Millennium Development Goals A South – Asian Perspective

1. Millennium Development Goals A South – Asian Perspective August 13, 2005 By: Dr. Yasmeen Sabeeh Qazi Senior Program Advisor Packard Foundation

2. GENESIS & SYNTHESIS: • MDGs emerged as an agreed Development Agenda in September 2000 in UN sponsored Millennium Summit • 147 World leaders agreed to a global compact – MDGs • Further supported by G8 countries in 2003 • Considered as a quantifiable “Development Agenda” emerging from the series of conferences in 1990s on Development

3. ESSENCE: • Eight Goals • Each goal - a specific commitment to reverse the spread of poverty and disease by 2015 • Supported by an “Action Plan” with 18 quantifiable targets combating: • Poverty • Hunger • Disease • Illiteracy • Environmental Degradation • Discrimination against women

4. Goals assign clear responsibilities to rich countries to provide developing countries • More Aid • Fairer terms of trade • Meaningful Debt Relief • UNDP Human Development Report 2003 provides most comprehensive analysis to date of: • Status of Global Campaign • Concrete Policy Reforms • Resource commitments needed to make these goals a reality by 2015

5. Challenges: • More than a billion people still struggle to survive on less than a dollar a day • Most of them lack access to basic health services & safe drinking water • Globally one child out of five does not complete primary school • In much of the developing world, the HIV/AIDS pandemic continues to spread unchecked • Nearly 800 million people or 15% of world’s population, suffer from chronic hunger

6. Challenges: • If current trend continues, South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa will not meet the target by 2015 • In Sub-Saharan Africa, a child has only a one-in-three chances of completing primary school • And one-in four school aged children in South Asia are not being educated • Half a million women die in pregnancy or childbirth each year ,or one every minute of a day • A woman in Sub-Saharan Africa is 100 times more likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth than is a women in Western Europe

7. South – Asian Perspective: • South Asia with GNI per capita at $460 is home to nearly 40% of world’s poor living on less than dollar a day • Since 1990, region has experienced rapid GDP growth, averaging 5.4% a year • This growth has helped to reduce the consumption poverty rate substantially • India has reduced poverty rate by 5 – 10 % since 1990 • Only exception is Pakistan where poverty has stagnated at around 33% using national poverty lines • Challenges remain on measurement of consistent poverty trends & has created a debate on measuring poverty trends in the 1990s

8. Encouraging success in reduction of mortality in children under five • Rates has reduced substantially between 1990 and 2002 – from 130 to 95 per 1000 live birth • Especially IMR is significantly reduced in Bangladesh; from 144 to 73 per 1000 live births

9. MDG 1 : Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger Target 1:Halve, between 1990 & 2015 the proportion of people whose income is less than one dollar a day

10. People living on less than 1 dollar a day in South Asia is 428 million (31.1%) in 2001 compared to 462 million (40.1%) in 1990 • People living on less than 2 dollar a day in South Asia is 1,059 million (76.9%) compared to 958 million (85.5%) in 1990 • Greatest number of poor people live in South Asia, but the proportion of poor is highest in Sub – Saharan Africa, where slow economic growth has left millions at the margins of survival • If projected growth remains on track, global poverty rates will fall to 12.7 percent- less than half the 1990 level- and 363 million more people will avert extreme poverty Source: World Bank Data

11. MDG 1: Eradicate Extreme Poverty & Hunger Target 2:Halve between 1990 & 2015 the proportions of people who suffer from hunger • Malnutrition plays a role in more than half of all child deaths • Prevalence rates of underweight children have been falling in most regions, but too slowly to achieve 2015 targets • In many regions the number of hungry people continues to grow • In South Asia however, progress in the prevalence rates of underweight children have been fast, the malnutrition rates declining by 25% • However the rates of malnutrition in general population remains high in South Asia

12. MDG 2: Achieve Universal Primary Education Target 3:Ensure that, by 2015 children every where, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling • According to World Bank study, only 37 of 155 developing countries analyzed have achieved universal primary education • Based on 1990s trends, another 32 are likely to achieve that goal • But 70 countries risk not reaching the goal unless progress is accelerated • South Asia has chronically low enrollment & completion rates and completion rates in Middle East and North Africa stagnated in 1990s

14. Primary Completion rate average primary School only

15. MDG 3: Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women: Target 4:Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005, and to all levels of education no later than 2015 • The differences between boys and girls schooling are greatest in regions with the lowest primary school completion rates and lowest average incomes • In South Asia girls enrollment in Primary schools is 12 points lower than boys • And only 61% of girls complete primary school compared with 86% of boys • Gender disparity at school is still serious in many Sub-Saharan African and South Asian countries

16. Beyond schooling the gender disparity in literacy is widespread, impinging on women empowerment • Gender disparity in labor market is observed throughout the world in different proportion • Of the 109 countries with data for late 1990s,only 18 had a share of women equal or slightly higher than that of men • Over the last decade there has been only a small progress, globally, in gender equality in wage employment in the non – agriculture sector

