EDITORIAL

A regional approach to fight global scourges

A frail twelve-year-old South African, Nkosi Johnson, who had become a living reminder for change of policy directions, both national and global, for dealing with the HIV/AIDS epidemic, quietly passed away in Johannesburg on 1 June, on the eve of the twentieth anniversary of discovery of the virus. Several days before that, a continent away in Brussels, a global UN Conference (Third UN Conference on the Least Developed Countries, 14-20 May 2001), hosted by the European Union, provided a vivid account of the enormous deprivations being endured by vast segments of humanity; once again highlighting the imperative need for policy changes at national and global levels for dealing with the complex sets of issues hindering their development prospects. High-level reviews are also underway on these and related issues in the General Assembly itself (Special Sessions on Human Settlements, 6-9 June and on HIV/AIDS, 25-27 June).

Surely, the importance of the issues and the urgency for dealing with them cannot be overemphasized. Take, for instance, HIV/AIDS. If the virus' transmission is not slowed, the number of AIDS victims will soon surpass that of the world's two other great pandemics, namely, the Black Death which ravaged Europe in the fourteenth century and the great influenza epidemic of 1918-19. Globally, nearly 21 million people have already died from the effects of the HIV virus, over three-quarters of them occurring in the Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), and nearly 36 million are infected as the new millennium begun. SSA countries are presently witnessing infection rates of twenty percent or more of the adult population. In most affected countries, half of all fifteen-year-olds alive today will eventually die of the disease, even if infection rates drop in the next few years, with the number rising to more than two-thirds in a high infection scenario. Also significant is the fact that a second epicentre of the AIDS pandemic is rapidly emerging in Asia, where it is fast becoming the first order of health and security issue in several countries in South, South-East and East Asia. The sharp rise in infection rates in densely populated countries with large population, such as India (where the number of the infected at 3.5 million is second only to South Africa) and China, the rate of increase in Asia could soon outpace that of Africa. On the other side of the globe, currently the infection rate in the Caribbean is the highest next to Africa.

In the other spectrum of development drama, the number of the countries on the 'least developed category' has doubled since the United Nations first defined this category twenty years ago. Fully half of the 630 million people in those forty-nine countries live on less than a-dollar-a-day. The problems are particularly acute in SSA, where the rate of poverty reduction is six times too slow to meet the 2015 deadline of the Millennium Declaration's goal for halving world poverty, according to IFAD.

A quarter of the world's population does not have adequate housing. In Africa, only one-third of all urban households is connected to potable water. In Latin America, urban poverty stood at 30 percent in 1997. In Asia-Pacific, a mere 38 percent of urban households are connected to a sewage system.

Notably, these scenarios are not isolated from each other. Rather, they are part of the same picture, with common threads running, reflecting a symbiotic relationship, feeding on one another in a continuous cycle of poverty and squalor. The responses needed to break such entrenched cycle must be overwhelming, as acts of common resolve and shared approach. They need strong national commitment, involvement of the communities at all levels, strong partnership between public and private sectors, and massive global support-financial, material and technical-including the creation of special funds. The Abuja Consensus of the African countries embodies the pledges of the African leaders themselves to devote fifteen percent of their annual budgets to improve their health sectors, providing momentum to the global efforts spearheaded by the Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, to create a Global Fund to fight the scourge of HIV/AIDS. Likewise, special global support, are needed to assist the least developed countries to generate certain momentum in their development struggle. For the fight against poverty and underdevelopment in these countries to have any credible results along the lines of the Millennium Declaration objectives, conditions must be created for these countries to achieve an annual average growth rate of seven percent. That means improved conditions of governance, much more significant external aid in terms both of quantity and quality, removal of debt burden and, most importantly, creating favourable conditions for trade.  In Brussels, the EU countries agreed to provide duty-free access to all LDC products, except arms. Other countries should follow this example. Moreover, this spirit should be followed up in revising the rules of origin and in dismantling other non-tariff barriers.

The desperation created by the cycle of poverty and underdevelopment can often have unanticipated consequences, further deepening the crisis. UNICEF studies have shown that the sharp drop in the commodity prices in recent years led to the heightened demand for free or cheap labour, and favoured commercial traffickers who use children with the promise of opportunities, often condemning those victims to child slavery and child prostitution.

The regional commissions remain ready to strengthen their support for and cooperation with the developing countries requiring special attention.