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The politics of poverty
HENLEY MORGAN
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
There could be no better time than now - when the world is in the throes of an economic recession - to sound the alarm that to forget the poor we do so at our own peril. At the World Economic Forum held in Davos, Switzerland, earlier this year, pleas came from powerful voices not to forget the more than one billion people at the bottom of the economic pyramid in the rush to rescue the global financial systems.
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| HENLEY MORGAN |
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon told the conference, "Now more than ever is the time to deliver (the poor). Wealthy countries are investing hundreds of billions of dollars in economic stimulus packages. Now more than ever the world's poor need your help. Do not overlook them."
Professor Jeffrey D Sachs, a key figure in the development of the Millennium Development Goals, which commit 189 member countries of the United Nations to eradicating poverty by the year 2015, reminds us in his book The End of Poverty of the dire situation faced by the poor. "The greatest tragedy of our time is that one sixth of humanity is not even on the development ladder. A large number of the extreme poor are caught in a poverty trap, unable on their own to escape from extreme material deprivation. They are trapped by disease, physical isolation, climate stress, environmental degradation, and by extreme poverty itself."
The so-called Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) with the lofty ideal of eradicating poverty from the face of the earth is under threat from the global recession that has spared no country and left the poor poorer. Speaking to reporters after a two-day meeting in Paris between the Food and Agriculture Organisation and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, FAO head Jacques Diouf was quoted as saying, "We have never seen so many poor people in the world. If the projection for 2009 proves to be accurate, that would mean that approximately one billion people or one-sixth of the world's population will go hungry by the end of the year."
But the MDGs were in trouble before now. On a visit with British Prime Minister Tony Blair in the waning days of his political career, PJ Patterson, the then head of the Group of Eighty Eight, and China opined that without significant assistance for poor countries the MDGs were at risk of being missed.
The MDGs incorporate eight distinct goals as follows:
(1) Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
(2) Achieve universal primary education
(3) Promote gender equality and empower women
(4) Reduce child mortality
(5) Improve maternal health
(6) Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
(7) Ensure environmental sustainability
(8) Develop a global partnership for development.
The Jamaica Social Policy Evaluation unit was set up in the Office of the Prime Minister to track and report on social policy outcomes. Up until 2003 JASPEV published annual reports tracking progress against the MDGs. Having heard not a word about JASPEV for the past two years it was a pleasant surprise to see the Planning Institute of Jamaica through its Social Planning and Research unit release a national progress report a couple weeks ago. The report is to be presented to the United Nations Economic and Social Council later this month.
The report attempts and largely succeeds in giving a balanced status report on the country's poverty status but there are at least two measurements that have caused controversy. Under MDG Goal Number 1 the report claims that the number of people who live below the national poverty line has been reduced from 28.4 per cent to 9.9 per cent in December 2007. Central Kingston Member of Parliament Ronald Thwaites believes these statistics bear no resemblance to what one sees on the ground. At a meeting of the Public Administration and Appropriations Committee he fumed at the PIOJ and the labour ministry. "How do you continue on the basis of hopelessly outdated figures? Our national statistics which are being paraded internationally and which are being used to inform our budgetary allocations are grossly understated. I am having a real difficulty coinciding reality with official statistics."
Another type of credibility problem has arisen with the achievement reported under MDG Goal Number 2. According to the report, there is now a net enrolment in the primary school system of over 90 per cent and gross enrolment is close to 100 per cent. Hardly any one will argue with that count, but recently Minister of Education Andrew Holness was in the press using the substandard output from the education system as an example of how it is possible to achieve the MDGs quantitatively but still be behind qualitatively.
Statistics generally and poverty statistics specifically are open to speculation and so can be manipulated to serve a given purpose. It suits politicians to make Jamaica look poor such as when on the hunt for aid money or relief from a natural disaster and to make Jamaica look poor or relatively well off, depending on whether you are government or Opposition, at election time. There is no evidence that the debate over the MDGs has entered the realm of politics but a warning to keep the discussion untainted by politics can do no harm.
hmorgan@cwjamaica.com
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