9/9/2005
Annan Concerned That Member States May Fail To Reach Agreement On World Summit Document

Secretary-General Kofi Annan has warned that the UN's General Assembly may fail to reach agreement on a draft document for the coming week's World Summit. This would be a major blow to the hopes of a successful outcome to the meeting designed to enable world leaders to take necessary action to meet the Millennium Development Goals and to reform the UN itself. Mr Annan said he was very concerned that agreement might not be reached in time for next week’s Summit, and he urged “more give and take” from Member States.

“I am very concerned that despite some signs of progress, the work may not finish on time and the deadline will be missed. Of course, I would be happy to be proven wrong,” he added in his most detailed expression of concern this week as the talks have gone down to the wire.

“Throughout the past week, I have urged ambassadors who are negotiating the outcome document to remember that in today’s interconnected world, the collective interest is often the national interest. They must negotiate with that spirit in mind,” he said, stressing the need for a balanced outcome that meets every country’s main concerns, from terrorism and non-proliferation to post-conflict reconstruction, human rights and UN reform itself.

Some 180 heads of State or government are expected to attend the World Summit from 14 to 16 September. With only days left to go, the General Assembly panel in charge of drafting the Summit document looked set to go into marathon session in an effort to produce agreement.

They do so against the disquieting background of the 2005 Human Development Report, compiled by the UN Development Programme and published this week. This shows that while there has been substantial overall progress globally towards achieving the Millennium Goal targets, many individual countries are actually falling further behind, a situation the report attributes to a lack of funds and political will. It also contains a stark warning of the human costs of missing agreed global targets for lifting people out of extreme poverty and makes an urgent plea for swift and dramatic changes to global aid, trade and security policies.

The report, delivered to the UN’s 191 member states in preparation for the World Summit, warns that there will be no chance under current trends of fulfilling the promises made in the Millennium Declaration five years ago. It shows that 18 countries, with a total of 460 million people, have actually moved backwards on the Human Development Index, a compendium of key indicators such as income, life expectancy and education, since 1990.

Fifty countries with a combined population of almost 900 million are falling backwards on at least one of the goals. Twenty-four of these countries are in sub-Saharan Africa, it says. Another 65 countries, with a combined population of 1.2 billion, risk failing to meet at least one goal until after 2040, thereby missing the target by an entire generation. The report says that on current trends there would be 827 million people living in extreme poverty in 2015, 380 million more than if the internationally agreed target were reached. Another 1.7 billion people would be living on $2 a day.

On current trends, the goal to reduce the deaths of children under five years of age would be met 30 years late - in 2045, not 2015. The human cost of missing this target would translate into 41 million more child deaths over the next decade, it says, while 47 million children would still be out of school in 2015, 19 million of them in sub-Saharan Africa. The goal was to provide primary education for all. Instead of halving the ranks of the 1 billion people who lack access to fresh drinking water, on current trends the world in 2015 would still be 210 million people short of this goal. More than 2 billion would still lack proper sanitation, again mostly in sub-Saharan Africa.

The Human Development Report argues that extreme inequality is a brake on progress and spotlights the scale of the international wealth divide. The poorest 40 per cent of the world’s population, 2.5 billion people, live on less than $2 a day, accounting for just five per cent of all global income.

It decries as perverse the system under which the world’s poorest countries face the highest tariffs in rich countries. It also examines the impact on the poor of agricultural subsidies and protectionism in wealthy industrialised nations. Donor countries, it shows, spend $1 billion a year aiding agriculture in developing countries and $1 billion a day on domestic subsidies that undermine the world’s poorest farmers.

“The world has the knowledge, resources and technology to end extreme poverty, but time is running out,” said the UNDP's head, Kemal Dervis. “This Human Development Report presents us with a clear warning. We know that the MDGs are attainable, but if we continue with business as usual, the promise of the Millennium Declaration will be broken.

“That would be a tragedy above all for the world’s poor, but rich countries would not be immune to the consequences of failure. In an interdependent world our shared prosperity and collective security depend critically on success in the war against poverty,” Mr Dervis added.