2006/117

CLEAN WATER, SCHOOLING AND AID

ARE MDG SUCCESS STORIES

But the UN reports that TB is making a comeback, gender progress may be steady but it is slow, and only half of the developing world has access to sanitation

TEHRAN, 4 July 2006 (UNIC)-- With 86 per cent of the developing world’s children going to school in 2003/4, the UN projects in a report released today that continued effort can put the world over the top in terms of the Millennium Development Goal of universal enrollment by 2015. That effort will need to be particularly strong in sub-Saharan Africa, however, because although primary school enrollment there has risen dramatically from roughly 50 per cent in 1990, more than one third of school age children today are still left outside the classroom.

This year’s progress report on the eight universally endorsed Millennium Development Goals is launched as international support in terms of aid and debt relief is being ratcheted upward, and national mobilization campaigns are taking off.

Also within sight is the MDG target of cutting in half the proportion of the developing world population lacking access to clean drinking water. That rate has fallen from about 30 per cent in 1990 to 20 per cent in 2004, with a little more than a decade left to bring the rate down to the agreed target of 15 per cent.

But the related target of reducing by half the percentage of those without access to improved sanitary facilities is unlikely to be met without greatly accelerated efforts, the UN reports. Sixty-five per cent of the developing worlds lacked access to such facilities in 1990. Today, half the world still lacks access, far removed from the 2015 target of 33 per cent.

Statistics from the UN Millennium Development Report 2006, the most recent and comprehensive statistical compendium available on global and regional MDG progress, tell a story of broad, sustained and probably inexorable progress for girls and women since 1990. They are benefiting from gains in births attended by a skilled health care worker and in participation rates in primary schools, work places and parliaments. But much of this change over the last decade and a half has been incremental, and the UN notes that discriminatory practices persist across the board.

Killer diseases untamed

The number of tuberculosis cases has risen since 1990, rather than fallen, as have HIV infections. Fortunately, international awareness of these two diseases, as well as of a persistently high toll from malaria, has spurred billions of dollars in support of specialized funds. The UN reports success in countries that have engaged in focused activities in distributing anti-malarial bed nets and in changing behaviours that put people at risk of HIV infections.

Even as burgeoning population and economic growth are stressing natural environments and swallowing natural resources, countries are taking protective measures. Consumption of ozone depleting substances has dropped from more than 200 tonnes in 1990 to around 60 in 2004. Energy is being used more efficiently. The continued loss of forests -- primarily through conversion to agricultural land -- is an ecological tragedy, but the rate of loss is slowing. The questions remain, as to whether protective measures can take effect swiftly enough to head off rapid climate change, runaway pollution and exhaustion of fresh water sources.

New life in the international partnership against poverty

The main objective commonly associated with the MDGs is eradication of extreme poverty, and the related target for cutting in half the proportion of people in the developing world living on $1 a day or less.

As reported last year, the UN finds that the world is on track to meet this target by 2015, primarily because of the magnitude of gains in South and East Asia. This huge victory is undercut by disturbingly slow progress in Latin America, and by a rate of extreme poverty in sub-Saharan Africa that is stuck at around 44 per cent. In the latter region, there are indications that recently improved economic performance, along with donor assistance and debt relief, may be laying the groundwork for sustained progress.

The revival of an international partnership to fight poverty, the eighth Millennium Development Goal, is in fact moving forward. Last year official development assistance (ODA) for the first time ever surpassed $100 billion, and reached the level of one third of one per cent of donor country combined national income, the highest level recorded since the early 1990s. Increased debt relief is bringing down debt service burdens of poor countries. But ODA accounting which counts debt write-off – an action that does not add resources that can be used to reach the MDGs -- as aid takes some of the lustre from these gains. Similarly, a rise in the proportion of developing country exports that enter markets duty free is tempered by lack of progress in the current “development round” of trade negotiations.

Statistical departments from more than 20 UN funds, programmes and agencies and other international organizations contributed to the Millennium Development Goals Report 2006. The report was coordinated and published by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Statistics Division.

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