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UN DPI Photo #187741C |
Every hour more than 1,200 children die away. The causes of death will
vary, but the overwhelming majority can be traced to poverty. Also hunger
and malnutrition are extremely serious. More than 800 million people have
too little to eat to meet their daily energy need. Especially, more than
a quarter of children under age 5 in developing countries are malnourished.
In the midst of an increasingly prosperous global
economy, more than 1 billion people survive in extreme poverty. One fifth of
humanity live in countries where many people think nothing of spending $1 a day
on a coffee. Another fifth of humanity survive on less than $1 a day and live in
countries where children die for want of a simple anti-mosquito bed net. Extreme
poverty remains a daily reality for more than 1 billion people who subsist on
less than $1 a day.
A future of our interconnected world built on the
foundations of mass poverty is economically inefficient, politically
unsustainable and morally indefensible. We have to do something for people who
survive in extreme poverty.
UN DPI Photo #187742C |
Needless to say, international aid is one of the most
effective weapons in the war against poverty. Official aid has recovered from
its decline in the 1990s, reaching a record high of $79 billion in 2004.
However, most of the recent increase in aid has been used to cancel debts and
meet humanitarian and reconstruction needs in the aftermath of emergencies. Debt
relief does not necessarily provide new finance for social services or poverty
reduction. Similarly, emergency and disaster relief does not address long-term
development needs.
More aid needs to go hand in hand with more effective use of aid - by advancing
a recipient country's own development strategies. Especially, agriculture
and physical infrastructure will need more support if countries are to
be able to feed their own people and build their economics.
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