The good intentions of governments and donors to ensure long-term food security for all may be melting away in the face of the current global financial and economic crisis.

There are just six years to go to the deadline set by the international community for achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The trouble is, reports now indicate that no sub-Saharan African country will attain all the goals by 2015.

Africa did not cause the economic crisis, but will suffer from it. What are the prospects?

Record fall in GDP; Economy; Gender learning; Other news; Soundbites; Plus ça change...

“The Chinese government rightly advocates firm opposition to trade and investment protectionism, as emphatically stated by Premier Wen Jiabao on several occasions in the past few weeks. As it did a decade ago during the Asian crisis, China has set itself firmly against inward retrenchment in the face of economic downturn. We celebrate this commitment at OECD.

Development aid rose to a new record in 2008. While good news in a crisis, how can the trend be maintained?

Coherence in policies within countries and between them will be vital to restoring economic growth and development.

The economic crisis has hit the entire world economy, with governments stepping in to rescue financial systems and kick-start economic growth. This adds up to a triumph for government fiscal policy, though fiscal policy must be used audaciously.

International aid conferences are famous for their promises and commitments, but at Accra, donors and aid recipients may finally have started to “walk the talk”.

Emerging markets such as China, India and Brazil are increasingly regarded as central rather than peripheral players in the global markets. Can this “rebalancing” continue through the current crisis?

Two major international sporting events take place this summer, with the Olympic Games in Beijing and the European football championships in Austria and Switzerland. The question on many policymakers’ minds will be less about medals on the track or pitch, but whether holding such major events can make or break the cities that host them?

According to President John F. Kennedy, the person who can solve the water problems of the world should receive two Nobel prizes, one for peace and the other for science. More than four decades after his death, the world is realising the complexity and urgency of the water-related problems facing humanity, and the relevance of his remark.

Originally founded by OECD member countries as “Club du Sahel” in 1976 to raise international support and awareness of the drought crisis in the Sahel region, the Club extended its geographic coverage in 2001 to encompass all 17 West African countries, home to approximately 290 million people.

Did you know that over the last ten years, the largest bilateral donors to Africa, excluding debt forgiveness, were the United States and France? The US has focused aid on Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan, whereas France’s main aid recipients have been Morocco, Mayotte and Senegal.

With the global economy mired in the fallout of subprime crises, costly oil and financial market volatility, it may seem a little surprising to learn that for the fourth consecutive year, Africa has experienced record economic growth. According to the 2008 edition of the African Economic Outlook (AEO) launched in May, the headlines are good indeed: 5.7% GDP growth and a per capita increase of 3.7% in 2007, with estimates looking quite bright for 2008 too. However, behind those numbers lies something more complex.

Over the last two years, prices of agricultural commodities have risen spectacularly, and nominal prices for many crops and dairy products are at an all-time record high. This surge in prices is not unique, and when adjusted for inflation, the recent price spike is neither unique nor the biggest one to occur in the last three decades or so.

Several Sahel and West African countries have seen prices of agricultural commodities rising since September 2007 compared with 2006 and on into the first quarter of 2008. This has given rise to tension in some countries like Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire and Senegal.

The gloomy image that has for so long hung over the world’s largest continent may at last be lifting.
Conflict and disease remain a bane, and there are challenges in areas like governance and transport, but as we reported in our last issue (No 255, May 2006), the OECD Development Centre’s latest African Economic Outlook is upbeat about future economic growth there.

Latin Americans’ access to telecommunications services has expanded fast since the early 1990s, with a telephone density now above the world average. Chile and Argentina lead the continent, with 90 and 82 telephone lines per 100 inhabitants respectively. Fewer, albeit wide, disparities still exist.

One role of development aid is humanitarian assistance to help victims of natural disasters, famine and conflict. Since 2000 the trend has been rising sharply, reaching some 6-7% of total bilateral official development assistance in 2005, or some US$7.1 billion (constant 2005 prices).

Something new is happening in Africa. Once talk of investment in the continent’s countries was dismissed as idealism. Now global investors are turning their eyes–and their funds–to a new investment frontier. Is this short-term euphoria?

