The New York Times - September 4, 2008
Neil Macfarquhar

The question of how to increase development aid will be the main theme on the sidelines of the General Assembly later this month, with scores of heads of state expected to attend a one-day conference on aid, to be held Sept. 25.

The United Nations report showed that aid dropped 8.4 percent in 2007, after a 4.7 percent drop in 2006. Commitments to help Africa in particular have lagged. The Group of 8 industrialized nations pledged in 2005 to donate more than $25 billion to Africa by 2010, but just $4 billion has actually been delivered.

"We are running out of time," Mr. Ban said at a news conference, adding that despite some progress, member states are not meeting their commitments.

Mr. Ban organized a task force to quantify the gap between aid goals for 2015, first set out in 2000 and known as the Millennium Development Goals, and what has actually been achieved.

The conclusions listed in the report included:

Just 79 percent of exports from the least developed countries are given duty-free access to developed countries, short of the goal of 97 percent.

Debt relief has been granted to 33 out of 41 eligible countries, canceling more than 90 percent of their external debt. Still, in 2006, 52 countries spent more paying off debts than on public health, and 10 devoted more to debt payments than to education.

The distribution of medicine to combat H.I.V./AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis has improved, but the supply of affordable drugs remains inadequate.

Huge progress has been made in getting cellphones to developing countries, with signals now available in more than three-quarters of the developing world. But Internet access and other technology lags.

The United Nations wants the richest 22 countries to commit to donating 0.7 percent of their overall national income to aid, but the only countries that have done that are Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden. Most of the aid donors hovered around 0.45 percent, the report said. The United States traditionally devotes a relatively small share of its public wealth to foreign aid.

The Group of 8 committed at a 2005 conference in Gleneagles, Scotland, to increase aid by $50 billion, but the nations are still $31.4 billion short, the report said.

The Millennium Development Goals were regarded as unrealistic targets when they were first introduced, but in the ensuing eight years they have become the framework by which both developing and developed nations set their priorities on aid.

Development experts credit the goals with helping to broaden access to primary education and health care. But some critics argue that the United Nations has emphasized the need for more money rather than the need to allocate existing resources more efficiently.

080904
NYT080903