Statement by Mr Jean Fabre, Deputy Director of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)

Geneva, 17 July 2002—World Civil Society Forum

Audio

I just want to give you a very simple message and my starting point are basic reference, article 1 of the Universal Declarations of the Human Rights: “All human beings are born equal in dignity and rights.” If we look at the world through those lenses we see that we in the world, we can accomplish the best and the worst. We have, during the last decade, moved ahead in a fabulous way. We have managed to reduce the proportion of people who live in absolute poverty from 29 % to 23 %; we have provided access to safe drinking water to 800 million people who didn’t have access to it before; access to sanitation facilities to 750 million people during that decade. Primary education has increased from 80 % to 84 % and we have an unprecedentive number of countries that are now democratic countries and are holding democratic relations, so, over 140 countries can be classified as such. But at the same time we still have one person out of 5 who lives in absolute poverty and we have 800 million people who go hungry or malnourished everyday. The richest 5 % of the world’s people earn a 114 time as much as the poorest 5 % of the people on the globe and 52 countries are ending the decade poorer than they were at the beginning.

For the first time in history, while those countries, all countries, as a matter of fact, had seen the human development index grow over the years, during this decade a number of countries have fallen down. And if you think of the access to knowledge and the wealth of opportunity that Internet offers to people, 72 % of all the internet users are in the richest countries that contain 14 % of the global population and in a number of places you hardly have people who are connected to those facilities, that are more internet users in the entire city of New York than there is in the whole of Sub Saharan Africa.

So this is a world of tremendous disparities and, in order to address those disparities, the United Nations, during the 90s, have called for a number of international conferences that have dealt with all the aspects of the relationship between development and things such as the environment, population, human rights, social exclusion, women, habitat and a number of other issues. At all these conferences we have established action plans and sometimes governments have made commitments.

What is clear is that we know the way forward, we know how to proceed, but there is a time that has been a moment which is of particular importance to all of us in this room and I should say beyond for all those whom we represent and it is the General Assembly of the millennium, of the year 2000 where 189 countries, the governments of the 189 countries, have adopted a series of targets that are called “The Millennium Development Goals” because of the moment when the decision was made. And this is the common project of humanity to start the 21^st century. Those countries, those representatives of the people of the world, with the support of the heads of states and governments, who came in great numbers to ratify those objectives and make a commitment to reach those objectives, have set the course. By 2015 we are to have halved the proportion of people who live in extreme poverty, halved by 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger, reduced by 3/4 natal mortality by 2/3 infant mortality, put every single child through a complete cycle of primary education, whereas today a 130 million children don’t even know what the school is. They pledge by 2015, to have ensured environment stability, to have reversed the progression of HIV/AIDS and to have created a global coalition for development.

This a fabulous project, this the project that should unite us all, it’s a commitment that has been made by governments, but it is something that will be achieved only if everybody feels that this project it is her or his project.

Since the Millennium Goals have been established, we have had a few international appointments. One is particularly encouraging and it is the meeting that took place in Monterey, the Conference on Financing for development where a global deal has been established, whereby developing countries have committed themselves to undertaking economic reforms, political reforms and that should be matched by the commitment of the richest countries that have committed themselves to increasing their support in the way of trade, of aid and investment.

This new global deal still falls short of what is needed. Despite the increases in official development assistance that have pledged in that place, we have still short of 50 billion dollars a year of the additional amount of resources for international cooperation in order to achieve those Millennium Development Goals.

But this is why we need to a real partnership, a global partnership to achieve those goals that involve every single member of what is called the Civil Society.

The administrator of UNDP, Mark Malloch Brown, has been appointed by the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, as the campaign manager and the goalkeeper.

That means that over the coming years we shall be providing you, when I say “we”, it is the entire UN system with the support of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund with a number of tools that should enable us to campaign together, each in our capacity, each from our position, for those goals to be reached.

The Millennium Development Project lead by Jeffery Sax, will provide, year after year, the costs of what this fuel takes to achieve those goals, some ideas about how to reach those goals that also make use of the action plans that have been joined during these international conferences of the 90s, but that also takes the latest information and we will be providing you with reports, year after year, where we stand, are we achieving those goals, are we not achieving those goals, which are the countries that are making it, which are the countries that are not making it.

If we look at the current trends, you have a number of countries that are well on their way to achieve part of those goals or a substantial number of those goals, but you have at least 33 countries that hold the quarter of the world population of which not even half of the goals can be reached.

So it will be important for us to keep you informed all the time and by doing that, we will be providing tools that you can use to campaign, because what we shall need in the 13 years, that we still have to go between now and the year 2015, is constant campaigning in the north and in the south, to make sure that the resources are mobilised, to make sure that political will is mobilised, to make sure that all the technical expertise is mobilised, to make sure that all people are involved. Development doesn’t happen form the top, it comes from the bottom, it comes from individuals, small and medium enterprises, big co-operations, associations, the political will, the political actions at all levels from the municipalities to central governments, it’s a whole set of things that create development and we need the partnership of everybody.

So this is our message for you today, you will have the opportunity, during this Forum, to discuss in depth the Millennium Development Goals and see what that means and what that implies.

But my invitation, this morning, on behalf of the administrator UNDP and of the entire UN system, is really for all of you and all of us to act together, to form this partnership that will make that we will achieve what is achievable. We are the first generation in the entire history of humankind that has the capacity and the means to do away with poverty. There is no more reason for it to be the eternal campaign in the human kind, so let’s get red of it and let’s achieve these goals, this is the project in the beginning of the 21^st century.

Thank you.