Interventions (29 page)

But among households in communities caught in the poverty trap, what income they have is spent entirely on keeping the household's members alive. This means there is no money available for taxes or savings. Hence, with population growth, the depreciation in the value of assets continues, which leads to an ever-reducing stock of capital in the form of resources and services available in the community. This further reduces opportunities for increases in income for individual households, usually leading to even further decreases in income. Add the impact of diseases, which such households are too poor to protect themselves against or treat, and productivity drops even more dramatically, with the income and capital available deteriorating still further.

The result is negative economic growth and an ever-decreasing level of capital per person. This is the situation for millions of communities around the world, and without help from outside, the situation continues to worsen. The only solution is through the managed use of an external injection of capital into that community to transform the cycle of the poverty trap into one of capital accumulation; significant development assistance from wealthy countries is essential for financing this process.

At the heart of the Millennium Development Goals was an understanding, which today is growing but remains incomplete, of the unique contribution that the empowerment of women can make to achieve the wider aims of poverty reduction, sustainable development, education, good governance, and human rights for all. During my travels to some of the most vulnerable communities in the world—from Afghanistan to India to Africa—I often made it a priority to seek out the schools for girls, microfinance projects geared towards women's employment, and the homes and hospitals that cared for the women victims of HIV/AIDS. I saw the boundless curiosity and eagerness for learning in the eyes of the young girls, the entrepreneurial spirit and sense of responsibility among those engaged in new businesses, and the cruel existence of women carrying a disease that their society often would not even acknowledge. I made it a point to meet with women activists and NGO leaders, ministers and teachers—not just to offer my encouragement and support but also to send a message to their own national leaders that to the United Nations, women would never be invisible.

Of course we also knew that there was no easy path to achieving the empowerment of women—or even basic equality. Gender disparities in education, for example, often reflect social attitudes and cultural practices that will take time and sustained effort to overcome. Early marriage is a stark example. For the poorest households in many countries, marrying off daughters at a young age to secure a bride price is often a practice driven by economic need. Add to that the concern in some societies that the benefits of any investment in a daughter's education will be transferred to her future husband's family. The disincentive for girls' schooling is, tragically, all too common. In countries such as Chad, Ethiopia, Mali, Bangladesh, India, and Sierra Leone, between one-quarter and one-third of girls marry by the age of fifteen—effectively marking the end of their education and the beginning of a life without equality of opportunity.

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A
fter the Millennium Declaration, international financing for the MDGs was the big missing piece. I decided that we needed to bring together the world's leading thinkers and politicians on the subject, to devise a political strategy for the way forward in a process that would conclude with a special summit of finance ministers and heads of state and government. In November 2000, I asked Ernesto Zedillo, the president of Mexico, to chair this panel.

The subsequent International Conference on Financing for Development was held in Monterrey, Mexico, in March 2002. This produced the Monterrey Consensus, in which it was formally agreed by over fifty attending heads of state and two hundred finance, foreign, and international development ministers that globalization and privatization alone could not be expected to help the poorest countries, as they lacked the infrastructure and human capital to attract such investment. External government-issued aid, therefore, had an essential role to play in international development, as well as foreign investment and trade. To back this up they issued an enormously important statement, urging “all developed countries that have not done so to make concrete efforts toward the goal of 0.7 percent of gross domestic product as official development assistance.”

This commitment to 0.7 percent of GDP was a breakthrough because it represented, for the first time, a decisive financial agreement among developed countries to commit the necessary resources to poverty eradication. Before Monterrey, aid from developed countries had been in decline for many years. In 2002, it stood at barely 0.2 percent of their shared GDP. Monterrey saw the reversal of this trend for the first time since the Cold War. It also brought an unexpected pledge from U.S. president George W. Bush, who decided to join the conference at the last minute.
He promised $10 billion from the United States over three years to go into the Millennium Challenge Account, a project designed to increase assistance to countries that had demonstrated their ability to use external funding successfully. Granted, even this new level of commitment did not bring the United States to even 0.2 percent of GDP in overseas development assistance. The United States was still one of the lowest contributors to development in terms of its capacity to pay. Nevertheless, this new move was hugely encouraging. We were nowhere near where we needed to be, but at least we now seemed to be facing in the right direction.

But this did not last long. A few months prior to the Monterrey conference, New York and Washington DC had been struck by the 9/11 terrorist attacks. As a result, preparations to invade Iraq loomed large soon after Monterrey, and world attention fled to that issue, doing enormous diplomatic damage to our attempts to bring about a common and united international focusing of efforts and resources on poverty. While those in the Bush administration were preparing for a military reckoning with Iraq, they were increasingly turning their heads from international development and dividing up the international community as they went.

One of the cruelly ironic features of this change was the fact that international development is a crucial part of the long-term fight against terrorism. While there are no statistical correlations between levels of poverty and the incidence of terrorist attacks in particular countries, failed development and poverty creates inequalities that underpin many of the grievances that drive terrorism. Furthermore, a lack of development undermines a country's ability to sustain effective domestic security forces. It is partnerships with these local forces that in the last ten years have proved the most effective means in tackling al Qaeda globally. International development is a vital security interest for nations of the rich world with any concerns about terrorism.

But in a world consumed with the specter of terrorism, this was poorly understood. Following the invasion of Iraq, members of the Bush administration—though not Bush himself—even turned against the concept of the MDGs. They started refusing to refer to the MDGs in speeches on development and began opposing their mention in UN and OECD documents. Concerned by the commitment required of rich countries by the MDGs there was even a moment when U.S. ambassador to the UN John Bolton attempted to have any mention of the MDGs removed from the draft declaration of the 2005 UN summit, despite it being an event concerned with examining progress toward the goals. Entirely isolated in this endeavor, Bolton was not able to succeed, but this attempt to savage the MDGs at a summit designed to advance them did not benefit the United States' standing in the world.

