A F R I C A B R I E F S

 

Make a ‘new deal’ for least developed, says UNCTAD

What the world’s poorest countries need most is not simply debt relief, but a "new deal" in international development cooperation, says the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in its Least Developed Countries 2000 Report, issued in October. Pointing to steadily worsening poverty in most of the world's 48 poorest countries, 33 of them in Africa, UNCTAD Secretary-General Rubens Ricupero calls for fundamental changes in current economic policies. Without such changes, he says in the introduction, more than one tenth of the world's population will be "caught in a downward spiral in which economic regress, social stress and violent conflict mutually reinforce each other"

The report argues that even the enhanced Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative provides insufficient debt reduction. The remaining debt burden, when combined with sliding official development assistance and a very limited flow of foreign direct investment, hampers the mobilization of resources for vital new investments in the economic and social infrastructure.

Only a handful of developed countries now meet the target of providing 0.2 per cent of their GDP in aid to LDCs, laid out at the second UN Conference on the Least Developed Countries in Paris in 1990. In addition, "the debt-tail has been wagging the aid-dog," so that levels of aid inflows to individual countries are designed to ensure continued debt service of old loans, creating an absurd situation in which official creditor-donors in effect take away with one hand what they give with the other, undercutting aid’s development impact.

The report aims to inform the debates at the Third UN Conference on the Least Developed Countries, to be held in Brussels in May 2001. Arguing that the current diagnosis for change is flawed in several respects, it urges an approach to international support that will facilitate "a progressive transition in which the LDCs build up productive capacities and international competitiveness." This in turn would ultimately enable them to rely on domestic resources and private capital inflows, rather than aid, to finance their development needs.

The report suggests five key elements of a "new deal" for the LDCs:

  • Reorienting national policies to develop productive capacities, international competitiveness and economic diversification, while recognizing that "leaving growth to market forces without adequate attention to the shortcomings of markets, institutions and infrastructure in LDCs is not going to do the trick";
  • Ensuring adequate aid flows;
  • Implementing partnership based on genuine national ownership, including local control over aid funds, participation in the formulation of policy agendas and political accountability;
  • Undertaking deeper, faster and broader debt relief;
  • Increasing overall policy coherence, enhancing the impact of aid and debt relief by making these policies more complementary, promoting private capital flows and establishing a supportive international trade environment that would ensure better market access for LDC exports, significant reductions in agricultural subsidies in developed countries and improved primary commodity prices.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Under-five mortality rate
(per 1,000 live births, 1999)
Source: UN Africa Recovery from UNICEF, State of the World's Children Report 2001

UNICEF: Three-year-olds can save the world

Declaring that "investment in the development and care of our youngest children is the most fundamental form of good leadership," Ms. Carol Bellamy, executive director of the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), introduced the agency’s annual flagship report, The State of the World's Children 2001 in New York on 12 December. She appealed to the world to stop its massive squandering of human potential, emphasizing that condoning childhood poverty not only is immoral, but also bad economic management, since it wastes human resources.

Ms. Bellamy argued that studies of human development demonstrate that the first three years of a child’s life are vital to everything that comes later. This is the most vulnerable period in a person’s life and demands the most care from society, says the report. Effective investment in health, nutrition, education, childcare and basic protection can unleash children’s brain power and yield high returns to the children and to society. Every $1 spent on early childhood care yields a $7 return through cost savings, according to studies cited in the report.

Yet according to Ms. Bellamy, 170 million of the world’s children are malnourished and more than 100 million never see the inside of a school. Fourteen of the 15 countries in which children have the highest chance of dying by the time they reach their fifth birthday are in Africa. More than 4 million under-fives died in sub-Saharan Africa in 1999, and those who survived have less chance than anywhere else to be enrolled in primary school.

The report indicates that leaders have failed to adopt development strategies that focus on early childhood, in part because poverty and onerous debt repayments hamper such efforts. The UNICEF report lays out a series of specific recommendations that include requiring legislation to make children the priority in all policy discussions and all budget meetings. It underscores the importance of the UN General Assembly's special session on children, to be held in September 2001.

That meeting will assemble leaders from governments and non-governmental organizations, as well as representatives of children and adolescents, to agree on a plan of action. Its aim will be to break the transmission across generations of poverty, violence, disease and discrimination that still afflict children and hold back the world’s chances of achieving sustainable development.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

New international treaty bans a dozen toxic ‘POPs’

After a week of talks in Johannesburg, South Africa, negotiators from 122 countries produced a landmark environmental treaty in early December that will ban 12 of the world's most toxic pollutants, described as "the dirty dozen" by some participants. The ban covers eight pesticides, two industrial chemicals (including PCBs) and two unwanted by-products of combustion and other industrial processes (dioxins and furans).

