Editor's introduction: MDGs & Human Rights
Article under review:
“The UN millennium development goals can be put back on track” by Philippe Douste-Blazy. The Guardian. September 5, 2010.
In his speech at the UN Millennium Development Goals Summit, President Obama noted that "if the international community just keeps doing the same things in the same way, we will miss many development goals." Regrettably, that is what many donors and recipients seem to be doing, and the opportunity to reach the MDGs is likely to be missed unless more urgent action is taken immediately. The United Nations 2010 MDG Report indicates that about one quarter of all children in developing countries are considered to be underweight and are at risk of long-term effects of undernourishment; more than 500,000 prospective mothers in developing countries die annually in childbirth or of complications from pregnancy; in sub-Saharan Africa, the proportion of people living on just over a dollar a day is unlikely to be cut in half. Additionally, in middle income countries like Mexico, Brazil, and Indonesia, inequality has also led to “pockets of poverty”–socially excluded groups that will need specific attention if their countries are to reach the MDGs.
Shortcomings in attaining these internationally accepted development goals are due to a range of factors. In this month’s centerpiece, former French foreign minister Philippe Douste-Blazy indicates that the global economic crisis is sapping developed countries' efforts to fulfill their commitments for official development assistance (ODA): “A UN report warns that annual investment from these donor countries is falling $35bn short of the $150bn goal.” For Douste-Blazy, one of the ways to reach these goals is to put into place innovative financing mechanisms that could tap incrementally into global financial flows without disrupting economic activity.
Our panelists take the discussion even further. For them, the Millennium Project’s agenda has focused exclusively on identifying the operational priorities, organizational means of implementation, and financing structures necessary to achieve the MDGs. To be more effective, these endeavors should also be understood within a broader human rights framework. In fact, for each one of the MDGs, there is a corresponding set of human rights obligations, standards, and norms. For example, the goal of halving poverty is useful as a benchmark, but a human rights focus would add value by helping to ensure that those working towards that objective do not discriminate against communities that have historically suffered from prejudice.
Finally, our contributors suggest that MDG-related activities must also work to change the unequal power relations that sustain poverty. Such an approach would consider the power asymmetries of the international economic system as well as inequalities within countries. Many of the barriers to progress on MDGs lie in the social and political realms, and it is in this context that the transformative power of human rights should take priority.
These issues and others are considered in this month’s Roundtable.
Saturday, October 16, 2010
October 2010: MDGs & Human Rights
Editor's introduction: MDGs & Human Rights
Article under review:
“The UN millennium development goals can be put back on track” by Philippe Douste-Blazy. The Guardian. September 5, 2010.
Development as Power
by Alison Brysk
"The Millennium Goals are a wonderful way to focus world attention and political pressure on the development gap. While new mechanisms and modalities for transferring resources are a good first step, real progress requires deeper understanding of the power distortions that cause the gap. The most effective programs will be those that redistribute power, not just wealth. And the best way to construct new policies is not just to ‘follow the money,’ but ‘follow the power’."
While material progress towards the Millennium Development Goals is laudable, and pledges of new resources are necessary, we can never fully address poverty without talking about power. As Amartya Sen pointed out, true development depends on freedom.
At the current Millenium Development Summit, Bhutan's contribution was to encourage a broader and more holistic measure of development, based on its own Gross National Happiness Index, which measures good governance as a dimension of development. Along another dimension of the power-development nexus, Thomas Pogge has shown that decreasing economic inequity both within and between countries is inextricably linked to the fulfillment of all human rights.
Perhaps the clearest link between poverty and empowerment is in the area of gender equity. Women are the poorest, sickest, least educated, and least powerful members of most developing societies. We know that women's education leads to more sustainable levels of population growth; conversely, we know that gender inequity is correlated with underdevelopment. As far as the well-being of half of society, we know that gender-based inequity in political, property, and reproductive rights puts women at risk for the fatal consequences of underdevelopment, including AIDS, domestic violence, and maternal mortality. The Millennium Goals already recognize these connections, but there has been less progress here than elsewhere.
