improved picture for HIV/AIDS, the broader measure of life expectancy has fallen below 50 years from a high of 59 years.
China
|
| Tibetan kids at a rural school © Barefoot Images / Tibet Information Network |
For example, the large investment in production and infrastructure has been concentrated on the developed urban eastern regions of Shanghai, Tianjin, and Guangdong. The majority of poor Chinese live in the underdeveloped western regions of Shaanxi, Guangxi, Sichuan and Gansu. In Tibet, 50% of the population is illiterate. These regional disparities are creating a new category of poverty through migration to the eastern cities where 150-200 million workers grapple with the constraints of the hukou system of household registrations which expose them to exploitation in the cities.
Colombia
Colombia has reduced the proportion of people living below the poverty line from 53.8% in 1991 to 45% in 2006, and extreme poverty from 20.4% to under 16%. That over twenty million people should live in poverty and that the overall rate of progress has been so slow in a country generously endowed with natural resources is testimony to the inability of its government to give adequate priority to the MDGs.
|
| Chocó, Colombia |
Eritrea
Where armies are assembled on either side of a disputed border, the countries involved are unlikely to allocate high priority to pursuit of the MDGs. The Eritrean government concedes that resources diverted to “national security” have acted as a brake on human development. Indeed poverty has increased over the period of the MDG programme, rising from 53% in the baseline period of the early 1990s to 66% at the most recent point of assessment in 2003.
|
| Mercy Corps school feeding program in Eritrea |
Ethiopia
Ethiopia is consistently positioned close to the bottom of the annual UNDP Human Development Index. An interesting feature of the government’s progress report for the MDGs published in 2004 is its willingness to place an estimate on the public spending cost necessary to achieve the Goals. The figure quoted is a staggering $37 billion. The improbability of raising such a sum alone provides the telling answer to questions about the likelihood of achieving all of the Goals by 2015. Indeed one of Ethiopia’s major bilateral donors, the UK government, has said in 2006 that the country is “unlikely to meet any of the MDG targets by 2015”. The specialist UK charity WaterAid says that efforts to achieve the Goals for water and sanitation are “way off track” with access in rural areas still below 20%.
Georgia
|
| 7th grade students in Georgia © Liko Chikhladze / UNESCO / ASPnet |
Georgia's ranking in the UNDP Human Development Index remains significantly below most of the transitional countries in the region and it is clear that the government has given greater priority to headline economic growth than poverty reduction strategies - indeed there is no formal long term plan for achieving the MDGs. In his re-election speeches in early 2008 the President has promised immediate pro-poverty actions associated with the slogan “Georgia Without Poverty”. There is reference to an accountable new commission but none of these initiatives yet refers to quantifiable targets which might be recognised as consistent with the MDGs.
Ghana
|
| A young girl in Patriensah, Ghana |
Closer analysis of the figures throws an element of doubt on these superlatives. The MDG Progress Report published in 2003 defines the poverty line as the “proportion below national basic needs” without further elaboration. The statistics themselves are drawn from a periodic census known as the Ghana Living Standards Survey (GLSS), but it is difficult to ascertain the basis for threshold levels of income poverty or how they evolve. Even the 177-page Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategy 2006-2009 (GPRS II) fails to provide an explanation of how poverty is calculated in Ghana. Most telling of all, the internationally recognised threshold for extreme poverty, $1 per day of purchasing power, is assessed by the 2007 UNDP Human Development Report to capture 44.8% of Ghana’s population, effectively unchanged from the 45.5% recorded in the baseline year of 1990. And the proportion of underweight children has reduced only to 22% from the baseline 27.4%.
Guatemala
The 36-year civil war in Guatemala ended just over a decade ago in 1996, its detrimental economic impact overlapping with the 1990 baseline for assessment of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Restoring social indicators has proved a volatile process and the country remains one of the poorest in Latin America with over half the population living below the poverty line, currently valued as $2.30 per day. Extreme poverty has reduced from 20% in 1990 only to about 15%; achieving the 10% target by 2015 will be a formidable task. There has been progress towards universal enrolment in primary education for both boys and girls but ingrained cultural gender roles lead to a high drop-out rate of girls. 60% of indigenous women are illiterate.
