Opinion - News Analysis   

7/7/7 — an auspicious date?

Kim Hak-Su

Today (Saturday) is rather special for it is numerically perfect — the 7th day of the 7th month in the 7th year in the millennium. But it is also special for a very different reason. Many groups engaged in promoting economic and social development have chosen the day to mark the mid-point in our collective quest to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) — eight goals to improve people’s lives by 2015.

A lot of activities are taking place around the globe on Saturday, to remind people and governments of the solemn pledge made by world leaders at the Millennium Summit in New York seven-and-a-half years ago. In New Delhi, the United Nations in India is calling attention to the date by organising a “Keep the Promise” concert. All this is important. The MDGs are everyone’s business.

Targeting poverty in its many dimensions — income poverty, hunger, disease, lack of safe drinking water — the MDGs also promote gender equality, improvement in child and maternal health, education, and environmental sustainability. In short, they are about the daily struggles of billions of poor people worldwide.

Under the eight broad goals, world leaders committed to 18 specific targets, with 48 indicators developed to measure progress. What they set for themselves were not utopian dreams, but realistic, achievable goals.

Have they delivered? Today, at the mid-point, it is important for us to take stock. Earlier this week, the U.N. released its most comprehensive report yet on the progress toward the MDGs. It paints a mixed picture — while much ground has been covered on many fronts, overall success is still far from certain.

In Asia and the Pacific, dramatic gains in eradicating extreme poverty and hunger have been achieved, particularly in East Asia, where the proportion of people living in extreme poverty — defined as living on less than $1 a day — fell from 33 per cent in 1990 to 9.9 per cent in 2004. The region as a whole thus appears on track to achieve the first MDG, which calls for halving the proportion of people living in extreme poverty and hunger by 2015.

However, Asia’s unprecedented gain in poverty reduction is accompanied by evidence that the benefits of economic growth are not being shared across different sections of the population.

East Asia has experienced the most dramatic rise in income inequality — the share of consumption of the poorest quintile of the population declined from 7.3 per cent in 1990 to 4.5 per cent in 2004.

In addition, The Millennium Development Goals Report 2007 indicates that Asia still has a long way to go with respect to some goals. For example, our region is home to 77 per cent of the global rural population with no access to bas ic sanitation. The region has three times as many under-weight children, and people living on less than $1 a day, as sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America combined.

On health issues, the report notes, South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa share the distinction of having the highest number of maternal deaths — and the lowest proportion of trained health attendants at birth. Only slightly more than one-third of women in South Asia receive attention from health-care personnel when giving birth. Environmental sustainability also remains a huge challenge in Asia.

Our future is determined by our actions today.

On this special day of lucky numbers, we could indeed ensure a tryst with destiny. Let’s make the most of this auspicious date and vow to pool our efforts to contribute to the global MDG endeavour — one of the most ambitious and yet achievable tasks that humankind has entrusted to itself. — Courtesy: U.N. Information Centre, New Delhi.

(U.N. Under-Secretary-General Kim Hak-Su is Executive Secretary of ESCAP, which is based in Bangkok.)

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

Turning promise into HIV therapy
IT sector maintains tempo
The last stand at the Lal Masjid
Many questions for the dinner table
7/7/7 — an auspicious date?
Ensuring the health of children
Corrections and clarifications
Arrest of Indians
Abolition of CET

Copyright © 2007, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu