Large gaps in Asia-Pacific development goals: UN

UN report has indicated that South Asia is lagging behind the Asia-Pacific region in poverty and hunger reduction.

JAKARTA: South Asia is lagging behind the Asia-Pacific region in poverty and hunger reduction, and is in danger of missing these key targets in the UN’s millennium development goals, a UN official said on Tuesday.

Eleven Asia-Pacific countries with poverty rates above five per cent of their populations are “likely to miss the income-poverty target”, including Bangladesh, Georgia, India, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Uzbekistan.

Ministers from around the region gathered at a review of the goals (MDGs) heard that global food, energy and financial crises in recent years had jeopardised progress toward achieving the goals set for 2015.

Achieving the goals in all the indicators across the region would mean additional spending until 2015 of $636 billion.

Given the global economic uncertainty, many countries had tightened spending on projects designed to improve indicators such as poverty, education, gender equality and environmental sustainability.

“The sharpest reductions in poverty worldwide continue to be recorded in eastern and southeastern Asia, where the target of halving extreme poverty has already been met,” UN Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs Sha Zukang said.

“Most of southern Asia, however, is in danger of not halving extreme poverty rates by 2015, and the prevalence of hunger there has increased slightly between 2002 and 2007.”

“With just five years to go until 2015 it is crucial that policies are changed or tightened now,” he said.

Additional money could come from a variety of sources including better managed tax systems and even a 0.1 per cent tax on global foreign exchange transactions, which could raise about $640 billion a year, a UN background briefing prepared for the conference said.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 4^th, 2010.