Rural and indigenous populations experience high infant and maternal mortality with less than convincing progress towards MDG targets. 48% of children suffer chronic malnutrition, the highest incidence in Latin America. A significant share of the population lacks access to affordable health services, largely down to inequitable targeting of public money, with highly-subsidised public facilities almost exclusively used by the non-poor.
Guinea-Bissau
|
| Cashew harvest time in the Bijagos Islands © Tom Shaw |
The MDGs 2 and 3 pose particularly difficult benchmarks for Guinea-Bissau, owing to a permanent crisis within the public sector. The state is rarely able to pay its public service employees to achieve even a minimum functioning, meaning that schools are routinely disrupted or non-operational for months at a time. It is not surprising therefore that illiteracy rates in the country are estimated at 50% of men and 83% of women – significantly higher than the regional average.
India
Beneath the veneer of the affluent Indian middle class, about 15% of the world’s population face a daily struggle for essentials, including the 300 million Indians who survive on less than $1 per day. The global challenge of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) therefore rests disproportionately on the fight against poverty in India.
|
| Farmer in Punjab © Centre for Science and Environment |
The government has given assurances that the resources necessary to achieve the Goals will be forthcoming and that the targets will be reached in advance of the 2015 deadline. More cautious civil society observers might however point out that water table levels throughout India have collapsed, that teacher absenteeism in primary schools is 25% with pupil drop-out rates of 40% and that the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food reported in March 2006 that “food insecurity is growing”.
Indonesia
The Indonesian Government has formulated reasonable poverty frameworks to work toward the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). But the latest progress report discloses that 16.6% of the population lived below the national poverty line in 2007, more than in 1990, the MDG baseline year. Another indicator which is rising rather than falling is the 8.8% of children under age 5 assessed to be severely underweight. In this context the impact of rising food prices is bound to be worrying, given that almost 35% of the population have incomes which place them only marginally above the poverty line and therefore vulnerable to adverse change.
|
| Jakarta Shanty , Indonesia. © Adrian Arbib |
Jordan
Jordan is classified as a middle-income country whose government conveys a sense of genuine concern for poverty issues, allocating financial resources for social development at a proportion of national income which its regional peers rarely match.
Levels of acute poverty in Jordan are therefore low with reasonable prospects of further reduction. However, large numbers of families find themselves just above the poverty line where they remain exposed to volatile regional politics which have caused sustainable damage to Jordan’s development strategies in the past. This is broadly the message of Jordan's first MDG Report published in October 2004 which expresses confidence in varying degrees that each of the Goals will be achieved but warns of the dependence on economic stability in the region.
For the present, Jordan can boast an impressive health system and almost full primary school enrolment for both boys and girls. Gender inequality is however apparent in employment opportunities where women are at a marked disadvantage. Despite Jordan being a front runner amongst Arab countries in supporting political participation of women, poor representation in parliament (under 10%) is recognized as a problem which will be difficult to rectify by 2015. A recent poll conducted in Jordan revealed a clear majority in support of increased representation by women in local government.
Kenya
|
| The town of Kibera © Peter Armstrong |
Progress toward attaining universal primary education is the one bright spot on an otherwise disappointing record. Beginning in 2003, Kenya instituted free primary education which has had the effect of increasing school enrolment by 2 million children. There is a further proposal for free tuition for secondary education. Recent enrolment gains at primary level have benefited girls, resulting in near gender parity. Despite these gains, regional inequalities are pronounced, particularly in the enrolment of girls in arid and semi-arid regions.
Poverty remains an enormous challenge for Kenya. Indeed current trends indicate significant growth rather than reduction in the number of people consigned to the margins of economic activity. The Kenyan government has defined the poverty line as $17 per month in rural areas and $36 per month in urban areas. In 1994, 47 percent of Kenyans fell below this line; today that figure has grown to 56 percent. Presently, 22.8 percent of the population lives on less than $1 a day and 58.3 percent live on less than $2 per day.