Mexico has made great economic strides over the past decade, and output growth is expected to reach 3.5-4% in 2008. However, the latest Economic Survey of Mexico says that only a renewed reform effort will raise the economy to a higher plane of growth and help close the gap with wealthier OECD countries.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice shakes hands with OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría at the launch of a new multilateral initiative called the Partnership for Democratic Governance (PDG).The new initiative is designed to assist those developing countries that need help to improve governance, strengthen capacity and accountability, and deliver the services that are essential supports of effective government.

Egypt has become the first Arab and first African country to sign the OECD Declaration on International Investment and Multinational Enterprises. Egypt has made impressive progress in reforming its investment policies in recent years–foreign investment in manufacturing has been fully liberalised, for instance, with the exception of defence-related industries–but significant barriers to both foreign and domestic businesses remain.

A new global courtship is blossoming, and it is bringing China and Latin America closer together. Whether it ends in happiness or in tears depends mostly on Latin America.

The figures you give for the dramatic fall in support for economic infrastructure and agriculture as part of total bilateral ODA between 1995/96 to 2002/2003 are sobering (No. 261, May 2007). There is increased emphasis on these two areas by development agencies, but it will be important to see if resource commitments actually follow–particularly for aid and investments in agriculture. But didn’t NEPAD members at Maputo commit to invest 10% of GDP in agriculture, not to increase investments by 10%?

On 22 March, World Water Day 2007, 21 Chinese environmental NGOs came together to launch a new “Green Choice Initiative”. Aimed at China’s vast consumer population, the hope is to encourage all individuals to consider a company’s environmental performance in guiding their daily purchasing decisions.

How can civil society help to make development aid more effective? Some 30 civil society organisation (CSO) representatives met to discuss this question on 7 March, at the OECD headquarters, with the Working Party on Aid Effectiveness, an international partnership of donors and recipient countries, hosted by the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC).

After several years of encouraging increases, development aid slumped in 2006. The 22 member countries of the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC), the world’s major donors, provided US$103.9 billion in aid in 2006, down by 5.1% from 2005, in constant 2005 dollars.

More than two billion people in developing countries rely on agriculture to meet their basic food and income needs. While the development community has long recognised the importance of investments in agriculture to fuel economic growth, the strategies employed have been erratic, sometimes misdirected, and often ineffective. As a result, benefits that poor people might have derived from a vibrant agricultural sector have not materialised.

The jury is still out on whether pro-poor growth is enough to reduce poverty. However, the OECD’s specialised network, POVNET, believes growth and poverty reduction should work together.

League tables of competitiveness give an easily comparable ranking of the global economic performance, but they leave underlying questions unanswered. Why are the “poor” countries four times less productive than the “rich” ones, for instance? And what do these rankings say about the role of human capital, or financial markets or physical infrastructure?

Dear editor, Developed countries met in Paris at the beginning of March to discuss how much they will contribute to the World Bank’s soft loan window for the next three years. 

The Newsletter has been prepared by the Public Affairs Division of the OECD for the purpose of informing the public of OECD cooperation with civil society. The Public Affairs Division acts as a clearing house for information about OECD dialogue with civil society. OECD staff who are in contact with civil society through consultations, workshops or other activities contribute to this newsletter.

The report entitled Challenges for China’s Public Spending: Toward Greater Effectiveness and Equity, published earlier this year, identified education and healthcare as priority areas for public spending. Why does China need to spend more on education and health?

Will the Millennium Development Goals launched in 2000 be met by the agreed deadline of 2015? This question is at the top of discussions in government and development agencies around the world. There have been several initiatives to help focus minds and boost international progress towards meeting the goals, not least by the G8.

An assessment of India’s short-term economic prospects appears for the first time in the latest OECD Economic Outlook, so adding to the coverage in this report of key non-OECD economies Brazil, China and the Russian Federation. India has been one of the most rapidly growing economies in the world over the past five years. Nonetheless, with a slightly lower population than China and significantly lower average incomes, the economy is only half the size of China’s, though double that of Brazil and Russia.

Jannat Bibi, who lives in a village in south Pakistan, was engaged to an older man at the age of three. In the circumstances, that would normally be the end of her story. Yet when she was 16, Jannat participated in the Girl Child Project, an initiative of UNICEF and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), whose workers encouraged Jannat not to rebel against her family but to convince her elders to support her own choices.

