UN chief calls on world leaders to keep promises for safer, healthier, prosperous world 

Mathaba News Network

Posted: 2008/10/22

In a press release here on Tuesday, United Nations Information Center (UNIC) gave the full text of his message as follows:
"On this 63rd anniversary of our Organization, I join you in celebrating UN Day.

"This is a crucial year in the life of our United Nations. We have just passed the midpoint in the struggle to reach the Millennium Development Goals — our common vision for building a better world in the 21st century. We can see more clearly than ever that the threats of the 21st century spare no one. Climate change, the spread of disease and deadly weapons, and the scourge of terrorism all cross borders. If we want to advance the global common good, we must secure global public goods.

"Many countries are still not on track to reach the Millennium Development Goals by the target date of 2015. I am also deeply concerned about the impact of the global financial crisis. Never has leadership and partnership been more important.

"This makes our success at the high-level MDG event in September all the more remarkable. We brought together a broad coalition for change. Governments, CEOs and civil society. We generated unprecedented commitment in pledges and partnerships to help the world’s poor.

"The final tally is not in yet, but the total amount pledged at the MDG event may exceed 16 billion dollars.

"Partnership is the way of the future. Just look at the advances on malaria. Our global malaria effort has brought us within range of containing a disease that kills a child every 30 seconds. It is doing so through focused country planning. Greater funding. Coordinated global management. Top-notch science and technology.

"We need models like these to tackle other challenges, including climate change, as we approach the conferences on Poznan and Copenhagen. We need them to achieve all the other Millennium Development Goals.

"Let us keep building on this as a way forward. There is no time to lose. The United Nations must deliver results for a safer, healthier, more prosperous world. On this UN Day, I call on all partners and leaders to do their part and keep the promise." –IRNA

We’re only 24 hours away from delivering a powerful message that the first presidential debate must include “Just ONE Question” on global poverty but, first, we need your help. We’re only 10,000 signatures short of meeting our goal of 100,000 ONE members taking action. You can put us over the top by clicking the link below, which will add your name to the petition:

 http://www.one.org/debates/o.pl?id=591-370861-n9GLHsx&t=2

 More than 90,000 ONE members have already signed our petition to debate moderator Jim Lehrer asking him to ask Just ONE Question on global poverty this Friday at the first presidential debate. Help us get to 100,000—a big, bold number that will make it even harder to ignore global poverty in 2008. We’re delivering all the petitions tomorrow to Jim Lehrer’s NewsHour headquarters in Shirlington, VA. You can help us reach our 100,000 petition goal before then by clicking the link below to add your name:

 http://www.one.org/debates/o.pl?id=591-370861-n9GLHsx&t=3

 Thank you for your voice,

 Josh Peck, ONE.org

Change We Can Believe In

Thursday , July 31, 2008

By Col. Oliver North

Kabul, Afghanistan — 

This place should have had real appeal to Senator Barack Obama. The poverty of the Afghan people is evident everywhere. Wracked by decades of Soviet occupation, civil war and an oppressive Taliban theocracy, the country is a veritable centerpiece for one of Mr. Obama’s legislative objectives: a frontal assault on global poverty.

Regrettably, when Senator Obama was here last week to play basketball for the cameras, neither he —nor any of the media sycophants traveling with him— mentioned the Global Poverty Act of 2007 (S.2433), legislation that he introduced on January 7, 2007. The bill – which now has 29 co-sponsors – requires the President and his administration to "develop and implement a comprehensive strategy" to achieve "the Millennium Development Goal of reducing by one-half the proportion of people worldwide…who live on less than $1 per day."

Failing to mention this noble-sounding legislation during his well-staged visit to this impoverished, violence-plagued nation was a missed opportunity for the Senator. And, even though he declared himself to be a "citizen of the world" during a triumphal visit to Berlin, he again botched the chance to showcase his warm and fuzzy commitment to "promoting the reduction of global poverty, [and] the elimination of extreme global poverty."

Now, this is an idea that pretty much everybody can embrace. It’s the kind of utopian ideal that might inspire one to build a camp fire on the Senate floor while the Sergeant-at-Arms searches the library for a "Peter, Paul and Mary" album. The mere mention of the bill that bears his name – and which passed the Senate Foreign Relations committee on April 24, 2008 – would undoubtedly have brought cheers from the throngs of Senator Obama’s adoring Euro-admirers. He didn’t breathe a word of it, however. Why?