Sadly, child mortality levels have kept pace with the swelling numbers of destitute. Due to the increasing paucity of immunization against curable diseases, child mortality has climbed steadily from 90 per 1000 in 1990 to 115 per 1000 in 2003. Likewise, infant mortality shows a similar trajectory during this same period, increasing from 60 to 77 per 1000 in 2003.
Laos
|
| Tribal village E Luang Namtha, Laos © Piet van der Poel |
Laos ranks as a low income, highly indebted poor country, centrally managed by a state that has demonstrated a weak capacity for public service delivery and infrastructure development. While the Lao government has ambitiously committed itself to shedding its "least developed country" status by 2020, the country remains heavily dependent on assistance from multilateral agencies, with over 70% of public investment sourced from aid.
Malawi
|
| Treatment for malnutrition, Malawi © United Nations' Integrated Regional Information Network |
UNICEF estimates that 22% of under-5 children are underweight and 53% suffer from stunting. Up to 35% of the total population does not have an adequate calorific intake in their diet and the maternal mortality rate of 1100 per 100,000 live births is one of the highest in the world and a massive increase over the MDG baseline 1992 figure of 620. The 2015 target is a 75% reduction. However, the under-5 mortality rate has fallen in recent years and life expectancy has risen sharply, reversing some of the declines brought by the AIDS pandemic. Another success is in the field of education, with substantial progress towards achieving universal access and removing gender imbalances, albeit at some cost to quality with class sizes approaching an average of 100 children.
Malaysia
Malaysia is one of the wealthiest and most developed countries in Southeast Asia, outranked only by Singapore and oil-rich Brunei. Since 1970, the percentage of the population living below the poverty line has fallen from 50% to 5%, extreme poverty is rare, infant mortality has dropped from 40.9 to 7.9 per 1,000 live births, and adult literacy has increased from 60% to 94%. Assessed by UNDP as already having achieved 7 of the 8 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the Malaysian experience is being presented as a model for the Asia-Pacific region. The government points in particular to its focus on agricultural productivity, development of labour-intensive exports, and investment in health and education.
Encouraging as these statistics are, they fail to identify underlying inequality and the Gini coefficient for Malaysia is the highest in the region. Poverty mainly occurs in rural areas amongst indigenous groups, especially in the Eastern Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak – in Sabah 23% of households live below the poverty line and 20% of its population have never been to school. The 9th Malaysia Plan, covering the period 2006-2010, does acknowledge that economic growth alone is insufficient and that pro-poor policies should be introduced. The Plan aims to further reduce the poverty rate to 2.8% and to eliminate the most extreme form of poverty by 2015.
Mali
A 2004 Government and UNDP report held little prospect of achieving the MDGs by 2015, though there was some hope for food self-sufficiency, universal primary education and access to potable water. Despite what most would declare a gloomy picture, there has been real progress since 1991. This is due to better, though certainly not perfect, governance. Problems in this area remain - such as widespread corruption and political parties being more concerned with personalities than policies. Decentralization and empowerment of local people holds out the best hope. Fairer terms of trade for Mali’s export crops and more development assistance to help Malians address health, education, food and water problems are necessary conditions for meaningful progress to be achieved.
Mexico
|
| Mexican children © Comunicación e Información de la Mujer |
However, such analyses fail to convey a true picture of poverty in Mexico where pressures of a population in excess of 100 million combine with the faultlines of a largely deregulated open market economy to create extremes of inequality. Bottlenecks of poverty are particularly found amongst rural indigenous groups and in the overcrowded shanty towns of the country’s vast cities. In 2005 45% of the population had difficulty in providing for basic needs and there is increasing consensus that the National Development Plan (2007-2012) currently under consideration must include more pro-poor policies to counter the shortcomings of the economic model.