Across the board, as a "lowest common denominator" international consensus, the Millennium Goals are necessary but insufficient insofar as they do not address fundamental freedoms. While China and other rising powers in Asia still claim that "a rising tide lifts all boats," they fail to heed the lessons of the past generation of Latin America's experience of the perils of unequal development. It is no accident that the most violent countries are not the poorest, but rather the most unequal.
On the other side of the ledger, the programs that have actually reduced poverty are precisely those that empower the most vulnerable members of society. Micro-credit for women in South Asia and Africa has improved incomes, nutrition, education, and political participation, at least at the local level. Perhaps the single most effective anti-poverty program today is school allowances for children, notably in Brazil and Mexico. What makes these programs work is that they go beyond the necessary (but not sufficient) goals of transferring resources to poor families or protecting children from labor exploitation, and empower children within their families and societies through education.
Garnering the resources to support these programs and other facets of the Millennium Goals is also a question of power in several ways. First, it is a question of finding leverage to make powerful countries contribute to global common goods. For example, middle power Canada ended up increasing its pledge to the Global Fund to Fight HIV, Tuberculosis and Malaria even under a conservative spending-averse government, because Canada will soon seek a seat on the UN Security Council.
Second, progress requires harnessing the growing power of non-governmental transnational exchange—like the tax on air tickets. Similar measures include fair trade campaigns to bolster developing countries' producers, and people-to-people micro-credit schemes such as KIVA. The proposed Tobin Tax on financial transactions would be another powerful mechanism, and is currently being debated in Europe.
Finally, we must find a way to link rising power to rising responsibility in the international system. Countries like China that grow from globalization must also contribute to ameliorate humanitarian suffering and the displacement of traditional producers. Something like a WTO Buffer Fund for food prices, indexed to growth, rates of rising powers would accomplish this goal. Even lower-income rising powers such as India or Brazil could contribute concessionary technology transfer or intellectual property—like bio-fuels or generic anti-retroviral drugs for HIV.
The Millennium Goals are a wonderful way to focus world attention and political pressure on the development gap. While new mechanisms and modalities for transferring resources are a good first step, real progress requires deeper understanding of the power distortions that cause the gap. The most effective programs will be those that redistribute power, not just wealth. And the best way to construct new policies is not just to “follow the money,” but “follow the power.”
ALISON BRYSK is Mellichamp Professor of Global Governance at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is the author of The Politics of Human Rights in Argentina (1994), From Tribal Village to Global Village (2000), Human Rights and Private Wrongs (2005), and Global Good Samaritans: Human Rights as Foreign Policy (2009). Professor Brysk has been a visiting scholar in Argentina, Ecuador, France, Spain, Sweden, the Netherlands, South Africa, and Japan. In 2007, she held the Fulbright Distinguished Visiting Chair in Global Governance at Canada's Centre for International Governance Innovation.
The MDGs and the (New) International Economic Order
by Par Engstrom
"“(…)as the emerging economies continue to grow, they will have to manage increasing expectations that they should play a more active and forceful role in the foreign aid regime and that they should shoulder a greater burden in response to humanitarian emergencies, for example. This has significant implications for the foreign aid regime, as one cannot assume that emerging powers will simply be absorbed into the current global order."
The current economic crisis has indeed had far-reaching consequences beyond the “developed world” where the crisis originated. Yet, significantly, the impact of the crisis on the “developing world” has varied quite considerably. While parts of sub-Saharan Africa may have suffered as a consequence of rising food prices and reduced aid flows, other regions have fared considerably better. It is too early to talk about the decoupling of “frontier markets” (to use investment analyst jargon) from developed markets. Yet the solid performance of most Latin American and Asian economies in recent years raises interesting questions regarding the international economic system and the prospects for reducing poverty levels for large sectors of the population of the developing world.
The current buoyant economies of countries such as Brazil, China, and India have for many highlighted a stark contrast with the recession-struck economies of Europe and the US. For some, such contrasts indicate fundamental shifts in the global economy toward the “Global South” and herald the future of the world order. A major concern of US and European policymakers has been how to grapple with the notion that their era of dominance in world affairs is being fundamentally challenged. The growing power and influence of emerging states will clearly shape international development debates as well. Indeed, the rising economic influence of China (and India) in Africa, for example, has been a major concern for many traditional donors in that region. With the increasing clout of emerging countries in the foreign aid regime, the principles and “best practices” that have shaped that regime–for example with regards to the DAC (the OECD Development Assistance Committee) principles and the anti-corruption agenda–may face gradual erosion.