Imagine a type of nut that could save hundreds of thousands of people in poor countries from starvation. In fact, imagine one that costs about $20 per child for a month, roughly the same as therapeutic milk, but which, unlike most other therapeutic foods, does not require preparation, is packaged, keeps fresh after opening, and can be easily transported and distributed directly to parents and children.

The latest African Economic Outlook from the OECD Development Centre, which looks at prospects for 29 countries, reports that economic activity overall in Africa rose by nearly 5% in 2005 amid windfall gains from booming markets in oil and minerals. The African Economic Outlook sees growth accelerating to 5.8% in 2006 and easing to 5.5% in 2007. These figures hide large differences between countries, particularly in light of endowments in natural resources.

Reconciling environmental conservation and the necessities of development will be very difficult in a developing county like mine. We know that the source of man’s welfare is the biosphere, and so to grow we must use its resources, particularly natural ones.

Latin America is back in the spotlight this year. The political climate is warming up once again, with major elections taking place in several countries. Economic prospects remain bright, as low interest rates and high prices of raw material exports bolster Asian-style growth rates, while China in particular sucks in huge quantities of soya, iron, copper, oil and gas. The emerging markets are awash in liquidity, with high yields attracting investors. Latin America has recorded three successive years of growth, its first such run in half a century and one that looks set to continue in 2006.

On 4 April OECD development and environment ministers meet in Paris. The aim is to push for more progress on the many areas that link the environment and development.

Fiscal responsibility is no longer a taboo in Latin America. Just look at Mexico. Once a country with burgeoning budget deficits, it is now a stable global economic player. But this OECD member is not the only example. New governments have been elected in Brazil and Chile, each promising fiscal rectitude.

“Tradition is a guide and not a jailer”, wrote W. Somerset Maugham. Could it be that some traditions, however rooted in great histories and cultures, are now trapping countries in poverty? This certainly appears to be the case when it comes to the influence of social and cultural norms on the status of women.

The 2005 UN World Summit achieved some notable breakthroughs for development. All countries committed themselves to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and Australia announced new aid targets to add to those of the EU and the G8 in the run up to the summit.

In September world leaders made the journey to the UN headquarters in New York. Statements were made; a much-contested declaration was painfully agreed. People get cynical about international summits. What should those concerned with ending global poverty make of this one?

When the OECD recently co-launched a new Middle East and North Africa project (MENA) on investment and governance in Jordan in February, there was much talk in the air about change and a new era. Coming so soon after Iraq’s elections, this can only be expected, but to long-term observers in the region the rhetoric could have seemed all too familiar, not least because MENA has been promoted in various guises before. Every initiative has its time of course, but can this one work now?

OECD Observer No 250, July 2005

What have humanitarian aid and Swiss army knives got in common? How is aid measured, and what is “phantom” aid? Is the situation after the tsunami tragedy improving? You can read about these issues in the OECD Observer of course, but there is a constant need for policymakers and NGOs to stay ahead of them.

The recent history of the world’s second largest continent has been plagued by internal conflict, famine and disease. But recent economic prospects for Africa are looking more favourable than they have for a number of years.

Another resource which Africa is perhaps less noted for is oil. And it could become a serious source of finance for development in certain countries.

Investing in African agriculture would help poor people to help themselves. The World Bank forecasts that in Africa and the Middle East, the number of “absolute poor” will increase between now and 2015. Nearly 80% of these people live in rural areas. Their options to improve livelihoods are largely restricted to agriculture.

In September the United Nations convenes the first major summit to review implementation of the UN Millennium Development Goals, and to rally support for more progress to cut poverty and boost development in an effort to meet the 2015 deadline. Determined action, as well as some new ideas, may well be needed. One such idea is the Commission for Africa, launched by the UK prime minister Tony Blair in February 2004.

Cancelling debt for poor countries is all very well, but the role of soft loans in spurring development and eradicating poverty should not be overlooked.

The earthquake and resulting tsunami that struck south and southeast Asia in late December caused massive destruction and left more than 300,000 persons dead or missing, and many more injured. An estimated $7.76 billion will be required for rehabilitation and reconstruction in India, Indonesia, the Maldives and Sri Lanka.

Leaders meeting at the 2005 World Summit in New York renewed their pledge to seek multilateral solutions to the problems of developing countries and highlighted the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness as an avenue worth pursuing (Outcomes II23c).