Could it be that Senator Obama didn’t want to remind the American people that his landmark legislation was lifted straight from the agenda of the globalists at the United Nations? They call the idea their "Millennium Development Goals." Was Mr. Obama trying to avoid questions about how we would "pay our share?" It would have been nice if the masters of the media who accompanied him here to Afghanistan – or everywhere else he stopped to take pictures for his photo album – had bothered to ask.

It’s not too late. About the time I return from this poor country where per capita income is near lowest in the world, diplomats from all over the planet will be descending on Manhattan for the U.N. General Assembly (UNGA) annual gabfest. Count on another big push to resurrect the Millennium Development Goals – the long-running attempt to transfer wealth from self-sufficient countries such as the United States to poor nations in the developing world.

In September, 2000, at the Millennium Summit in New York City, Kofi Annan browbeat world leaders into subscribing to what he called a "Global New Deal." Ever since, it’s been on the UNGA agenda. This year’s Millennium Development Goals (MDG) discussion is the perfect forum for the globetrotting Senator Obama to highlight his namesake bill. In addition to combating global poverty, the MDGs include "promoting gender equality and empowering women"; "ensuring environmental sustainability"; "achieving universal primary education" and "combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases."

The problem for MDG advocates – like Senator Obama – is how to fund all this idealism. The United Nations calls for the U.S. to hand over 0.7 percent of America’s gross domestic product (GDP) on an annual basis – approximately $100 billion each year. Though the UN, Mr. Obama, and everybody associated with the idea deny it, it is a global tax on America’s national income – and it’s been beating around since 1969, when Senator Obama was a child in Indonesia.

The idea of a tax on "wealthy" countries appeared that year in the Pearson Commission report, "Partners in Development." The following year, the UNGA adopted Resolution 2626 that stated, "each economically advanced country will progressively increase its official development assistance to the developing countries and will exert its best efforts to reach a minimum net amount of 0.7 percent of its gross national product."

Senator Obama’s bill – which he didn’t mention last week, would commit the U.S. to a "comprehensive strategy" with "specific and measurable goals." If it is to be funded, it means that the U.S. government will have to start collecting taxes for the United Nations.

The concept of the IRS collecting taxes for the UN might not sit well with American taxpayers when gas prices are soaring, the economy is shaky and the Office of Management and Budget is forecasting a record $482 billion budget deficit for next year. Perhaps that’s why Senator Obama didn’t pitch his global poverty solution here in Afghanistan. He could have been worried that the only "change we can believe in" would be the coins in our pockets.

Oliver North hosts War Stories on FOX News Channel and is the author of the new best-seller, "American Heroes: In The War Against Radical Islam."

World crises test UN development goals
By Daniel Altman / International Herald Tribune
Wednesday, August 13, 2008

This month readers of the Managing Globalization blog had the chance to pose questions to Kemal Dervis, administrator of the United Nations Development Program. Here is an excerpt from their dialogue, which is available in its entirety online at blogs.iht.com/globalization:

Your program has the Millennium Development Goals on its agenda. Now you have several unexpected events like rising oil and natural gas prices, global financial turmoil and increasing food prices. Another angle on the issue is climate change: clamors and demands for restrictions on air, land and sea transport, and technology upgrades for reducing emissions - an anti-movement to the globalization process, putting a premium on developing countries. How are you harmonizing these conflicting demands without jeopardizing international cooperation or obstructing growth and antipoverty programs?

S. Lakshma Reddy, India

Making progress toward the Millennium Development Goals, or MDGs, while we face crises like the current global financial turmoil and the rising cost of energy and food will be a huge challenge. Initial estimates indicate that more than 100 million people will fall back into extreme poverty because of the increase in food prices alone, unmatched by increases in their already meager income - a serious setback for the MDGs. There will be secondary effects on the other MDGs: children, and particularly girls, will drop out of school, health care will suffer and deforestation may accelerate.