Yet, as the emerging economies continue to grow, they will have to manage increasing expectations that they should play a more active and forceful role in the foreign aid regime and that they should shoulder a greater burden in response to humanitarian emergencies, for example. This has significant implications for the foreign aid regime, as one cannot assume that emerging powers will simply be absorbed into the current global order. Countries such as Brazil, China, India, and South Africa are not likely to develop approaches to poverty alleviation in line with the “moral consensus” that Philippe Douste-Blazy refers to. In particular, these countries have traditionally emphasized the importance of protections from external interference and have opposed the idea and practice of coercive and intrusive interventions, whether these be military or economic in nature. Hence, rather than requesting increases in overseas development assistance (ODA), many developing countries are increasingly assertive in their demands for reforms of international trade and financial institutions which, they argue, better serve the interests of the rich and powerful than the needs of poorer countries.
The achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), therefore, is not simply a matter of an increase in ODA flows, the creation of “innovative financing mechanisms,” or the effective implementation of development policy. Broadly speaking, much of the development policy debate has tended to focus on three sets of issues: economic reforms to establish macroeconomic stability; institutions and “governance,” and their role in the enforcement of the rule of law and targeting of corruption; and an emphasis on “participation” as a way of involving people in decisions that affect them and their communities. This overlooks, however, the structural constraints that impede economic growth and human development for many developing societies. True, MDG8, with a focus on a “Global Partnership for Development,” seeks to address these structural constraints. It emphasizes the imperative for developed countries to provide financial resources, but also to support the creation of a fairer trade regime to respond to the needs of developing countries. However, in large part due to the economic crisis, the more far-reaching reform agenda incorporated in MDG8 concerning trade, the reduction of tariffs and quotas, the untying of aid, and debt relief has effectively stalled. Any progress on this front requires far more than another UN Summit.
Par Engstrom is lecturer in human rights at the Human Rights Consortium, School of Advanced Study, University of London, and teaches at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies and the Institute for the Study of the Americas. Current research interests focus on regional human rights institutions both comparatively and with a particular reference to the Inter-American Human Rights System. Further research interests include the relationship between human rights and democratization; transitional justice; the international relations of the Americas; human rights, humanitarianism, and foreign policy; and theories of international relations, particularly relating to international law and institutions. http://sas.academia.edu/ParEngstrom/About
MDG: Reinvigoration or Mourning?
by Marc Alexander C. Gionet
"The international community still has a remarkable degree of separation between current achievement and MDG expectations to resolve over the coming five years. Only by shifting the narrative from that of selective championed goals to obligatory holistic achievement will the international community be able to compensate for the currently lagging effort. "
The United Nations Millennium Development Goals Summit got underway on September 20th in New York. Opening speeches seemed to be a roster of who’s – who of contributors towards global poverty with the IMF and WTO leading the pack.As speeches progressed, a disturbing trend developed which romanticized the pre-recessionary period of progress towardsMDG achievement and reducing world poverty. As Dominique Strauss-Kahn stated on behalf of the IMF,
“Before the crisis, we saw strong growth and macroeconomic stability in developing countries—driven mainly by good homegrown policies, but supported by an enabling international environment. This was translating into falling poverty and improving social indicators, and gave us grounds for optimism. But because of the crisis…we have lost years of progress, and the momentum has been derailed.”
This defeatist tone was constant in opening speeches, with all lost progress attributed to the economic and financial crisis as well as to volatile food and energy costs. Bolivian President Evo Morales provided deviation from the defeatism stating,
"If we wish to make progress, it is our obligation to reach the Millennium Development Goals. And in order to reach these goals, the South has to stop financing the North. This millennium should see the closure of the open veins of the South that are bleeding towards the North."