When is too much not enough? When it is development aid, of course. Here is why. Foreign aid, in the doldrums for years after the Cold War ended, is back with a splash. We need more aid, everyone is saying, to fight poverty and disease, and in particular to help us meet the Millennium Development Goals whose 2015 deadline looms.

The Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami of 26 December 2004 was one of the most lethal, and perhaps the most widespread natural disaster in living memory. What general conclusions can the development community draw?

World AIDS Day 2004 kicked off on 1 December with the slogan, “Have you heard me today?”. The slogan was coined by women, who account for about half of the people infected with HIV/AIDS, but who often don’t have a say in protecting themselves against the disease.

Taxes, philanthropy and financial markets could all become new sources of funding to help finance development and meet the Millennium Development Goals. But donors should be aware of their pitfalls too.

We all now know that weak corporate governance can have a real impact on investors, savers, retirees, creditors, employees and consumers, as well as on entire economies. Corporate failures from the US to Italy have demonstrated this. But what would the effects be on developing countries?

Violent conflict plus widespread public insecurity and fear are primary causes of poverty, says the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee. Yet poverty itself is fertile ground for terrorism. In fact, terrorists often cite development problems as justification for their acts, says A Development Cooperation Lens on Terrorism Prevention.

A new study by the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC) and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) demonstrates a clear trend toward rising aid donations to fight HIV/AIDS.

One of the oft-overlooked facts about the OECD is that its member countries handle over 90% of global bilateral development aid. The lion’s share of foreign direct investment also comes from the OECD area.

Socially responsible development is becoming a buzzword among private equity funds. But can this business community reconcile commercial and developmental objectives in investment? Yes, though there are certain conditions.

Major aid donors have increased their aid efforts, but still have a long way to go if they are to reach the levels they pledged at the UN Financing for Development Conference in Monterrey, Mexico, in 2002, a new OECD report says. International aid rose significantly in 2002 for the first time in several years, to US$58 billion from US$52 billion in 2001 at current prices and exchange rates, according to the latest edition of the OECD’s annual Development Co-operation Report.

Insuring the environment is a high-risk business; not only is it a gamble on whether and how one’s client will pollute, it also means having to pay increasingly high costs for cleaning up oil spills, detoxifying chemical leaks and decontaminating groundwater. Can insurance companies continue to afford such coverage?

While bemoaning the global impact of rich countries’ subsidies on poorer economies, environmentalists are taking a closer look at how the elimination of some subsidies may be detrimental to the environment.

Health before wealth is more than just an old adage, and in the build-up to the WTO meeting at Cancún in September, we look at why programmes that aim to protect and improve the health of poor people can help in the battle against global poverty.

Donor countries in the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) increased their official development assistance (ODA) by almost 5% in real terms in 2002 to US$57 billion, raising ODA to 0.23% of gross national income (GNI). This marked the beginning of a recovery from the all-time low of 0.22% of GNI seen in each of the past three years.

“Agenda for growth and development” was the theme of this year’s annual OECD Ministerial Council. The meeting was chaired by New Zealand’s prime minister, Helen Clark. Here are some key points from the chair’s summary, issued after the meeting.

In 1962, we usually divided the world into three regions. The advanced capitalist group was then known as the developed world. The second was the “Sino-Soviet bloc”. Countries “in course of development” were the third world. The China-USSR split occurred in the early 1960s; most of the communist regimes collapsed around 1990, and the hostility of the cold war has largely faded away. The income gap between the former communist countries and the advanced capitalist group has become very much wider than it was. For this reason, a tripartite division of the world economy is no longer appropriate.

During the early 1990s, the least developed countries accounted for a paltry 0.5% of world trade, while carrying a burden of total external debt that in some countries, such as Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique and Uganda, amounted to more than ten times their export earnings. This meant that, at times, a third or more of their export revenues went towards servicing financial obligations. And as their debt was denoted in hard currency, it could not be paid for with earnings made in the domestic economy, where weak currencies or barter predominated.

“Africa is awakening to the realisation that its progress lies in partnership … we have got to be partners against all the evils emanating from the legacy of our history.” These were the concluding words of Mozambique’s president, Joaquim Chissano, who on 4 April became the second African head of state to recently visit the OECD. Mozambican President Chissano followed Senegal’s Abdoulayé Wade who in February 2002 came to participate in the launch of the Development Centre/African Development Bank’s first African Economic Outlook (see Book reviews).

