Focus on world’s poor during General Assembly debate

Nick Wadhams

UNITED NATIONS — Leaders from developing nations took the rostrum Monday at the annual U.N. General Assembly debate to criticize rich countries for not doing enough to ease the plight of the world’s poorest people.

Speakers from Africa, Asia and Latin America said they were encouraged by a document adopted at a three-day summit last week promising to alleviate poverty, but would withhold final judgment until rich nations make good on their vows.

“We will now wait in earnest to see concrete results,” Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam of Mauritius said in his address on the third day of the ministerial meetings.

He called on the international community to intensify the political will and resources needed to succeed.

“The wealthy and powerful should assist the less fortunate countries which require assistance to help propel them into the orbit of a reversible sustainable social and economic growth,” he said.

While the focus of the summit that ended Friday was largely efforts to overhaul the U.N. management and human rights machinery, the original thrust of the event was to take stock of progress made toward achieving a series of goals set in 2000 to cut poverty by half, ensure universal primary education and stem the AIDS pandemic, all by 2015.

Leaders of poor nations made clear that they were not impressed with the progress made so far. A week ago, a U.N. report said that about 40 percent of the world’s people still struggle to survive on less than $2 a day.

“We need to step up our efforts,” Madagascar’s president, Marc Ravalomanana, said Monday. “It is also time for Africa to be better represented.”

There is strong support for enlarging the powerful Security Council as part of U.N. reform efforts to better represent developing nations in Africa and elsewhere and reflect the world today rather than the power structure after World War II when the United Nations was created.

The Security Council currently has 15 members — 10 elected for two-year terms and five permanent members with veto power — the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France.

On the sidelines of the meeting, Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora met with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and ministers of European and Muslim nations as he seeks economic ties beyond his country’s former patron and overlord Syria.

The Israeli and Tunisian foreign ministers also met amid Israel’s warming relations with the Arab world following its withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.

Underlying many global problems is the widening gap between rich and poor in many parts of the world — and the inability of the poorest to escape the poverty trap.

The 2005 U.N. Human Development Report, released Sept. 7, said more than 1 billion people still survive on less than $1 a day, and 2.5 billion live on less than $2 a day — about 40 percent of the world’s 6.2 billion population.

The 35-page document adopted Friday by world leaders dropped a call for countries that haven’t done so — including the United States — “to make concrete efforts” to earmark 0.7 percent of their gross domestic product to development assistance.

Jamaica’s Prime Minister P.J. Patterson, speaking on behalf of the Group of 77 developing countries, repeated Sunday what has been largely acknowledged by many U.N. and outside officials: the world is nowhere close to meeting the development goals.

“At the current pace, some regions and countries will miss several of the MDGs by decades,” Patterson said. “In certain areas, such as the elimination of hunger, we would be centuries away.”

Sri Lanka’s President Chandrika Kumaratunga said “it is unconscionable” to let 6 million children die from malnutrition before their 5th birthday and to have more than 50 percent of Africa’s people suffer from diseases caused by contaminated drinking water.

(Associated Press)