17. Ratio of girls to boys in primary and secondary education

18. MDG 4: Reduce Child Mortality Target 5 : Reduce by two thirds, between 1990 and 2015, the under five Mortality rate • Child mortality is closely linked to poverty • In 2002, the average under five mortality rates were: -121 deaths per 1000 live births in low- income countries - 40 in lower middle income countries - 22 in upper-middle-income countries - 7 or less in high-income countries • In 2002 : 48 countries had child mortality rates greater than 100 and 15 countries have greater than 200 • Mortality rates for children under 5 dropped by 15 percent since 1990, but the rates remain high in developing countries

19. More than 10 million children die each year in the developing world, vast majority from preventable causes • In developing countries 1 child in 10 dies before its 5th birthday, compared with 1 in 143 in high – income countries • At current rates of progress only a few countries will likely to achieve this MDG of reducing child mortality to one – third of their 1990 levels • Just as child deaths are the result of many causes, reducing child mortality will require multiple, complimentary interventions

20. Under– Five mortality rate

21. MDG 5: Improve Maternal Health Target 6 :Reduce by three quarters, between 1990 and 2015, the maternal mortality ratio • Worldwide, more than 50 million women suffer from poor reproductive health and serious pregnancy – related illnesses and disability • Every year more than 500,000 women die from complications of pregnancy and child birth. • Most of these deaths occur in Asia, but the risk of dying is highest in Africa • In developing countries, only about half of deliveries are attended by professional health staff • In South East Asia currently 35% births are attended by skilled attendants

22. The extreme risk of dying from pregnancy or child birth in South East Asia is 1 in 140 Lifetime Risk of Maternal Death, 2000

23. MDG 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and other diseases Target 7 :Have halted by 2015 & begun to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS • In 2003, 36 million adults and 2 million children were living with HIV/AIDS • 66% of these cases are in Sub-Saharan Africa • Almost a million new cases in South & East Asia , where more than 7 million people are living with HIV/AIDS • HIV strikes at youth - women are particularly vulnerable • More than half of those newly infected with HIV are between 15 and 24 year old - 13% for males and 6% for females • East Asia have the lowest rates of known infected cases

24. Youths Living with HIV/AIDS

25. Target 7 :Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases • WHO estimates that 300 – 500 million cases of Malaria occur every year, leading to 1.1 million deaths • 90% of all cases occur in Sub-Saharan Africa & may account for as much as 25% of child mortality • Tuberculosis kills around 2 million people a year, most of them 15-45 years old • Each year there are about 3 million new cases in South East Asia

26. Incidence of Tuberculosis

27. MDG 7: Ensure Environmental Sustainability Target 9:Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes & reverse the losses of environmental resources • Forest cover 20% of land in South Asia and about 30% of all land around the world • Forest shrank by 95 million hectares in the last decade, the minimum change is however in South Asia, Middle East & North Africa

28. Total Energy Use

29. Carbon Dioxide Emissions

30. Target 10 :Halve by 2015 the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation • Access to safe water has improved in last decade but in 2000, 1.2 billion people still lacked access to an improved water source • Out of this, 40% are in East Asia & Pacific and 25% in Sub-Saharan Africa • Meeting MDGs will require providing about 1.5 billion people with access to safe water and 2 billion with access to basic sanitation facilities between 2000 and 2015

31. Population with access to an improved water source (%)

32. Target 11 :Have achieved by 2020 a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers • Slums are the stage to the most acute scenarios of urban poverty, physical & environmental deprivation • Approx. one-third of the Urban Population globally live in these conditions • Where available, trend data indicate that this problem is worsening • In case of no major interventions it is expected that 924 million slum dwellers in 2001 will grow to 1.5 billion by 2020 [UN-HABITAT]

33. MDG 8: Build a Global Partnership for Development • Goal 8 complements the first 7 goals and has 7 targets (12-18) • It calls for an open, rule-based trading and financial system • More generous AID to countries committed to poverty reduction • Relief for debt problems of developing countries • It draws attention to problems of least developed land locked countries & small island states • Calls for co-operation with private sector to address youth unemployment • Ensure access to affordable, essential drugs • Make available the benefits of new technologies • Monterrey Consensus: In March 2002, leaders from developing and high income countries agreed on new strategies for attacking global poverty in Monterrey, Mexico • Commitment was made to increase official development assistance in real term by about 16 billion a year by 2006

34. What will it take to achieve the Millennium Development Goals? • Political will , commitment & focus • Monitoring the process • Economies need to grow to provide jobs & more income for poor people • Health & Education system must deliver services to everyone, men & women, rich & poor • Infrastructure has to work and be accessible to all

35. Policies need to empower people to participate in the development process • Fortify partnerships with private sector to complement & supplement government programs • Prioritization and context setting in development work at each country level • Overcoming financial, human and institutional resource constraints • Increased resources & new financial commitments by the wealthiest nations • While sustained growth would be necessary for poverty reduction, concomitant improvement in institutional delivery mechanisms will be essential for achieving progress in all other dimensions of MDGs.

36. Thank You . . .