Poverty Breeds Insecurity

NEW YORK: At the Millennium Summit in September 2000, the largest gathering of world leaders in history adopted the UN Millennium Declaration, committing their nations to a global partnership to reduce poverty, improve health, and promote peace, human rights, gender equality, and environmental sustainability. Soon after, world leaders met again at the March 2002 International Conference on Financing for Development in Monterrey, Mexico, establishing a landmark framework for global development partnership in which developed and developing countries agreed to take joint actions for poverty reduction (box 1). Later that same year, UN member states gathered at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa, where they reaffirmed the Goals as the world's time-bound development targets.

The Goals not only reflect global justice and human rights-they are also vital to international and national security and stability. Poor and hungry societies are much more likely than high-income societies to fall into conflict over scarce vital resources, such as watering holes and arable land-and over scarce natural resources, such as oil, diamonds, and timber. .Achieving the Millennium Development Goals should therefore be placed centrally in international efforts to end violent conflict, instability, and terrorism. We endorse the Panel's recommended criterion of 0.7 percent of GNP in official donor assistance for developed countries aspiring to permanent membership.

Poverty increases the risks of conflict through multiple paths. Poor countries are more likely to have weak governments, making it easier for would-be rebels to grab land and vital resources. Resource scarcity can provoke population migrations and displacements that result in conflicts between social groups, as in Darfur, Sudan, in the wake of diminishing rainfall. Without productive alternatives, young people may turn to violence for material gain, or feel a sense of hopelessness, despair, and rage. Poor farmers who lack basic infrastructure and access to agricultural markets may turn in desperation to narcotics production and trade, such as growing poppy in Afghanistan or coca in the Andes. Many slums are controlled by gangs of drug traffickers and traders, who create a vicious cycle of insecurity and poverty. The lack of economically viable options other than criminal activity creates the seedbed of -instability-and increases the potential for violence.

The world has made significant progress in achieving many of the Goals. Between 1990 and 2002 average overall incomes increased by approximately 21 percent. The number of people in extreme poverty declined by an estimated 130 million 1. Child mortality rates fell from 103 deaths per 1,000 live births a year to 88. Life expectancy rose from 63 years to nearly 65 years. An additional 8 percent of the developing world's people received access to water. And an additional 15 percent acquired access to improved sanitation services.

But progress has been far from uniform across the world-or across the Goals. There are huge disparities across and within countries. Within countries, poverty is greatest for rural areas, though urban poverty is also extensive, growing, and underreported by traditional indicators.

There is no one-size-fits-all explanation for why the Goals are failing or succeeding. Each region and each Goal requires a careful analysis. We can, however, identify four overarching reasons why the Goals are not being achieved. Sometimes the problem is poor governance, marked by corruption, poor economic policy choices, and denial of human rights. Sometimes the problem is a poverty trap, with local and national economies too poor to make the needed investments. Sometimes progress is made in one part of the country but not in others, so that pockets of poverty persist. Even when overall governance is adequate, there are often areas of specific policy neglect that can have a monumental effect on their citizens' well-being. Sometimes these factors occur together, making individual problems all the more challenging to resolve.

Governance failures

Economic development stalls when governments do not uphold the rule of law, pursue sound economic policy, make appropriate public investments, manage a public administration, protect basic human rights, and support civil -society organizations-including those representing poor people-in national decisionmaking.

The rule of law involves security in private property and tenure rights, safety from violence and physical abuse, honesty and transparency in government functions, and predictability of government behavior according to law. Too many countries fail to achieve these basic standards, sometimes due to authoritarian rulers who use violence and corruption to hold on to power-but often because upholding the rule of law requires institutions for government accountability, and those institutions are missing.

Political and social rights should ensure equality before the law and fairness in society across groups. These rights must be substantive and not merely formal. The poor must have a meaningful say in the decisions that affect their lives. Women and girls must be assured freedom from violence and from legal, economic, and social discrimination. In many places, access to public goods and services is restricted for certain groups. Minority groups, for their language, religion, or race, suffer discrimination at the hands of more powerful groups.

Sound economic policies involve a rational balance of responsibilities between the private sector and the public sector to secure sustained and widespread economic progress. The private sector is the engine of growth in production. The public sector establishes the framework and enabling environment for growth by setting sound macroeconomic policies and providing such public goods as infrastructure, public health and education, and support for science and technology.

Public investments are crucial for a "private-based" market economy. Every successful economy relies heavily on public spending in critical areas including health, education, infrastructure (electricity grid, roads, seaports), environmental management (national parks and protected reserves, water and sanitation), information and communications, scientific research, and land for affordable housing.

Accountable and efficient public administration requires transparency and administrators who are qualified, motivated, and adequately paid. It also requires efficient management systems, to disburse and track large investments, and monitoring and evaluation systems. Many poor countries without adequate resources for decent salaries-or the checks on political abuse that provide the incentives for performance and the ability to weed out the inept and corrupt-are unable to afford an effective public sector, so they end up suffering from large-scale inefficiencies and wasted resources.

Strong civil society engagement and participation are crucial to effective governance because they bring important actors to the fore, ensure the relevance of public investments, lead to decisions that best address the people's needs as they perceive them, and serve as watchdogs for the development and implementation of government policies.

Achieving the Goals requires that all these areas of governance be properly addressed. There is no excuse for any country, no matter how poor, to abuse its citizens, deny them the equal protection of the law, or leave them victims of corruption, mismanagement, and economic irrationality. Some improvements in governance do not cost much money, if any, and some actually save money (by cutting corruption or granting land tenure, for example). Some improvements in economic outcomes are thus available at low cost, and such opportunities must not be squandered.

To achieve the Goals, governments must work actively with all constituencies, particularly civil society organizations and the private sector. Civil society organizations can help design national strategies, deliver services, defend human rights, and supervise government in the fight against corruption and misrule. And the private sector is, plainly, the place for job creation and long-term income growth.

neonatal health have also been grossly insufficient. All of these areas of neglect could be addressed through strengthening the management and service delivery of district-level health systems.

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