While globalization has facilitated a long period of rapid growth and also poverty reduction in many parts of the world, particularly in East Asia, the problems we face are serious and indicate that globalization can also amplify economic problems and vulnerabilities. The farmer in Africa who faces large increases in the price of fertilizer or the slum dweller, who can no longer afford even a subsistence meal, are in no way responsible for the energy often wasted in the rich countries, which helps drive up prices, or the huge mistakes made by some financial institutions that are slowing down world growth.

Failures in regulation and excessive behavior by managers in the financial sector have led to a major slowdown in the U.S. economy, which has in turn spilled over into the global economy. The inter-linkages in our financial markets create vulnerabilities that threaten development, as we saw during the Asian financial crisis in 1997 and which we experience with much greater force today. So there are problems of regulation and stability. There is also the problem of inequality. Understandably, there has been a negative reaction against the kind of globalization and technological changes that continue to concentrate wealth at the top and increase the gaps between rich and poor. We must consider whether or not this type of globalization is sustainable, which leads naturally to the question below.

Is capitalism sustainable? Is the future in regulation and redistribution, so as to help 6.6 billion people - the poor - to catch up with the 0.05 billion rich?

Kelvyn Richards, Greece

Even very strong supporters of “capitalist globalization” believe that greater and more effective regulation is needed to make what some call “financial capitalism” sustainable. The market economy has brought the world huge benefits, and we need to avoid the bureaucratic and centralist mistakes of the past. What we need to invent and develop are regulatory mechanisms that, on the one hand, do not stifle private initiative and the creative energy of a market economy, but on the other hand, are very effective in their correction of the market failures that lead to excesses and misallocation of resources.

The current global financial crisis provides a stark example of the consequences of missing and misguided regulation in the market economy. The renewed environmental challenge is another example of the need for powerful public policy to complement and guide the work of markets.

WE MUST TACKLE THE GREATEST INJUSTICE OF THIS CENTURY
Public Service Review: International Development Issue 11 - Friday, August 22, 2008

2008 must be the year that the world remembers its vow to eradicate poverty, and strives to keep it, says Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

In 2000, world leaders came together in an unprecedented show of unity and moral purpose and agreed eight Millennium Development Goals – creating for the first time a clear plan of action to tackle the most serious injustices facing the developing world.

The Goals are to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger; achieve universal primary education; promote gender equality and empower women; reduce child mortality; improve maternal health; combat HIV and AIDS, malaria and other diseases; ensure environmental sustainability and finally to develop a global partnership for development.

But eight years on, it is to our great shame that the world is unlikely to achieve a single one of the goals we set ourselves to achieve by 2015.

Progress has been too slow and too uneven and lives are being unnecessarily lost as a result of our collective failure to act quickly enough.

Take the promise that every primary school age child would be in school by 2015, which is crucial to breaking the cycle of deprivation for so many families living in poverty. On present rates of progress we will not meet that goal in 2015. Not even by 2100. It will be 2115 before the Goal is reached.

100 years is too long to wait.

The UK is playing its part in efforts to achieve the goals – I recently announced funding for 20 million anti-malaria bed nets, which will help save millions of lives.

And good progress was made at the recent G8 leaders’ summit in Japan: 100 million malaria bed nets and money that will immediately provide for 10 million extra children being able to go to school.

But there is so much more work to do.

I want 2008 to be the year that the world remembers its promises – and remembers it must keep them.

To do this, we must form a coalition the likes of which the world has never seen before.

Everyone has a role to play in this coalition – from faith leaders, business leaders and world leaders through to individuals who agree with us that the suffering endured by the world’s poorest people must end – and be ended by us.

We have the power to raise the standard of living of millions of people living without hope and without the means to better their lives and the lives of their children.

This power is all the more potent in a world where rising food prices are – almost unthinkably after the horrors we witnessed in the 1980s – putting people on the brink of famine, which is once again threatening the lives of millions around the world.

As Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks once said: “We cannot feast while others starve, we cannot be happy while others are sad, we cannot be fully at ease while millions suffer.” As long as millions of people are in poverty, our whole society is impoverished.

Our mission is clearer and more urgent than ever before: poverty can be eradicated, poverty must be eradicated and, if we work together for change, poverty will be eradicated.