The dominant narrative which has framed meeting the MDGs is in stark contrast to the views of Mr. Morales, who so aptly referred to Eduardo Galeano’s definitive work “Las Venas Abiertas de America Latina” which chronicles the historic subsidization of first world wealth and prosperity by the developing world. The MDGs were constructed to address the very worst consequences of the global inequitable distribution of wealth. It was not a charity drive organized by the fortunate to assist the less fortunate, but a pact to counteract injustice.
Despite its inception as a holistic accomplishment the dichotomy of MDG achievement has developed into the celebrated possible attainment of some goals, such as eradicating diseases like malaria, contrasted by the near resignation of failure to achieve other goals. Following the end of the Summit, the United Nations was quick to promote the pledges of more than $40 billion over the next five years towards women and children’s health, removing that effort from the larger context.
Canada is an excellent example of a nation that has made selective commitments, championing certain goals while withdrawing support for others. As the host of the 2010 G8 Summit, Canada led the Muskoka Initiative which pledged an additional $5.0 billion for disbursement over the next five years in an effort to accelerate progress towards MDGs 4 and 5, relating to maternal and child health care. Canada’s pledged contribution was $2.85 billion of this sum over five years. While this initiative should be applauded, Canada has also frozen its overall budget for overseas assistance. In addition, Canada “re-clarified” its 2005 G8 summit promise of $2.8 billion in annual aid to Africa to $2.1 billion. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper also resisted calls to extend the Unitaid fee, a small fee attached to the purchase of airline tickets, to Canadian consumers despite the program’s success. Since 2007, the program has raised $1.5 billion which has been utilized to increase drug program accessibility for those in low income countries who need HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis treatments.
Canada, along with other states that take a similarly selective approach towards MDG achievement, needs to assume full responsibility towards the holistic objective. Unlike other commitments to the developing world, such as raising foreign aid contributions to 0.7% GDP, the MDGs are not an aspirational goal designed to be striven towards to the fullest extent possible within a state’s means. Instead, what the MDGs represent is an interdependent agreement to mitigate the worst effects of the global wealth disparity. And in order to properly address this, as the MDGs establish, total achievement is necessary.
The international community still has a remarkable degree of separation between current achievement and MDG expectations to resolve over the coming five years. Only by shifting the narrative from that of selective championed goals to obligatory holistic achievement will the international community be able to compensate for the currently lagging effort.
Marc Alexander C. Gionet is the Director of the Atlantic Human Rights Research and Development Centre housed at St. Thomas University where he also lectures within the undergraduate human rights programme. Mr. Gionet is currently teaching courses on Humanitarian Law, NGOs and Human Rights and Terrorism and Human Rights. His most recent publication discusses the transfer of Canadian captured detainees to third parties in Afghanistan.
The Misnomer of MDGs? When Goals are Rights
by Erin Mooney
“More fundamentally, what is required is to recognize that the MDGs are not merely ‘goals’ to aim for, hitting or missing as the case may be. Rather, they are about realizing rights which governments, individually and collectively, have pre-existing legal obligations to uphold and ensure."
That much more must be done to meet the Millennium Development Goals is evident. The proposals put forth by Douste-Blazy and the new pledges announced at the recent UN MDG Summit are steps in the right direction. More fundamentally, what is required is to recognize that the MDGs are not merely “goals” to aim for, hitting or missing as the case may be. Rather, they are about realizing rights which governments, individually and collectively, have pre-existing legal obligations to uphold and ensure.
Each of the eight MDGs can be framed in rights-based language. Doing so can be useful, by strengthening accountability for their realization. Ending poverty and hunger (MDG 1) is necessary to ensure the basic right to life as well as the right to food. Universal primary education (MDG 2) is a well-established right under international law, most notably in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). Gender equality (MDG 3) is the realization of the fundamental human right of non-discrimination. Ensuring child health, maternal health and combating HIV/AIDS (MDGs 4, 5, and 6) are part and parcel of the right to health. Environmental sustainability (MDG 7) is linked to a range of rights, including the right to life, to health, to water, to food and to development. Moreover, a framework for global partnership (MDG 8) to realize these rights is essential, especially when the efforts of individual governments fall short.
