Action plan eludes poverty summit

Summit offers no hope for the poor, say critics

By Claire Doole in Geneva

A United Nations summit on eradicating poverty has been extended into an extra day - but with no sign that real progress is about to emerge.

Negotiators are still hammering out the final text on strategies to ease the misery of more than one billion people around the world who live on less than a dollar a day.

But it is becoming clear that there has been little concrete progress in the fight against poverty.

Although everyone agrees that urgent measures are needed to bridge the gap between rich and poor, a definite plan of action has not yet materialised.

Basic healthcare remains a goal without a strategy

The final document is expected to amount to little more than a reiteration of goals set at UN conferences over the past decade.

Those goals were outlined in a report presented by the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, at the start of the week.

They include commitments to cut poverty by half by 2015, provide basic education and healthcare for all and drastically reduce mother and child mortality rates.

There is nothing wrong with the targets.

'Patronising'

It is not only the UN, but also non-governmental organisations, which say they are potentially achievable. The problem is that the report, "A Better World For All" fails to explain how they can be met.

The report marked the first time the UN, International Monetary Fund, World Bank and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development had worked together to review progress on social issues.

But their approach angered NGOs who dismissed it as patronising.

They accused the UN of backing discredited economic liberalisation policies, which they claim have perpetuated poverty rather than prevented it.

Summit declaration will restate existing policies

A critical letter to the UN secretary-general has so far remained unanswered.

The final text of the summit declaration, still being negotiated, appears to be strong on rhetoric, but short on new initiatives.

The two big issues - debt relief and a new fund-raising proposal - have been so watered down as to be almost unrecognisable.

NGOs holding their own alternative summit, financed by the Swiss hosts, had campaigned hard for faster debt relief. But in future, countries will merely be encouraged to ease developing countries debt burden.

Mistakes

The much-discussed Tobin Tax, which would be levied on foreign currency transactions, has not merited its own feasibility study.

There is a general commitment to analysing new potential sources of funding, but it is not clear who would carry this out.

Without a clear road map for meeting poverty eradication targets, it is difficult to see how the international community is going to avoid making the mistakes of the past.

Five years after the first social summit in Copenhagen, there is common agreement that governments have not followed up on their commitments.

Access to clean water is a distant dream for many

Only four countries - Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden - have met a long-standing target of contributing 0.7% of their gross national product to overseas aid.

There was rare unanimity amongst government delegations and NGOs that Copenhagen had changed little for the better.

Since then poverty and inequality have increased. The financial crisis and the downside of globalisation have widened the gap between rich and poor.

But the danger is that Geneva will also go down in history as the summit which recognised the challenges but couldn't agree on how to meet them.