UN poverty panel meets in Liberia to debate world goals as deadline looms

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/01/un-poverty-panel-liberia-goals

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Staging debates in a relatively high-class hotel in Monrovia about how the world should abolish absolute poverty in 2030 might seem on the more surreal side of life, especially as the world confronts austerity and terrorism.

But the UN high-level panel, including David Cameron and set up last summer, is in Liberia to try to keep alive one of the few successful international efforts to address poverty: the UN Millennium Development Goals, which expire in 2015.

Many of those goals have not been met as the finishing line approaches, but some on access to education or improving access to water have been achieved, sometimes largely due to the economic growth in China and India over the past decade.

There is also a consensus that the eight goals, and their sub targets, did focus the world's efforts. Measuring things in business, political and development terms clarifies the mind. The task now is now how to renew, replace and replenish them.

Before a report is delivered to the UN at the end of the year, intense arguments are expected on development, one of the most ideological and sometimes abstract disciplines.

David Cameron wants the simplicity of eradicating extreme poverty by 2030, but others would like to see income inequality included, as a way to address the underlying factors that creates poverty in the first place, or then hold people back.

Some, such as Brazil, would like to see more focus on sustainability, with environmental issues included in the mainstream goals, but others such as India and Britain, would like to keep the two processes apart. Some European countries would like to see human rights, good governance and democracy added as a goal, a suggestion rejected by the Chinese.

There are also issues around whether the goals are universal or whether countries should be set different tasks according to their stage of development.

Brendan Cox, the Save the Children advocate at the conference, admits the panel are split over the aims of the new framework.

"In our view, the framework can do lots of things: advance debates, encourage a normative shift, start to redefine development – but at its core must be abolishing absolute poverty in all its forms. That's both because we think ending absolute poverty and focussing on the world's poorest people is the most important thing, but also because we're worried that without clear prioritisation the panel and the ultimate framework will flounder, be unable to prioritise and unable to get specific. Such a framework would remain at 30,000 feet and struggle to gain political purchase if it could even be agreed."

Cox, who used to work for the Labour government on development issues, would also like to see the panel make a push on inequality.

Cameron takes the view that this will be impossible and will complicate an already Byzantine process. He would also like to see more goals expressed in terms of outcomes, such as the number of children capable of reading and writing, rather than the number attending school. The quality of education is likely to be as important as access to schooling.

The draft communique contains an emphasis on private sector investment, which shows Cameron's mark. It states: "To be transformative, a future development agenda must work with the private sector to place development objectives at the core of good business practices and to harness the private sector's problem-solving capability toward positive social impacts and long-term, sustainable investments."

Do not expect instant results. This is the UN, and there many more conferences to come before the new targets are published.