Human rights standards also provide important guidance as to how these goals are to be achieved. Consider, for instance, the second MDG, of achieving universal primary education. Human rights standards prescribe that education must exhibit four essential features: (i) availability (in sufficient quantity and functional according to local needs); (ii) accessibility (i.e. open to all persons without discrimination, within safe physical reach, and affordable to all); (iii) acceptability (e.g. relevant, culturally appropriate and of good quality); and (iv) adaptability (responding to the needs of students within their diverse social and cultural settings). At a minimum, and as MDG 2 seeks to achieve by 2015, education is to be free and compulsory at the primary level.
A rights-based approach to the MDGs also serves to strengthen accountability and to underscore that these outcomes are to be expected and pursued at all times, and not limited to a “development” context, as strictly defined. Taking again the example of universal education, this right (and indeed all of the CRC) applies in all circumstances. International humanitarian law reaffirms this right in times of war, including during occupation and evacuations. Deliberate armed attacks against schools may constitute grave breaches of the law of war and even constitute crimes against humanity and war crimes, subject to prosecution under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. In reality, however, of some 75 million school-aged children currently deprived of access to education, more than half– 40 million children-- live in countries beset by conflict.
Achieving the MDGs also can be critical for the realization of other rights. Access to education, for instance, is not only a right essential to the cognitive development and future opportunities of these children; the daily routine of going to school can provide a critical source of stability and psychological support in the volatile and precarious circumstances facing civilians during war. Education can also be a vital protection tool for children, potentially reducing their exposure to the risks of military recruitment, sexual exploitation, trafficking, and child labor. Schools can also be safe spaces for disseminating life-saving messages about other risks, such as landmines, and when curricula are sensitively designed, education can contribute to the rebuilding of war-torn societies.
However, the terminology of “MDG” reinforces tendencies to consider these rights strictly as “development” needs, to be addressed and funded only once conflict has subsided and major investments in rebuilding the infrastructure of war-torn societies can begin. For instance, Save the Children has found that only five donors worldwide include education in their funding strategies for responding to humanitarian emergencies. If current trends continue, children in conflict-affected countries will not receive the levels of basic education aid needed to achieve universal primary education (not to mention elementary or secondary education) until at least 2034, well beyond the 2015 MDG deadline.
In reality, realizing the MDGs, such as need not be contingent upon massive investments in infrastructure and thus await for development funding. Realizing the right to education, for instance, does not necessarily require the building of schools; learning can take place in more informal environments, for instance in tents or even under a tree. UNICEF’s “school-in-a-box” kits, which contain supplies for a teacher and forty students, are specifically designed to ensure the continuation of children's education within the first seventy-two hours of an emergency, whether in situations of armed conflict or natural disaster. Often, the key input is cooperation, not cash. In Central African Republic, advocacy by humanitarian actors led to an agreement with rebel forces (which had a history of kidnapping teachers and parents) to create “neutral areas” where the internally displaced children from makeshift “bush schools” set up in their hiding places in the jungle could come to write their national school examinations. In Nepal, community facilitators have negotiated with armed forces codes of conduct recognizing schools as “zones of peace,” mobilized local media to monitor attacks against schools, and provided psychosocial support to students and teachers. These are just some examples of how even in conflict it is possible to secure children’s access to education. Instrumental to such efforts has been rights-based advocacy underscoring the responsibility of parties to a conflict–states as well as insurgent groups– to uphold their obligations under international law.
Meeting the targets for all of the MDGs is proving challenging enough; complicating these efforts is that “MDGs” is somewhat of a misnomer, and in two important ways. First, the emphasis on development risks distracting from the fact that these objectives need to be pursued in all circumstances, including those outside of the “development phase” as traditionally defined as being pre-conflict and post-conflict. Second, recasting these goals as rights, which entail responsibilities for governments and non-state actors as well as for the international community can strengthen accountability and bolster efforts towards meeting these most basic benchmarks of human welfare.
Erin Mooney is a consultant to the United Nations and the Brookings Institution on issues of human rights and forced migration and Adjunct Professor in International Relations at the University of Toronto (2008-10). The views expressed are those of the author, writing in an independent capacity.
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