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I
t is in this erratic manner that the fight against poverty has lurched on ever since. The 2005 G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, hosted by Tony Blair and underpinned by the staunch support of the British finance minister Gordon Brown, was another highlight that later compromised itself. Gleneagles saw a new set of groundbreaking promises, including a pledge to double aid to Africa by 2010. But the G8 has since reneged on this promise.

The vast array of supporters, organizations, activists, and local leaders engaged in development need the financial support and opportunities that only the rich world can provide to multiply the striking results such targeted aid has produced. To mention just two very isolated examples of the impact of targeted aid:

By 2000, malaria was killing over twenty-nine thousand people a year in Ethiopia. In 2005, as part of its campaign to meet the MDGs, the government introduced a program to deliver two mosquito nets to every family at risk, alongside a reduction in the cost of malarial drugs and treatment. This was possible only with donor support, and within three years, deaths from malaria were cut in half. In Rwanda in 2003, access to health care stood at just 7 percent of the population. But a health insurance scheme was brought into place, with the small fee subsidized by foreign aid for those who could not afford it. By 2009, this simple scheme saw access to health care rise to 85 percent.

It is these kinds of projects, replicated across the range of issues and around the world, that could create the sustained, worldwide leap forward in the campaign to end poverty that the MDGs demand. And their enormous and tangible impact on the lives of those affected is impossible without donor funding. But the rich world keeps faltering and has repeatedly failed to fall in decisively behind these activities. While the overall decline in contributions has been reversed since 2000, the developed world has not come anywhere near to meeting its collective promise to dedicate just 0.7 percent of GDP to overseas development assistance—the minimum financial contribution required for any hope of ending extreme poverty.

It is vital, however, also to emphasize that the success of external support is utterly predicated on leadership and the institutional reform efforts of recipient countries. It is not only corruption that can make aid money ineffective or wasteful. It is weak policies, poor leadership, and unaccountable institutions that produce dire results for the lives of the poor as well. In Pakistan, for example, the rate of teacher absenteeism has been 19 percent, and in some places in the world it is as high as 25 percent or more. In Bangladesh, absenteeism rates for doctors in primary health care centers have been reported at 74 percent. As emphasized in a report by the World Bank, absenteeism rates of such severity are not a matter of money—they are an institutional problem that must be resolved through reform and institutional change, which depends upon local leadership and true on-the-ground partners for social progress.

Many developing countries have proven reluctant to undertake necessary reforms to resolve these kinds of institutional problems because such policies can be divisive and politically contentious. (Teachers unions and medical unions can often be powerful players in local politics.) As a 2011 report evaluating success in achieving the MDGs concluded, those countries that are on track for meeting the MDGs are there not because they received the largest amount of aid but because, most of all, they have made the greatest efforts in economic reforms, including in innovations in service delivery.

Responsibility for reform lies with the people on the ground, the politicians and leaders within their own countries. But the failure of donor countries to provide the necessary financial aid when these kinds of reforms are being pursued is perhaps made even more unforgivable by this dynamic. The reformers need to be given every chance. The MDGs are a partnership in the truest sense between the rich and poor. The people within developing countries are responsible, but everyone has a role to play.

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O
f the countless components to the MDGs campaign and our battle with poverty, one issue—HIV/AIDS—demands special focus. In turning to this challenge, we drew on many of the innovations of the Millennium Declaration, applying them in an intensive form to face down one of the most serious crises of my secretary-generalship.

At 8:50 a.m. New York time, on December 7, 1999, the phone rang. It was Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, on the line:

“We should raise HIV/AIDS as an issue at the Security Council in January.”

When I heard this I couldn't help but pause in satisfaction at this news. For HIV/AIDS to obtain the attention that it deserved, and of the right kind, I had believed for some time that it had to be understood as a security issue. It was not just a problem to be packaged away under the label of “health.” It was a fundamental security threat of global proportions: just the sort of world issue that the UN, and particularly the Security Council, existed to deal with. But its nature as a disease meant it was of a type never brought to the Security Council before. This was a foolish reason not to act against a threat that had required concerted global attention for years. An obstinate layer of ambivalence in the corridors of power had made leaders apparently impervious to the colossal evidence that mounted every day.

“Well, we have a problem, Richard. You do realize HIV/AIDS isn't seen as a peace and security issue don't you?” I was deliberately baiting him. I needed to establish the level of his ambition. Was this going to be a side issue, a distracting footnote at the Security Council, or was this going to be an opportunity to bring HIV/AIDS into the center of international diplomacy? It would all depend on how the powerful would represent it.

“You know full well that you told me over a year ago that it is a security issue!” Richard replied. “If we take it to the Security Council now, then it's finally going to get the emphasis that it deserves. This is going to be a priority for the U.S. presidency of the Security Council.”

The idea was finally in the head of one of the permanent five. A crack in the wall had opened. Better than that, we had Holbrooke leading the charge. I thought the other members of the Council might not be ready to accept this change. But Holbrooke had the force and personality and moral courage, in a manner like no one else, to push the other governments into unfamiliar territory. With the Security Council as a rhetorical partner, there was now a chance for a change in the trajectory of the HIV/AIDS agenda. Holbrooke had been speaking to Nelson Mandela that day, and I remembered my own lesson from Mandela's achievements: you have to have a sense of opportunity.