Firm will needed to meet Millennium Goals
by Hoang Nhu Hoa
What do you remem-ber as the mile-stone international event of the Year 2000?
Perhaps its former United States President Bill Clinton's visit to Viet Nam or Vladimir Putin's election as president of the Russian Federation?
What about the largest ever meeting of world leaders, who at the end of three days of negotiations and speeches in New York – from September 6 to September 8 – ratified the United Nations Millennium Declaration?
The purpose of that historic meeting was to discuss the role of the world organisation in the new century and was followed by the General Assembly-sponsored World Summit five years later where the 189 member countries agreed to a more equitable distribution of the fruits of globalisation by 2015.
The summit gave birth to a new concept — The Millennium Development Goals or MDGs — and its eight targets included: Halving the number of people living in extreme poverty; reducing and reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS, and providing basic education for the young.
The United Nations Resident Co-ordinator in Viet Nam, John Hendra, provides a simple explanation of the goals.
"As President Ho Chi Minh put it in 1945, Viet Nam has two enemies, illiteracy and hunger," he says
"The MDGs are very similar; they talk about the right to food, to clothing, to send our children to school, to ensure healthy babies are born and that mothers can deliver their babies safely.
"They speak to the need to have a roof over our heads, clean water, and a safe and unspoiled environment. The MDGs are very similar to the rights that are outlined in Viet Nam's Constitution, which says that all people have the right to enjoy an abundant, free and happy life."
Meeting
The world's representatives are about to again meet in New York from September 20-22 to review progress, assess obstacles and shortcomings and agree to concrete strategies and actions to ensure the goals are met on schedule.
Global advances in regards to the MDGs vary, and Asia's progress, although impressive, is uneven.
Regional ministers who reviewed the MDGs in Jakarta last month were told that East and Southeast Asia continue to record the sharpest reduction in poverty but South Asia lags behind the Asia-Pacific and is in danger of missing the targets.
Viet Nam helps set the standard in Southeast Asia.
A draft report titled Viet Nam on the Track to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals shows the country's poverty rate fell from 58.1 per cent in 1993 to 28.9 per cent in 2002 and to 14.5 per cent in 2008.
Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has approved the report and it will be tabled at the New York summit.
It confirms that Viet Nam has achieved the first MDG of halving the proportion of people whose income is less than US$1 a day since 2002.
"Viet Nam has been a world leader in poverty reduction," Hendra told Viet Nam News.
"While China has lifted more people out of poverty, Viet Nam has achieved a more rapid rate of poverty reduction. Poverty reduction has largely benefited all population groups, across urban and rural areas, and all regions.
"Viet Nam is rightfully proud of this achievement."
This year's UN MDGs Report shows the sharpest reductions in poverty continue to be recorded in Eastern Asia.
Poverty
Poverty rates in China are expected to fall about 5 per cent and 24 per cent in India by 2015.
But Secretary General Ban Ki-moon concedes that "it is clear that improvement in the lives of the poor has been unacceptably slow and some hard-won gains are being eroded by the climate, food and economic crises".
Newly elected Philippine President Benigno Aquino acknowledges that his country is in serious danger of missing many of the MDGs, including halving poverty by 2015.
Food and fuel shocks in early 2008 and the global financial crisis hampered the government's efforts to foster change, he says.
But the Philippines is on course to achieve targets as gender equality, reducing infant deaths, controlling malaria and tuberculosis and improving access to sanitation.
Bangladesh is one of only seven countries to have reduced child mortality in both rich and poor families and improved girl's chances of survival, says a new Save the Children study.
"Bangladesh has defied the odds," and avoided this "dangerous trend" with an average 5.3 per cent yearly fall in the child mortality rate between 1993 and 2007 and a closing of the gap between the survival of girls against boys, the report, titled, A Fair Chance at Life, found.
But the lives of up to 4 million children could have been saved in the last decade had developing countries reduced infant mortality among the poor at the same rate as the rich, it says.
So if progress has been made, there is also much to do.
The effects of the global financial crisis are expected to persist and the poverty rate is likely to be slightly higher in 2015 and even to 2020 – the number of people living in poverty was estimated at 1.5 billion in 2005 – with sluggish progress from providing education to ensuring access to political decision-making.
Hendra says the challenges for Viet Nam range from rising urban inequality; the quality and affordability of social services, including health and education; corruption within basic social services; gender equality; policy development and consolidating the gains made so far.
"I hope Viet Nam will also take the opportunity to renew its own commitment to addressing disparities in MDG attainments in Viet Nam so that all of the MDGs will not only be achieved in the country as a whole but also in every province, in every district and in every commune – for all the Vietnamese people," he says.
Commitments made in New York later this month will not go unnoticed. — VNS