In September we will mark the halfway point to 2015 by gathering at the UN headquarters in New York to take stock of progress so far and make plans to accelerate it, and tackle what has become a poverty emergency.

We used to be able to say ‘if only’ – if only we had the technology, the medicines, the science and the engineering skills, we could meet the Millennium Development Goals.

But with the technology, the medicines, the science and the engineering skills we do now have today, it is only the will to act that must be found.

We must get 40 million more children in schools by 2010, just two years away, with the final goal of every child getting good quality schooling by 2015.

We must invest in training four million nurses, doctors, midwives and health workers, and provide the equipment so we can eradicate polio, tuberculosis, malaria and diphtheria, and then go on to eradicate HIV Aids in our generation.

And we must set aside $20bn for food aid and give people the means, free of the old agricultural protectionism, to grow food themselves and start a green revolution in Africa.

And if people say that these are unrealisable, idealistic goals, we must reply that 20 years ago it seemed an impossible dream that apartheid would end, but thanks to the will of the people, it did.

We must now do the same to make poverty in the developing world – the greatest injustice of this generation – history.

SHANTO, Ethiopia (AP) — This year’s poor rains have nearly killed Bizunesh.

Bizunesh is 3 and weighs less than 10 pounds. “There is nothing … I beg for milk,” her mother says.

The rangy 3-year-old weighs less than 10 pounds, or 4 kilograms. Her long limbs, weak and folded like a praying mantis, cannot carry even her slight weight. She cannot speak. She doesn’t want to eat. Health officials say she is permanently stunted.

Bizunesh — whose name, sadly, means “plentiful” — is one of untold numbers of children hit by this year’s double blow of a countrywide drought and skyrocketing global food prices that has brought famine, once again, to Ethiopia.

“She should be bigger than this,” said her mother Zewdunesh Feltam, rocking the listless child. “Before there was maize, different kinds of food. But now there is nothing … I beg for milk from my neighbors.”

The U.N. children’s agency said in a statement Tuesday an estimated 126,000 Ethiopian children urgently need food and medical care because of severe malnutrition — and called the crisis “the worst since the major humanitarian crisis of 2003.”

The U.N. World Food Program estimates that 2.7 million Ethiopians will need emergency food aid because of late rains — nearly double the number who needed help last year. An additional 5 million of Ethiopia’s 80 million people receive aid each year because they never have enough food, whether harvests are good or not.

In Shanto, the crisis is vivid. A feeding center run by the Irish charity GOAL has admitted 73 starving children in the past month.

Some, like Bizunesh, are frail and skeletal. Others, like 4-year-old Eyob Tadesse, have grossly swollen limbs in a sign of extreme malnutrition.

Eyob, whose mother said he used to be a lively, talkative child, sat in a stupor, unable to speak, not moving even to brush away the flies that swarmed all over his face. The sunny room humid with a recent, too late, rain shower was made gloomy by an eerie silence despite being full of sick children. Chronic malnutrition can affect children for life, stunting their growth, brain development and immune systems, which leaves them vulnerable to a host of illnesses.

Many mothers said their families were trying to survive on a gluey, chewy bread made of the root of the “false banana” plant — one of many wild or so-called famine foods that Ethiopians depend on in times of trouble.

It’s not known how many children have died or are starving now. Local and international aid and health workers say between 10 and nearly 20 percent of Ethiopia’s children are malnourished — 15 percent is considered a critical situation. In 2006, Ethiopia had 13.4 million children under the age of five, according to UNICEF.

In Shanto, a southwestern agricultural area that grows sweet potatoes, recent rains arrived too late to save the harvest.

Samuel Akale, a nutritionist with the government’s disaster prevention agency, said the hunger will get worse. “The number of severely malnourished will increase, and then they’ll die.”

WFP officials say the drought has affected six of Ethiopia’s nine regions, stretching from Tigray in the north to the vast and dry Somali region in the south, though not every part of every region is affected.

Spokesman Greg Beals said the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs is preparing an appeal for additional tens of millions of dollars.

“This is a real crisis that needs to be addressed,” he said.

Ethiopia is a country with a history of hunger. It escalated to notoriety in 1984 when a famine compounded by communist policies killed some 1 million people. Pictures of stick-thin children like Bizunesh were broadcast onto television sets around the world.

