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| MDG West Africa Forum
PRESS RELEASE February 24, 2003 The UNDP Sub-Regional Resource Facility for West Africa in collaboration with UNDP Senegal is organising a Forum on the Millenium Development Goals in West Africa from February 26th to 28th in Dakar, Senegal. The Forum will bring together government, civil society, and development partner participants from all the countries of ECOWAS. Participants in this Campaign for Action will spend three days working towards greater awareness of the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) and reflect on integration of the MDGs within the development strategies of West African countries. The Opening Ceremony, scheduled for February 26th at 8:30 am, will be presided over by Mr. Idrissa SECK, Prime Minister of Senegal. The national and international press is invited to cover Forum events which will be taking place at the Hotel Teranga, Dakar. Contact: Summary Note The world's political leaders, who met in September 2000 at the Millennium Summit, fixed a set of quantifiable goals with deadlines for the fight against poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation and discrimination against women. As the central focus of the global action programme, these objectives are now designated as the Millennium Development Goals (MDG's). The Millennium Declaration also provides for a broad range of commitments in areas such as human rights, good governance and democracy and envisages efforts to address Africa's special needs. The Millennium Development Goals (MDG's) constitute a framework in which the entire United Nations System consistently collaborates with a view to achieving the same objective. They consist of 8 goals, 18 targets and 48 indicators. They clearly define efforts to be deployed by year 2015 in areas such as poverty reduction, health, education, gender equality, etc. However, in spite of this international will, we are justified in asking whether the efforts made at national and international levels will really make it possible to attain these goals within the fixed deadlines. In fact, a simple extrapolation of poverty trends since 1990 might give the impression that the world could reduce monetary poverty by 2015. But the reality seems to be the opposite. With the exception of China, the progress achieved was 50% lower than what was required to attain this goal. The number of people living in monetary poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa, South-east Asia and Latin America has been increasing by about 10 million annually since 1990. At present, 1.2 billion people are living (or surviving) on less than one US dollar (less than 700 CFA Francs) daily, just about the same number, if not more than it used to be, 10 years ago. The objective of Education For All (EFA) by the year 2000 has not been achieved either - and that is not all - thus illustrating the ambivalent results that call the feasibility of the said MDG's into question. Even if the MDG's appear financially accessible and technically feasible, without development assistance, improved policies and strong institutions, they are unattainable in many poor countries. This assistance, which is based on development needs, plays a conclusive role comparable to debt relief. But it now appears essential to lay emphasis on trade that will afford a more substantial foreign exchange input than assistance. If the poor countries' exports were provided access to the rich countries' agricultural, textile and clothing markets, this would hasten growth and create jobs; it would ultimately promote human development and reduce poverty. However, trade development alone will not produce sufficient resources that would enable the poorest countries to attain the set goals. Consequently, trade development should be envisaged hand in hand with assistance. In the same vein, assistance should be matched with capacity building and that constitutes the main thrust of the action undertaken by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Present in the field in almost all developing countries, UNDP is in a better position to advocate change, to link the countries to the sources of knowledge and resources, in addition to assisting in co-ordinating the overall efforts deployed by the United Nations at country level. A world-wide campaign for MDG implementation is currently on course to encourage mobilisation of national and international resources, promote the political will to act, re-motivate governments, redefine priorities and development policies, restore capacities and establish contacts with the various partners of both the civil society and private sector. It is indeed time to fill the gap between the simple messages required for advocacy and the more complex reality of poverty. In the developing countries, this campaign will particularly be geared towards mobilising domestic resources, giving top priority to MDG-related budgetary expenditures and promoting human rights, democracy and good governance, as stipulated in the Millennium Declaration. It will absolutely be crucial to adapt the campaign's activities to the specific features of the country concerned, just as the Millennium Development Goals are suited to national and local realities. The Secretary General of the United Nations Organisation, Kofi Annan, has requested UNDP Administrator Mark Malloch Brown, in his capacity as UNDG Chairman, to co-ordinate the campaign as well as the follow-up activities conducted in the countries for the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. UNDP collaborates with the entire United Nations System and often with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, in order to assist with the preparation of MDG reports for each developing country. These reports will indicate areas where the countries make the expected progress towards the attainment of the set goals and those where urgent efforts are considered necessary. Nine reports have already been produced; 40 others are in the pipeline and virtually all the developing countries are expected to have prepared their first reports by the end of year 2004. The Regional Forum scheduled for Dakar from 26th to 28th February 2003, whose theme is "Sensitisation on the Millennium Development Goals and Reflection on the Integration of MDG's into the Development Policies and Strategies of West African countries", aptly comes within the spirit of the campaign conducted for the materialisation of the MDG's. Nearly 150 personalities from the 16 ECOWAS member countries will be there to reflect on "the MDG's and their significance to human development and poverty within the framework of national and sub-regional initiatives", "coherence of the initiatives", "Financing MDG's", and "Partnerships". The Forum is expected to come up with recommendations for concrete actions that will help accelerate efforts and assess progress on a regular basis. There is increasing interest in the MDG's because of their relevance to the monitoring of international development. For instance, UNDP presents this issue before the informal G8 Summit every year in addition to the Report periodically issued to the UN authorities.
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