United Press International - April 21, 2004
Dar Haddix, UPI Business Correspondent

On a scale of 0 to 10, the world scored no better than a 4 in its attempts to solve any major humanitarian issue, the report said. A score of 10 would mean that the world did all it could in 2003 to achieve the goals, while a 5 would indicate that the world did about half of what it should have in 2003.

Efforts to secure world health and eradicate poverty earned a score of 4, while efforts to ensure peace and security, education, environment, and human rights each received a score of 3, according to the first annual report of the WEF's Global Governance Initiative. The report notes several initiatives by the World Bank and/or the IMF aimed at achieving these goals.

"The world community is devoting less than half of the effort necessary to meet any of the goals ... to building a safer more prosperous world," -- goals that are part of the United Nations Millennium Declaration, a multinational agreement to confront poverty, illiteracy, hunger, environmental abuse and other problems," said GGI steering committee member Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, chairman of Anglo American Plc. "All elements of society need to work much more effectively if we are to meet the goals by 2015; no one group on its own can achieve the goals."

Leaders from 189 countries set the goals in September 2000, at the Millennium Summit of the United Nations.

The report doesn't just blame governments for the shortfall. "It is now time to hold all of us -- governments, business, civil society and international institutions -- more accountable for the egregious gap between aspiration and action," the report said.

Private investment in the public-private cooperation in the rebuilding of Afghanistan and Mozambique is a bright spot the GGI report indicated.

Poverty is on the rise in Africa, Latin America and South Asia, the report said, in spite of the declaration's "strikingly modest" goal of halving the number of people whose income is less than $1 per day.

Currently, 2.8 billion live on less than $2 a day, and 1.2 billion on less than $1 a day.

A big part of the problem is agricultural subsidies which give the richest countries' farmers the advantage, the report noted.

The GGI report congratulated China (home to about 1 billion people or 1/6th of the world's population) for cutting rural poverty from 31 percent to 11 percent between 1990 and 1998, but noted that urban poverty has increased, though China has tried to compensate with social "safety nets."

The challenge that hunger presents is a complicated one. The physical and mental effects of hunger can perpetuate poverty and hunger through the generations, reduce productivity and hike up health care costs. Out of 34 countries containing more than 90 percent of the world's hungry people, China and Nigeria slashed the number of hungry people in half since 1990, and East Asian and Latin America look to be on track to meet the declaration goal by the 2015 due date, but hunger has intensified in Burundi, Congo, Rwanda, Tanzania and North Korea.

One research initiative, the Harvest Plus Program, is looking into how to increase nutrients in staple foods of people in developing countries. The World Bank has looked into the benefits of such research.

A lot of progress is being made toward primary schooling as well as girls' schooling, but not secondary education, the report said. Education is "instrumental in higher economic growth, human security, poverty alleviation and participation in political and community life," the report said. China and India are far from meeting secondary-schooling goals for gender parity in schools. Countries with only 75 girls enrolled for every 100 boys included Afghanistan, Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Mozambique and Pakistan.

Eliminating school fees is the most important step to making education affordable, especially for girls, the report said.

While poor countries get $1.5 billion a year for education, a report by Education for All estimates that $5.6 billion more is needed. The World Bank's Fast Track program, which promises financial and technical help to countries with good education plans and reasonable education budgets, is also short $100 million of the promised $300 million from wealthier countries, the report said.

Health also greatly cripples productivity, which hurts people's ability to work or feed them selves, or care for children, the report said.

About 40 million people are now infected with HIV/AIDS it said, but "More money is available for HIV/AIDS than ever before," the report said. The World Health Organization's "3 by 5" program aims to get 3 million people on anti-retroviral medications by 2005 by obtaining the drugs cheaply and training volunteers to deliver the drugs and monitor drug regimens. Low- and middle-income countries spent $4.7 billion on HIV/AIDS in 2003, compared to $200 million in 1996 the report said, and Congress is poised to approve $2.4 billion for HIV/AIDS in FY2004. But dangerous behaviors need to be changed, and health-protective services need to be used to make a real difference according to the report. The biggest hurdle to reaching the health goals is the apathetic attitude of affected countries.

"HIV/AIDS continues to spread most aggressively in precisely the countries whose leaders refused to take the threat seriously," among them, China, India and South Africa, the GGI report indicated.

While several corporations as well as government coalitions have voluntarily enacted more environmentally friendly policies, human activity has already raised the earth's temperature about 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.6 degrees Celsius), and is projected to raise it another 2.5-10.4 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5-6.24 Celsius) by century's end, the report said.

"Addressing climate change will require a technological revolution, one that leads to a global society producing zero, or close to zero, net emissions of greenhouse gases," the report said.

Forests and fisheries, a major source of income for some, have been overharvested because of scant regulation of these industries. Many people are forced to pay private providers instead of the state for clean drinking water due to lack of government funding, the report said.

Finally, workers' rights are often still not observed. The International Convention for the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families, an initiative that protects migrants' rights, has not been ratified by a single industrial country, the report said.

More than 213 union activists were killed in 2002 for supporting labor rights, 1,000 workers were attacked and beaten, and 30,000 were fired, the report said.

This, despite the World Bank, the IMF and the U.N. Development Program putting more money into judicial and other systems to regulate crime, corruption, and abusive administrations.

"The attempt to link the security sector with the development agenda is particularly significant. Focusing on the security and development nexus will go a long way in pushing the global agenda for the benefit of all who suffer daily threats and poverty," said Sadako Ogata, president of the Japan International Cooperation Agency and GGI steering committee member.

The report can be accessed at:

http://www.weforum.org/documents/special_activities/GGI_Executive_Summary.pdf.

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