Nepal
|
| WFP beneficiaries in Nepal © Naresh Newar / United Nations' Integrated Regional Information Network |
Predictions of future progress should also draw attention to the underlying risks to human development. A 2007 report by the World Food Programme (WFP) and the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation describes Nepal as “chronically food insecure”, its inefficient production further undermined by natural disasters and climate change. WFP is already targeting over one million people with food aid. Regions that are the focus of poverty alleviation programmes tend also to be those most affected by the Maoist conflict and successful implementation of the peace agreement is critical to the MDG programme in Nepal.
Nigeria
|
| © Vince Barailler / OneWorld US |
Health figures reveal the most serious problem with indicators for infant and child mortality worse than they were in the baseline year of 1990. - one in five children is expected to die before age five. Maternal mortality is also extremely high. A contributory factor is undoubtedly the corresponding failure to provide access to improved sources of drinking water, another statistic which at 48% has moved in reverse since 1990. Although 7 million children remain out of school, enrolment is rising slowly and there is a slightly more positive outlook on the Goal for universal primary education.
Poor coordination of development plans within the Federal government together with incompetent delivery of services at State and local government levels have greatly hampered progress towards the MDGs. An unusual government post of Special Adviser to the President on Millennium Development Goals has been established to address these administrative bottlenecks and to be accountable for directing proceeds of debt relief to MDG sectors. The holder of the post, Mrs Amina Ibrahim, has estimated that the cost of achieving the Goals in Nigeria exceeds $5 billion pa, a figure far above current resources.
Pakistan
|
| Children working in Pakistan © Manos Unidas |
On a more positive note, there are signs of structural change in moves towards decentralisation of government powers – a shift which development agencies have recommended as a means for health services in particular to reach areas where they are most needed. The Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) and the Medium Term Development Framework 2005-2010 have both been realigned with the MDGs and Pakistan continues to attract generous aid programmes.
Peru
|
| Peruvian vendors © Helen Jones |
Recent years of relatively high economic growth have failed to make significant inroads into poverty reduction. By the government's own criteria, 48% of the population lives below the poverty line. In rural areas this figure rises to over 60%, illustrating how poverty particularly impacts indigenous people as opposed to those of Spanish descent who dominate the urban business economy.
The impact of poverty is most evident in health indicators - about one quarter of the population has no access to health services despite the apparent introduction of free healthcare in 2002. The rate of maternal mortality is one of the highest in the region. Malnutrition is another inevitable consequence and children especially find themselves caught in the poverty trap, unable to benefit from economic growth.
Philippines
|
| Philippine urban poor protest at MDG failures © Global Call to Action against Poverty |
The government has integrated the MDGs into the Medium-Term Philippine Development Plan (MTPDP) 2004-2010 but its underlying commitment is questioned in an unusually frank 2007 MDG Midterm Progress Report which observes that “expenditures for social and economic services as a percentage of the total budget had been declining for the past seven years”. The funding gap to achieve the Goals by 2015 is estimated at around $15 billion, a figure well beyond current resources, and the report encourages discussion of innovative mechanisms to exchange the country’s substantial external debt for ringfenced MDG programmes.
South Africa
|
| Table Mountain primary school © Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN) |
By UN classification South Africa is a middle-income country with ample resources and by far the most developed country in Africa. In its “Vision 2014”, the government sets out a strategy for fighting poverty through high rates of economic growth in parallel with direct welfare payments to the poor and high investment in education. The Mid-Term MDG Progress Review published in 2007 offers no update of the extreme poverty indicator but claims that incomes of the poorest households have risen strongly in this period and that the Goal is likely to be achieved. However, the most recent UNDP Human Development Report presents a figure of 10.7% for extreme poverty in 2005, almost unchanged from the baseline position. Over 43% of the population remains under the poverty line which is assessed as R3,000 per annum at 2000 values.
Nevertheless, the Goals for education are already close to being achieved and the country has made impressive strides in the area of gender equality with over 30% women’s representation in both parliament and in the cabinet. Considerable progress has also been made in the provision of safe water and sanitation and the government promises universal access to these services by 2008 and 2010 respectively, far beyond the MDG targets.