Richard Manning, a senior British civil servant, has been elected chairman of the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC), succeeding Jean-Claude Faure who has held the post since 1999. Mr Manning will take up his duties in June 2003.

The 2002/2003 edition of the joint African Development Bank/OECD Development Centre African Economic Outlook (AEO) was launched at OECD Headquarters in Paris on 3 March in unusually dramatic circumstances. The launch was initially planned for the fourth International Forum on African Perspectives which should have been held by the two institutions on 3-4 March in the premises of the French Ministry of Economy, Finance and Industry.

The recent world summit on sustainable development was either a success or a disappointment, depending on whom you ask. For a clear assessment of the summit’s achievements, it should be measured against what is in fact needed to achieve sustainable development and what was feasible in the current political climate.

Rock and pop have been linked to social protest since the 1960s. But the advocacy role of major stars took on a whole new dimension when Irish pop star, Bob Geldoff, successfully raised over $100 million for African famine relief by organising the all-star televised Live Aid rock concerts in London and Philadelphia in July 1985.

The OECD may be seen by some as a “rich countries’ club”, yet for four decades it has devoted considerable resources and effort to the global task of promoting development in non-OECD countries. It is home to the Development Assistance Committee (DAC), which is responsible for over 90% of global official development assistance (ODA) to developing countries, as well as home to the regionally focused Sahel and West Africa Club. And celebrating its 40th anniversary this year is the Development Centre, which has been an active forum for professional consultation, intellectual exchange and policy advice between the OECD and the emerging and developing economies of Africa, Asia and Latin America.

China’s business environment has become far more transparent since Deng Xiaoping began his programme of reforming and opening up the Chinese economy at the end of 1978, but the authorities’ way of dealing with private enterprises is still largely characterised by relationship-based rather than rule-based decision-making.

Investment is partly about taking risks, though not just any risk. In fact, transparent systems where the judicial framework is efficient and corruption is low tend to receive more investment.

Nearly a billion households, particularly the rural poor, rely directly on natural resources for their livelihoods. But global environmental threats are undermining this resource base. Biodiversity loss is proceeding at a rapid rate in many countries, as is the build-up of toxic chemicals. Desertification and drought are problems of global dimensions, affecting all regions. Greenhouse gas emissions pose risks to the world’s climate and developing countries are likely to be the most vulnerable to the impacts. Three UN conventions, on climate change, biological diversity and desertification – closely associated with the Earth Summit, held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 – address these threats, which could undermine collective efforts to eradicate poverty and foster sustainable development worldwide.

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) embody the key dimensions of human development – poverty, hunger, education, health – expressed as a set of time-bound targets. They include halving income-poverty and hunger; achieving universal primary education and gender equality; reducing under-five mortality by two-thirds and maternal mortality by three-quarters; reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS; and halving the proportion of people without access to safe water. These targets are to be achieved by 2015, the comparison point being 1990.

One key problem is how to stop displaced national fishing vessels from searching for fishing opportunities on the high seas and even re-flagging to jurisdictions that do not provide proper surveillance of fleet activities. Indeed, the number of vessels fishing under flags of convenience (FOC), many of which are of OECD origin, has risen in the past decade.

Developing countries want to boost their income through exports. Importers, particularly industrialised countries, want to ensure that imported goods meet their own domestic requirements for health, safety and the environment. Their consumers may also want to minimise the environmental impact of producing and using those goods. In theory, these goals are compatible. In practice, however, it can be more complicated, as there can be different ways to reconcile these objectives, some of which affect developing countries more than others.

The developing world is far more diverse than those responsible for development strategies seem to believe. Unless projects are cut to suit circumstances more, they may be doomed to fail.

There is wide acceptance now that aid from wealthy countries is important for development. More assistance is needed, but that is not all.

How to explain the brutalisation and death of Palestinian and Israeli children? Or the savagery of fighters in Sierra Leone who chop off children’s limbs? Or the systematic abduction of thousands of Ugandan children as guerrilla fighters and sexual slaves? Graça Machel, author of a watershed report on the impact of armed conflict on children suggests that such depravity can be understood only in terms of the “desolate moral vacuum” that is part of every armed conflict.