All have been linked to birth defects, other genetic abnormalities, cancer and conditions fatal to humans, domestic animals and wildlife. The environmental activist group Greenpeace hailed the new agreement as "the beginning of the end of toxic pollution."

These chemicals — called persistent organic pollutants (POPs) — are carried by wind and rain well beyond their areas of original use, concentrate in the fatty tissues of living beings and remain toxic for years or even decades. Some of the toxins turn up in arctic whales and African streams, far from the industrial countries where they often originate.

Therefore, a "global treaty is the necessary global defence against these poisons," commented Mr. Klaus Töpfer, executive director of the UN Environment Programme, which organized the negotiations.

Most of the 12 pollutants listed are subject to an immediate ban, but exemptions granted include DDT, which is still needed in African and other countries to control malaria. Industrialized nations agreed to help find the resources — about $150 mn annually — to help poor countries find alternatives to DDT and to enforce the ban.

The treaty is to be formally adopted and signed at a meeting on 22-23 May 2001, in Stockholm. It will then have to be ratified by at least 50 countries before coming into force. A review committee will regularly consider additions to the list of banned POPs.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

Peace agreement signed in Horn of Africa

The two-year war between Ethiopia and Eritrea, which took tens of thousands of lives, came to a formal end on 12 December. On that day Prime Minister Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia and President Isayas Afewerki of Eritrea signed a peace agreement in Algiers, the Algerian capital, at a ceremony witnessed by UN Secretary- General Kofi Annan and US Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright. The agreement commits both sides to a permanent cessation of military hostilities and establishes a neutral commission to demarcate the disputed border. The two leaders solemnly pledged to look to a future of peace and mutual respect.

The accord involved months of diplomatic pressure and mediation by the Organization of African Unity and the UN. About 4,200 UN peacekeepers will be deployed in a buffer zone to secure the border. Mr. Annan welcomed the day as one of hope for the peoples of Eritrea and Ethiopia and as a "victory for the voice of reason," kindling new expectations across the continent. Adding that "it is not enough to silence the guns," he promised to seek strong support from the international community for the essential tasks of reconstruction now ahead. Both countries are frequently plagued by drought and famine and rank among the world’s poorest nations.

 

Benin conference urges democratic consolidation

As demonstrators and political leaders were battling over the nature of democracy in nearby Côte d'Ivoire, representatives from 92 countries were meeting in Cotonou, Benin, for the Fourth International Conference of New or Restored Democracies on 4-6 December 2000 to examine ways they could strengthen their own democracies. Past meetings of these new democracies had been held in the Philippines, Nicaragua, and Romania, but this was the first time they met in Africa, a continent with many emerging – though still fragile – democracies. The UN, along with governments, donor agencies and other international organizations, helped in the organization of the conference, which called, among other things, for the UN to establish a focal point to help member states coordinate their efforts to consolidate democracy

Rejecting the notion that democracy is an alien concept to Africa, many of the participants at the Cotonou meeting emphasized the need to build on African democratic traditions in the context of present-day realities. To all those who may believe that Africa is not yet ready for democracy or that democracy is a foreign idea, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan responded with a proverb from his own country, Ghana: "One hand is not enough to decide." Africans, he said, "have much to learn from their own traditions, and something to teach others, about the true meaning and spirit of democracy." He added, "We need to understand that there is much more to democracy than simply holding elections and deciding fairly which candidate, or which party, has majority support."

"There isn't only an Africa that suffers and weeps," said the conference host, President Mathieu Kérékou of Benin. "There is also an Africa that is trying to stand, and that is teaching itself to advance down the road of democracy. She stumbles, hesitates, fumbles about, halts, and carefully advances. The march has started and will no longer be stopped."

Benin itself has been an example of this process. A decade ago, after 18 years of military rule, Mr. Kérékou was obliged to step down by a popular movement for democracy and make way for an elected government. After that government lost the voters’ confidence, Mr. Kérékou returned to power, but as an elected civilian president. The new, more open atmosphere in Benin was exemplified during the conference itself, when an association of journalists from the private media sharply responded to remarks by the president criticizing the press. Before Benin’s return to democracy, hardly any journalists would have dared to respond in such a way, for fear of imprisonment.

With democracy in Côte d’Ivoire under serious challenge, Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade — himself a long-time opposition leader newly elected to the presidency — had sharp words for Ivoirian leaders, saying that a failure to accommodate the opposition could trigger violence with "incalculable consequences." He stressed that the recent experience of Côte d’Ivoire "should encourage African politicians and foreign powers to reflect on the concept of compromise, as Ivoirian political players, like us all, have made mistakes."

— Daniel Shepard

 

 

*******