Syria
|
| Water shortage in Damascus © Hugh Macleod / United Nations' Integrated Regional Information Network |
The problem is particularly acute in the rural northeastern region which seems trapped in a spiral of poor or non-existent education, low enrolment for girls and absence of employment opportunities. University enrolment is falling countrywide and reform of education is acknowledged to be a priority.
Statistics are more favourable in the health sector where both child and infant mortality rates fell by about 50% in the 1997-2004 period. Nevertheless, the dual pressure of a high rate of population increase and lack of investment ensures that the majority of Syrians endure poor quality of health services, the middle classes often resorting to private prescriptions and treatment.
Tanzania
Tanzania is one of the poorest countries in the world, with 58% of the population living below the $1 per day threshold for extreme poverty adopted by the UN. Based on Tanzania’s own assessment of the minimum income for basic needs, the percentage is less acute, just under 36% in 2004. The equivalent figure for 1990 was 39% implying a disappointing rate of progress. The same is true for the percentage surviving below the more extreme food poverty line. The latest position is awaited in results of a Household Budget Survey conducted in 2007 but it appears likely that, taking into account population growth which continues at about 3% pa, there are more people now living in poverty in Tanzania than in the baseline year for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
|
| © PACT Tanzania |
In a country which offers only one doctor per 20,000 people, child mortality is not improving fast enough to meet the MDG targets and, in common with many African countries, maternal mortality appears to be worsening. Data is unreliable but maternal mortality in 2005 has been estimated at 578 per 100,000 births, higher than the rate in 1996. Only 27% of births in rural areas were attended by a qualified health worker.
Thailand
Thanks to the strong performance of its economy during much of the 1990’s, Thailand has already achieved, or is on its way to achieving, most of the MDGs. The percentage of people living in poverty has been reduced from 38% in 1990 to 11% in 2004 and, with literacy rates at 96 percent for men and 91 percent for women and almost universal primary education enrolment, the country is now concentrating on improvement of secondary education. Whilst divisions of wealth between rich and poor, and between rural and urban communities are deepening, overall health indicators for child and maternal mortality are progressing well and the threat of malaria is limited to endemic regions and is under control. Thailand has also done unexpectedly well to achieve near universal access to safe water and sanitation due to well-financed government programs.
|
| Karenni refugees in Thailand © Ng Yuina |
Turkey
Turkey’s progress towards achieving the MDGs is moderate. The latest government reports for 2005 disclose that extreme poverty is rare with under 1 per cent of the population living on less than US$1 a day. Yet, over 20 per cent of the population falls below a broader definition of poverty and is vulnerable to any economic instability. This rate is even higher in rural areas due to a stagnating agricultural economy and slow labour transition to non-agricultural activities. Infant and child mortality rates are very high and life expectancy is low by European standards, in part due to difficulties in meeting the costs of medical attention.
As for education, the adult literacy rate is 85 per cent, with a significant gap between the literacy rates of men (94 per cent) and women (78 per cent). There are serious disparities at the regional level too. Literacy is as high as 98 per cent in the western and north-western parts of the country, while it goes down to as low as 40 per cent (for women) in the eastern part. Turkey also needs to improve in the area of women's empowerment and entrenched gender discrimination. The level of female economic activity is also significantly lower than that of males. Only half of the female population over 15 years of age is economically active and mostly working in the agricultural sector at low levels of productivity.
Uganda
|
| Hunger walk, Uganda © Mbabazi Morgan |
By contrast, infant and maternal mortality rates give cause for much concern, the latter being amongst the highest in the world. Absolute poverty continues to be a nightmare, increasing by the day and unalleviated by the economic liberalization which has otherwise led to a remarkable economic recovery. Macro-economic indicators cannot hide the disturbing reality that the proportion of Ugandans living below the national poverty line has been static at around 35% throughout the period 2000-2005, falling to 31% in 2006.
Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan is one of the three poorest countries in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), with 28% of the population unable to meet their basic needs and 46% living on less than the equivalent of 2 dollars a day. The majority of the poor live in rural areas and rely on a struggling welfare system. 23% of under five-year-olds were estimated to be malnourished in 2006, and women of reproductive age have the highest anemia rates in the region.
The Uzbekistan government has officially recognized that poverty is widespread and has committed itself to reaching the MDGs. Its Welfare Improvement Strategy for 2005-2010 integrates the MDGs and envisages a reduction in poverty to 20% by the end of that period. The sharp fall in living standards that followed independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 greatly adds to the challenge of achieving the MDGs in Uzbekistan, given that the baseline year for the Goals is 1990.
Venezuela
The government of Hugo Chávez has made major efforts to tackle poverty and social exclusion, especially through programmes known as misiones. Financed by oil revenues, these programmes include healthcare and education for poor communities, employment creation, reforestation, energy saving and measures against social exclusion.
In spite of the country’s abundance of natural resources, 37.9% of Venezuelan households live below the poverty line, notably the rural poor and indigenous people. The Venezuelan government has declared that it will be able to accomplish some of the MDGs before 2015, particularly those related to the eradication of illiteracy. However, progress is slow in other areas and clear policies are necessary to accelerate the process.
Vietnam
|
| Vietnamese girl © Xuan An |
This success is widely attributed to the doi moi (open door) policy introduced by the Vietnamese government in 1986 and which signalled a move away from central planning and collectivist agriculture towards the beginnings of a market economy and farm ownership. However, the characteristic weaknesses of a more modern economy inevitably lurk beneath these aggregate statistics, in particular the widening divisions between the Western-oriented, infrastructure-rich south and the more populated but impoverished northern regions. Gaps in wealth are also emerging between the urban and rural areas. These divisions manifest themselves especially in the quality of education which tends to be linked to the ability to pay suitable fees and in the provision of safe water and sanitation. Despite major government spending to support people living under the poverty line, illiteracy in remote areas or among ethnic minority groups remains a thorny issue and many international organizations focus their activities in this field.
Yemen
Over 40 per cent of the Yemeni population lives in poverty, the majority concentrated in rural areas. The country is presently in the midst of a food crisis where approximately one-third of its population remains undernourished rising to 46 per cent of children under-five. Almost 18 per cent of Yemenis exist below the food poverty line and the World Food Programme is actively assisting about one million people. A financially starved health sector has severely jeopardized maternal and child health, particularly in remote areas of the countryside where underdeveloped infrastructure restricts access to basic services.
Yemen’s adult literacy rate of only 49 per cent is indicative of the low average net enrolment in primary education which at 72 per cent is one of the lowest in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Furthermore, this average figure conceals the vastly lower enrolment rates for girls, which sinks to 30 per cent in rural areas. The 2005 Arab Human Development Report cites poverty and cultural attitudes to women, such as early marriage and segregation between the sexes, for the gender gap in education. In a recent effort to boost girls’ primary enrolment and to meet the MDG goal of education for all by 2015, the Ministry of Education announced its decision to waive primary school tuition fees for female students. With approximately half the population under the age of 15 and a population growth rate ranking sixth in the world, education needs to be a top priority for development policy in Yemen. Increasing evidence that as many as 400,000 children under 14 are engaged in child labour adds fresh concern.
|
| 17 million weapons in Yemen © Edward Parsons / United Nations' Integrated Regional Information Network |
Zambia
|
| Community school with no roof at Nthombimbi © United Nations Children's Fund |
Nevertheless, Zambia has the potential to achieve nearly all of the MDGs, according to the Progress Report published in 2005. One important exception is maternal mortality (MDG 5) which has been increasing in recent years. This worrying trend is also true of literacy rates (MDG2) which have declined since 1990. Today one third of the adult population is illiterate. However, free primary education was introduced in 2003, and 95% of children are now going to primary school.