A UN panel called Thursday for a campaign to convince Western public opinion of its self-interest in greatly increasing government development aid to poor countries.
"There is a misperception in donor countries that they give away too much," the panel chairman, former Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo, told a news conference. "In fact, they give away too little."
Zedillo had earlier given UN Secretary General Kofi Annan the panel's report, containing 12 recommendations for a major UN conference on financing for development, to be held in Mexico in March 2002.
The panel noted that while the past half-century had seen faster human and economic development than any comparable period in history, more than a fifth of the world's population still lives in abject poverty, on less than one dollar a day.
"Sadly, increasing polarisation between the haves and the have-nots has become a feature of our world; reversing this shameful trend is the pre-eminent moral and humanitarian challenge of our age," it said.
"For people in the rich wold, elementary self-interest is also at stake," it continued.
"In the global village, someone else's poverty very soon becomes one's own problem: lack of markets for one's products, illegal immigration, pollution, contagious disease, insecurity, fanaticism, and even terrorism."
The panel noted that direct foreign investment to developing countries now totals about 190 billion dollars a year, dwarfing official development assistance (ODA) from industrial states, which totalled 53.1 billion last year.
But, it said, the conference in Mexico should seek a commitment from the rich nations to meet the UN's target for them to provide 0.7 percent of their gross national product as ODA.
Last year, only five countries attained or bettered the target.
Figures published by the OECD in April showed that Denmark contributed 1.06 percent, The Netherlands 0.82, Sweden 0.81, Norway 0.80 and Luxembourg 0.70 percent.
At the other end of the scale, Greece put aside 0.19 percent of its GNP, Italy 0.13 and the United States 0.10 percent.
"The international development goals are unlikely to be achievable unless public opinion in the developed countries comes to recognise the moral and the utilitarian case for treating them as a priority," Zedillo said.
The goals, endorsed at the UN's Millennium Summit in September 2000, include halving the proportion of people in abject poverty, achieving universal primary education, and improving the lives of 100 million slum dwellers, all by 2015.
"Our estimates are only indicative, but they show clearly that there is a very large shortfall in official development assistance," Zedillo said.
He said an extra 50 billion dollars a year was needed in ODA to meet the development goals, and another eight-to-nine billion "in a typical year" for relief of humanitarian and natural disasters.
"It is an ambitious agenda which requires public education and political courage," he said.
"Many politicians do not support foreign aid, not because they don't think it is good -- many of them probably do think it is good -- but because their constituents do not think it is good."
The panel advocated a massive campaign to convince public opinion, particulary in the United States, Zedillo said. |
