08 September 2005

As leaders from 189 nations meet at the UN World Summit to discuss progress toward achieving the eight Millennium Development Goals, analysts, policy specialists, academics, and civil society leaders will voice their call for reforms. John Bolton, US ambassador to the UN, will be pushing the US agenda to water down development commitments. 

The charity ActionAid International says that everyone will have a voice except the people the MDGs were designed to help.

To fill that gap, ActionAid International went to people living in poverty and asked them whether their freedom, rights and dignity have enlarged over the past five years. Actionaid today (8 September) released its summary report of this extensive and unprecedented survey. The survey - Whose Freedom:  MDGs As If People Matter – represents the first time the world’s poor have spoken out on the lack of progress of the goals.

The report documents the collective viewpoints and experiences of more than 340,000 impoverished people living in 5,000 villages across 18 countries. Participants were surveyed during June, July and August 2005 in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, India, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Vietnam, Ethiopia, Senegal, Malawi, Sierra Leone, Kenya, Tanzania, Somalia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Brazil and Guatemala. 

ActionAid International chief executive Ramesh Singh summarised the report’s findings: “For our world’s poorest people, life is getting worse, not better.” 

The report shows:

• in 64% of the villages ActionAid visited, people regularly go hungry
• in 83% of settlements, work is not available for part of the year
• nearly half the villages have no access to any social services
• women often subsist on less than half the wages paid to men
• children, as young as five, work for money in 71% of the villages
• four out of five schoolage girls have never been inside a classroom

The people who speak out in Whose Freedom:  MDGs As If People Matter describe poverty and hunger as wounds that refuse to heal.  ActionAid says their testimonials expose the lack of work, the constant search for food, and the tradeoffs people are forced to make to pay for food, education, and medical treatment.

• Chhorn Phaly, a Cambodian mother, worked extra hard hauling bamboo so she could send her son Nak to school.  But, despite Chhorn’s pleas, Nak dropped out after fourth grade to live on Phnom Penh’s streets.  Nak can bring home $2.50 a week begging in the city, compared to the $0.50 a week his father earns as a construction labourer.
• Ahmed Abdi Dualeh once owned 300 sheep and two camels.  But the drought in Somalia killed his pasture and all but 25 of the sheep died.  He has since lost three of his family to starvation, and the rest barely survive on emergency food supplies.  Ahmed wonders if his grandchildren will ever enjoy the independence and security of owning their own livestock.
• Robin Mtitu remembers the “boom times” when he could pocket $1 per kilogram for the coffee he grows in Tanzania.  This was before the government stopped subsidising inputs.  Now he must buy pesticides and other supplies from the same western companies that halved the the price of coffee.  The boom times have turned into fear times for small growers like Robin. 

ActionAid’s report is exceptional in its methodology, documenting first person accounts supported by village records. The report tracks widespread hunger, gaps in basic services, wage disparities, and lack of access to education and healthcare.  Poor people say that, in the five years since the MDGs were launched, they have remained where they were, or are even worse off in development. 

Yet, ActionAid says, the people which the goals aim to benefit have not taken part or will not participate in the decisions on how the MDGs can be achieved. The charity declares that its agenda at the summit will be based on the agenda of poor people. 

Whose Freedom: 

• MDGs As If People Matter report is a call to action to reclaim rights and liberty for those living in poverty.
• It provides UN leaders and civil society with a new 12-part framework for governments to reform the goals from a rights-based perspective and engage poor people as the agents of their own liberation from poverty:
• instead of focusing on counting poor people and their income, ActionAid urges leaders to restore the debate on human rights to its deserved central place.
• the rights to food, employment, shelter, water, health, education and enabling the poor to claim them should be the basic requirements for governments.
• women’s rights must be not just protected, but expanded to make decisions on life, reproduction, livelihood, peace and security.
• governments must acknowledge that education and health targets have not been met.  ActionAid urges sustained and substantial investment in public health infrastructure and national health systems in developing countries, including drug procurement and distribution systems.
• more investment in agriculture is urgently needed, along with land reforms, rights to food and work, and the promotion of women’s rights of access to and control over land, seeds and water.
• donors must meet their target of 0.7% of national income in aid.  All the debts owed by the world’s poorest countries must be cancelled. 
• trade justice should mean policies must change direction to ensure trade supports development and gender equity, not forced liberalisation and privatisation of services and resources. 
•  Rich nations must stop dumping agricultural products on poor countries.