Event Summary:
InterAction Symposium Weighs How to Achieve Millennium Development
Goals
Millennium
Development Goals should be seen as a "political framework"
through which voters in developing countries and their supporters
in developed nations "demand better of their governments''
in reducing poverty, United Nations Development Programme
Administrator Mark Malloch Brown told InterAction's recent
symposium on MDGs.
Under
the broad political framework outlined by Malloch Brown, participants
linked trade and finance policy and political will as key
elements that contribute to an environment for achieving the
worldwide poverty reduction goals.
The
symposium on Creating an Enabling Environment for Achievement
of the Millennium Development Goals was co-sponsored by the
Interim Facilitating Group for Follow-up to Monterrey, the
Friedrich Ebert Foundation, Heinrich Böll Foundation
and InterAction -- with support from the United Nations. The
Oct. 2 event drew nearly 200 participants from government,
donors, U.S. nongovernmental organizations and civil society
groups.
The symposium
was designed to examine not only the role of developing country
governance, but also the role of the international community
-- particularly the donor community -- in creating an enabling
environment for achievement of the internationally agreed
upon development goals pledged to be realized by 2015.
The symposium
sought to link the trade and finance policy discourses emanating
from the Doha Trade Rounds, the Monterrey Financing for Development
Conference, and the World Summit on Sustainable Development
in Johannesburg, under the unifying MDG framework.
In opening
the meeting, Mary E. McClymont, InterAction's president and
chief executive officer, underscored the importance of the
MDGs. "The MDGs represent a milestone and give a clear
set of objectives for the entire international community to
get behind. We are urging that the president's Millennium
Challenge Account be tied to the MDGs and used to advance
them."
Malloch
Brown said the MDGs have elements of politics and measurement,
noting that there were "the MDGs for Bono, and the MDGs
for (Treasury Secretary) Paul O'Neill."
The UNDP
administrator asserted that figures on country progress are
imperative for generating active, productive debate in an
attempt to reverse the trend of countries not achieving MDGs.
According to Malloch Brown, the vast database of MDG progress
measurements and the ensuing debates would generate the energy,
the demands, and ultimately the results necessary to achieve
the goals.
Malloch
Brown stressed that the MDGs are still more about politics
than economics and that developing thinking must be "out
of the box" if it is going to achieve the goals. The
real drive to achieve the MDGs will not come from better economics,
but from a "broad political energy and power exercised
by civil society through its organizations, exercised ultimately
by voters at the ballot box, which will just demand of their
policy makers better results," he said.
In order
to generate the kind of universal debate envisioned for the
MDGs to drive global political action, Malloch Brown said
the MDGs must infiltrate the policy planning process everywhere
as measures of progress - including the Poverty Reduction
Strategy Papers process, Organization for Economic Cooperation
and Development/Development Assistance Committee peer reviews,
and regional strategies. In this way, he explained, the MDGs
would become "the common language" used by all development
practitioners to agree about the goals and "infuse the
broader political community" with the same energy.
One place
where the MDGs are glaringly absent is the in the Bush administration's
Millennium Challenge Account, which would increase U.S. development
aid for countries that govern justly, invest in their people
and encourage economic freedom. Malloch Brown said he's tried
to persuade the White House that "if the MCA is to have
real value as a globally accepting legitimate effort to reward
winners," they must "use the globally accepted measurement
system" found in the MDGs, rather than creating an independent
system of measurement.
The
important roles of measurement and unity outlined by Malloch
Brown were echoed by several symposium panelists. Both Rampela
Mamphele, Managing Director of the World Bank, and Ivan Simonovic,
president of the U.N.'s Economic and Social Council, commented
on present failures of the development community in contributing
to the success of the MDGs. While Mamphele focused on the
need for more accurate information collection and data, Simonovic
called for continued increase in overseas development assistance.
A second
panel focused on the role of U.S. foreign policy in achieving
the MDGs. Cynthia Rozell, the U.S. Agency for International
Development's senior advisor on the Millennium Challenge Account,
announced that effective immediately, USAID "will begin
monitoring and tracking all of its development assessments
through the lens of the Millennium Development Goals."
Despite
the USAID announcement, the disparity of relatively small
impacts from new bilateral agreements in the face of much
larger on-going donor-country trade policies continued to
present itself as an immense obstacle to MDG achievement.
Panelist Steven Radelet, Senior Fellow at the Center for Global
Development remarked that "trade polices of the European
Union and the United States always have a much, much greater
impact on achievement towards the MDGs than any bilateral
assistance program we can come up with."
Other
panelists identified lack of emphasis on essential services,
low levels of overseas development assistance, over prescription
of market access, and misguided multilateral agreements as
inhibiting factors to MDG achievement.
Sarah
Jane Hise is a program associate with the Committee on
Development Policy and Practice at InterAction.
Related
Documents
InterAction
White Paper
InterAction Campaign
InterAction
Fact Sheets on the MDGs
InterAction
Fact Sheets on Economic Growth and Poverty Reduction
UNDP
Documents
The
Millennium Development Goals: Targets and Indicators
The
Millennium Development Goals: What They Are and What We Can
Do Together (June 2002)
Mark
Malloch Brown Commentary "Goals for the New Millennium"
(June 2002)
Are
the MDG's Feasible? (July 2002)
Localising
the Millennium Development Goals: Some Examples (September
2002)
UNDP
and Civil Society Organizations: A Policy Note on Engagnement
A
Joint Submission to the World Bank and the IMF Review of HIPC
and Dect Sustainability (August 2002)
MDG
Core Strategy (September 2002)
Human
Development Report 2002
Road
map towards the implementation of the United Nations Millennium
Declaration, Report of the Secretary-General (6 September
2002)