This year’s crisis is mild in comparison. But drought and chronic hunger persist in Ethiopia, a Horn of Africa nation known for its coffee, a major export. In 2003, droughts led 13.2 million people to seek emergency food aid. Drought in 2000 left more than 10 million needing emergency food.

Drought is especially disastrous in Ethiopia because more than 80 percent of people live off the land, and agriculture drives the economy, accounting for half of all domestic production and 85 percent of exports. But many also go hungry because of government policies. Ethiopia’s government buys all crops from farmers at fixed low prices. And the government owns all the land, so it cannot be used as collateral for loans.

Aid agencies say emergency intervention is not enough and are appealing for more money to support regular feeding programs.

“What we’re doing at the moment is waiting until children get severely malnourished, taking them into the feeding program, getting them back to a level of moderate malnutrition and then watching them cycle back,” said Hatty Newhouse, a nutrition adviser from GOAL.

There are fears that the next harvest also will fail.

“We are crying with the mothers and the children,” said Akale, the nutritionist.

1. Refuse to take plastic bags at the store. Opt for reusable.
2. Take the bus or other forms of public transportation.
3. Bike or walk to anything that is within a 15 min. radius of your home or place of employment.
4. Take a shorter shower. Try to get down to 5-7 min.
5. Read more books. Watch less TV.
6. Turn off the lights when you leave a room
7. Turn off the water when brushing your teeth or shaving.
8. Consume less. Share more.
9. Wear condoms, and help prevent the spread of AIDS and other diseases.

www.iamjohnnyappleseed.com

It’s being called the “Silent Tsunami.” In three years, prices for the basic staples that feed the world—wheat, rice and corn—have risen by a staggering 83%. For people in the developing world, affording enough food to eat is becoming a daily struggle for survival.

The New York Times is reporting that in Haiti, people are eating cakes made of mud mixed with a little sugar and oil to try and beat the hunger pangs. Without action to stop the upward spiral of food prices, 100 million people around the world will face deeper poverty and hunger, and hundreds of thousands will confront famine and starvation.

In the face of this suffering, we cannot be silent.

Last week, I asked you to send a message to President Bush and urge him to make solving this hunger crisis a priority on the G8’s poverty-fighting agenda at its summit this July in Japan. Your response matched the urgency of the moment, and we smashed through our initial goal of 30,000 petition signers.

Just yesterday, we learned that Japanese Prime Minister Fukuda has sent a letter to the other seven leaders of G8 nations adding the hunger crisis on the agenda for the G8 summit. It’s a critical first step and shows that our concern is being heard. Now we need to hear from President Bush and work to keep the focus on this ongoing crisis.

Help us reach our new goal of 100,000 ONE members urging President Bush to rally the G8 to take emergency action against hunger and to invest in agricultural productivity in the developing world.

By clicking the link below, you’ll send the following petition to President Bush:

www.one.org/hungercrisis

President Bush,

The soaring cost of staple foods and the resulting hunger crisis has caused riots from Haiti to Bangladesh, threatens hundreds of thousands of people with starvation and could push one hundred million more people deeper into poverty. Please build on your recent commitment by taking immediate action to:

1) Prioritize issues of global poverty, including the world hunger crisis on the agenda of the G8 Summit this July in Japan.

2) At the summit, secure commitments for additional resources for all types of food assistance and increased agricultural productivity in developing countries.

Why are we asking the G8—the leaders of the world’s eight wealthiest nations—to take action? We ask because a global crisis demands a global response, and recent history shows these leaders are in the best position to take action.

In 2005, ONE members joined millions of people from around the world in demanding that the G8 make poverty a priority at its meeting in Gleneagles, Scotland. The results were historic. A year of grassroots organizing culminated in the Gleneagles Declaration, in which the G8 committed to double development assistance to Africa by 2010.

We can recapture that energy. We’ve already won a critical victory by getting rising food prices and their impact on global poverty on to the summit agenda. We have the momentum and now it’s time to turn that momentum into action to prevent this crisis from turning into a tragedy. By clicking the link below, you’ll add your name to the more than 68,000 ONE members who have already signed the petition.

