Global body needed to fight poverty

By Richard Black BBC Science Correspondent

The world needs a new global body for economic development, according to a leading medical journal.

The Lancet says that existing United Nations agencies are too big, too unwieldy, and constrained by UN politics.

It says there is no consensus on the best policies for development, as there has been no scientific analysis of what works and what does not.

At the forthcoming World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, world leaders will attempt to plot a path forward for relieving poverty.

But The Lancet says that without effective leadership from a global body, targets set in Johannesburg are unlikely to be realised.

Tied hands

"Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary-General, acknowledges there's been a failure to implement existing plans on development in a way that makes a real difference," Lancet editor Richard Horton told BBC News Online.

"The work of agencies like the UN Development Programme is too constrained by politics. They can't lobby for the democratisation of the World Bank, for example, because they'll offend some important people."

UNDP declined to comment on the Lancet article.

Summit aims to halve poverty

The United Nations has set a series of targets on reducing poverty, based largely on goals set down by world leaders at the millennium.

The UN hopes these targets will be turned into firm policies at the Johannesburg summit, along with a timetable for implementing them.

But according to The Lancet, there is no global body with "the mandate, legitimacy, or means to make the progress on development demanded by the millennium development goals".

Slimmer model

The new body it advocates would be set up along the lines of UNAids, the UN agency responsible for tackling HIV and Aids, itself now acknowledged as one of the most important barriers to economic progress in the developing world.

"UNAids has been remarkably successful as a facilitating body," said Richard Horton.

He emphasises that he is not calling for another major UN institution.

Poor health is a major obstacle to development

"UNAids costs relatively little - about $60 million a year - has just a few hundred staff, and has beeen extraordinarily effective at lobbying for action, and measuring the effects of different policies.

"When UNAids was set up six years ago, Aids was always just a health issue. Now its a foreign policy issue, on the agenda at G8 meetings, largely because UNAids has been so effective."

Science not ideology

Richard Horton believes that lack of scientific data is a major hurdle to effective economic development - another area which the proposed new body would address.

"There are so many arguments about the best policies for development, and all the policies stem from ideology, not research," he said.

"We need to do apolitical scientific research on the best ways to do development and build up a library of this scientific knowledge."

The UN Summit on Sustainable Development begins on August 26th, but many delegates are pessimistic that it will make real progress on measures designed to alleviate poverty.