Church and civil society groups should focus their energy and influence on dismantling rich-country protection against the labour-intensive exports of great importance to the poor countries. But they have to dispel some fallacies about tariff barriers first.

James Tobin died on 11 March 2002. He was born in 1918. Just like the tax with which his name has become associated, a lot has been written and said about Mr Tobin. A Nobel prize winner in 1981 for his analytical work on financial markets, and Yale professor from 1950 until his retirement in 1988, Mr Tobin has been described by many as a man whose influence reached well beyond the circles of many of his contemporaries.

Net official development assistance (ODA) remained stable in 2001, in both constant dollars and as a share of gross national income (GNI), as increases in the United States and many EU member states compensated for a decline in Japan's ODA, figures published on May 13 showed. As a proportion of Development Assistance Committee (DAC) members' combined gross national income the ratio remained unchanged, at 0.22%, as compared to 0.33% in 1990 to 1992. In current dollars, ODA from DAC member countries to developing countries was US$51.4 billion in 2001.

Whenever development financing is discussed these days, it is hard to avoid mention of the Tobin tax. Generally, the question people ask is whether it would be feasible, even desirable, to put a tax on global capital flows to finance development. The issue also came up for discussion at the UN Financing for Development Conference, in Monterrey (Mexico) in March 2002, when heads of state and the major international institutions met to discuss ways of reducing global poverty.

A busy agenda is in store at the UN Conference on Financing for Development in Monterrey in March. The importance of the issues cannot be overstated or repeated enough. Perhaps we have all already read that 1.2 billion people live on less than $1 a day, with another 1.6 billion on less than $2. Perhaps we think we have read somewhere that these groups make up nearly a half of the world’s population. And for sure, most people would agree that poverty in all its forms is the greatest challenge to the world community, that action is needed on several fronts.

Extreme poverty still ravages the lives of one in four people in the developing world and women and girls are the poorest, despite the remarkable economic and social progress of the past 30 years. Life expectancy is up from 41 to 62 years, infant mortality rates are down by 50%, and primary school enrolment has doubled.

Development choices

In a world of volatility, poorer countries should aim for equity inflows – portfolio equity and FDI – if they want growth to last.

A high-level meeting of the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee in April adopted a recommendation on untying aid to least developed countries. This means that loans and grants for a wide range of projects will no longer be dependent on the contracts being carried out bycompanies from the donor country. The agreement represents “a very concrete signal… of the DAC’s commitment to the reform of aid practices”, said DAC chairman Jean-Claude Faure. The meeting also adopted a policy statement on poverty reduction, pledging to help developing countries meet the challenge of a comprehensive approach to development and poverty reduction; globalisation; the digital age; and diseases such as AIDS.

For many developing countries, inadequate telephone service is a major obstacle to joining the e-commerce age. Sri Lanka’s experience shows that competition is the key to improving telecom access.

The mythical Greek hero Odysseus had to use all his intelligence to navigate between Scylla, a rock monster whose six heads plucked hapless sailors to their doom, and the fatal whirlpool Charybdis in his odyssey across the Mediterranean more than 2,000 years ago.

Since the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC) published the international development goals in 1996 – in a report called Shaping the 21st Century: the Contribution of Development Co-operation – the commitment to halve world poverty has become the focus of the development policies of the majority of donor organisations.

Traditionally, we have always considered poverty to be a lack of means. It is certainly that in part. Without resources, people cannot satisfy even their most basic physiological needs. But a more meaningful definition of poverty is based on deprivation of capability, a concept associated with Nobel prize winner Amartya Sen, and elaborated in UNDP’s Human Development Report of 1997, which called it ‘human poverty’.

The launch of A Better World for All at Geneva 2000 marked a new stage in the development of closer bonds between the UN, the OECD and the international financial institutions: the World Bank and the IMF. Predictably, it received both praise and criticism. World Vision was encouraged that the International Development Goals were receiving some much-needed renewed impetus, but to be honest, it all had a faintly hollow ring.