The G8 can do so much good and we’re holding their feet to the fire. We’re asking them to keep their promise to increase development assistance to poor countries, double aid to Africa, build better health systems, fight deadly diseases, and support universal education and economic growth initiatives in agriculture and infrastructure.

But rising food prices threatens to roll-back progress in all these areas. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and World Bank President Robert Zoellick are sounding the warning that if immediate action isn’t taken, global food shortages could set the world back seven years in the fight against extreme poverty. The developing world can’t afford to lose that time.

That’s why we’re taking your petitions directly to the White House next week. We’ll get your message to the President, but you only have one more week to make your voice heard. Click the link below to add your name to the petition.

www.one.org/hungercrisis

Solving this crisis requires increased resources for all types of food assistance, as well as a comprehensive plan to boost agricultural productivity in long-neglected parts of the world. When the leaders of the G8 sit down to meet this July, they’ll represent the resources and technology needed to do just that. Together, we can show them that we also have the will.

Thank you,

David Lane, ONE.org

· Warning of instability and backlash for economies
· Progress on development goals could be wiped out

The Guardian, Monday April 21 2008 (Alexandra Topping)

The UN secretary general issued a gloomy warning yesterday that the deepening global food crisis, in which rapidly rising prices have triggered riots and threatened hunger in dozens of countries, could have grave implications for international security, economic growth and social progress.

Ban Ki-moon told a trade and development conference in Accra, Ghana, that the surge in prices of basic foodstuffs like cereals since last year could cancel out progress made towards meeting the UN’s Millennium Development Goal of halving world poverty by 2015.

“If not handled properly, this crisis could result in a cascade of others … and become a multidimensional problem affecting economic growth, social progress and even political security around the world,” Ban told the conference.

The World Bank estimates food prices have risen by an average of 83% in the past three years, and warns that at least 100 million people could be tipped into poverty as a result. A range of factors has been blamed, including poor harvests, partly due to climate change, rising oil prices, steep growth in demand from China and India, and the dash to produce biofuels for motoring at the expense of food crops.

“One thing is certain,” Ban said. “The world has consumed more than it has produced” over the last three years.

Last week Gordon Brown called for coordinated action by the US and Europe on rising food prices, after discussing the problem with Ban. In his speech yesterday, the UN chief said the ripple effect from food shortages and price hikes risked setting the UN’s anti-poverty agenda back at square one. “The global food prices could mean seven lost years … for the Millennium Development Goals,” he said.

The threat of hunger and poverty in developing countries has also sharply increased, and has already resulted in food riots in parts of Asia and Africa.

Ban said several states had attempted to stave off food shortages by barring exports of rice and wheat, or introducing incentives for easier imports of foodstuffs. “This threatens to distort international trade and exacerbate shortages,” he said.

The UN’s special rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler, earlier blamed the crisis on biofuels, speculation on commodities markets, and EU export subsidies. “Hunger has not been down to fate for a long time - just as Marx thought,” he told the Austrian newspaper Kurier am Sonntag. “This is silent mass murder.”

Food riots have broken out in at least a dozen countries, most notably in Egypt, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Yemen and Mexico. Pakistan has reintroduced rationing, while Russia has frozen the price of milk, bread, eggs and cooking oil. Indonesia has increased public food subsidies, while India has banned the export of rice, except the high-quality basmati variety.

Earlier this month, Haiti’s parliament dismissed the prime minister, and cut the price of rice, in an attempt to defuse widespread anger at food price hikes that led to days of protests and looting in the capital, Port-au-Prince.

Thousands of garment workers in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, also went on strike this month over spiralling prices. The price of rice, the staple Bangladeshi food, has increased by a third since a devastating cyclone last year. Experts say 30 million of the country’s 150 million people could go without daily meals.

The UN food agency has warned that it will need to make “heartbreaking” choices about which countries should receive its emergency aid, unless governments donate more money to buy increasingly expensive food.

In the 30 years to 2005, world food prices fell by around three-quarters in inflation-adjusted terms, according to the Economist food prices index. Since then they have risen by 75%, with much of the increase in the past year. Wheat prices have doubled, while maize, soya and oilseeds are at record highs.

Source: www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/apr/21/food.unitednations