More than a billion people world-wide live in extreme poverty and preventable diseases are a major cause of mortality in developing countries, so why should we care about the environment? The answer becomes obvious once we recall that in developing countries activities based on natural resources, such as agriculture, forestry and fisheries, still contribute more to the economy than industry or services. And since many of the world’s poor depend directly on these activities for a living, environmental degradation hurts the poor disproportionately.

The importance of promoting gender equality cannot be underestimated. While all seven development goals laid out in this Spotlight are intertwined to a very large extent, a few of them, like reducing poverty, improving education and lowering maternal mortality, would have little hope of being achieved without a more even rapport de force between the sexes. Inequality keeps women poor, illiterate and unhealthy; it undermines the lives of children; in short, it places a dead hand on economic potential. The question is how to reduce inequality, if not remove it altogether.

Malaysia, Morocco and the Republic of Korea form a select group of countries that halved the proportion of their people living in poverty in less than a generation. The Indian states of Haryana, Kerala and Punjab have achieved the same type of progress. Another dozen countries – including Botswana and Mauritius – reduced poverty by a quarter or more. Their experiences are well-documented and other countries can learn much from them. After all, if they have done it, others can do it too. The question is how?

Reproductive health services are an area where gains have been made in recent years, but with rising numbers of people in poor countries passing through their reproductive ages, the pressure is on to sustain and build upon this progress in the decade ahead.

More than 500,000 women died during pregnancy and childbirth in 1995 – and many more millions suffered without treatment. Large as the problem is, resolving it might not be as difficult as many believe.

Joe was a normal looking child. He looked about the right weight, had a cheery smile and laughed loudly when he played with his many friends. Sadly, Joe fell ill and died a week before his fifth birthday.

Despite the economic boom in the western world, notably the United States, global poverty remains a serious problem. Across the globe 1 person in 5 lives on less than $1 a day – and 1 in 7 suffers from chronic hunger.

Picture a country where girls are not allowed to go to school just because they are girls and must work instead. Or where sick babies die because their mothers cannot read the prescription on the medicine bottle. Imagine a society where parents remove their daughters from school at puberty for fear of unwanted pregnancy, and marry them off early to husbands their daughters do not necessarily want.

Providing universal primary education in developing countries remains a great challenge – and a great opportunity. Educational success would give millions more the skills to rise out of poverty. But failure would fuel an educational – and social – crisis in the decade ahead.

The goals for international development address that most compelling of human desires - a world free of poverty and free of the misery that poverty breeds. The goals have been set in quantitative terms, so part of the story is told in words and pictures, but the core of it is in numbers and charts.

Over the past decade, the concept of “sustainable development” – combining rapid growth with macroeconomic stability, poverty reduction and environmental regeneration – has replaced “market reform” as the main goal of the major multilateral organisations.

For Jean-Louis Terrier, Chairman of Credit Risk International, a consulting firm, there are good reasons to be “Afro-positive”. Speaking at the first International Forum on African Perspectives, organised by the OECD and the African Development Bank and held in Paris on 3 and 4 February, Mr Terrier, a country risks expert, highlighted the importance of the large market that Africa could become.

In 1998 the Nobel Prize for economics was awarded to Amartya Kunar Sen, the Cambridge economist of Indian origin, who showed that famine can happen even when the granaries are full. By that he meant that there could be “poorer people amongst the poor” and the main problem is that of allocations and entitlements. Amartya Kunar Sen’s influence in development economics is reflected in the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in the formulation of an alternative concept of development – sustainable human development, which takes account of more than just GDP.

The Club du Sahel was formed 1976. It is an active forum that brings together the Sahelian states belonging to the Permanent Inter-State Committee for the Prevention of Drought in the Sahel (CILSS) - Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Chad, the Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Senegal - non-government organisations representing the private sector, rural communities and women, municipal officials, and the main bilateral and multilateral donors. The Club is run by a secretariat based at OECD in Paris.

Africa is the poorest of the earth’s continents and the Sahel is the world’s poorest region at peace. Six of the nine countries that make up this West African region – the Gambia, Chad, Guinea Bissau, Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger – are among the bottom twelve on a list of 174 countries ranked in the latest UNDP report on human development. Adding to the crushing poverty is an unstable climate, fragile natural resources, dependence on a small number of exports that are subject to highly unpredictable market fluctuations, and a heavy reliance on financial transfers from abroad. All these factors generate an environment of permanent uncertainty that is hardly conducive to investment.