Targets and Resources
An International Anti-Poverty Pact


      The World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen in 1995 identified a number of specific anti-poverty targets but they were not given great prominence in the final agreement.

     In the following year, however, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) comprising the major donor countries agreed on a number of International Development Targets for achievement by the year 2015. The targets are:

  • halving the proportion of people living in extreme poverty;
  • achieving universal primary education;
  • eliminating gender disparity in primary and secondary education (by 2005);
  • reducing mortality rates of infants and children under 5 by two-thirds;
  • reducing maternal mortality rates by three-quarters;
  • achieving universal access to appropriate reproductive health services;
  • reversing global and national losses of environmental resources.

     These goals, unlike more emotionally attractive ones such as total elimination of poverty, could conceivably be achieved by the target date of 2015. The fifteen-year period is long enough for the necessary initiatives to achieve major improvements but not so long as to condone procrastination. Substantial action must be initiated urgently, however, if the outcomes are to be achieved on time.

     There is no prospect of the targets being met without substantial commitments of resources and other support by the wealthier countries and the international financial institutions which they control. It is reasonable to conclude that, since they established the targets, they should be willing to provide adequate support. If they do not do so, the targets will rapidly be seen as unfair and unattainable impositions on developing countries rather than as realistic and reciprocal commitments by all members of the international community.

     This concept of reciprocal commitments could be implemented by establishing an International Anti-Poverty Pact involving both developed and developing countries, as well as international financial institutions. The Pact would involve commitments to mobilisation of resources, as well as to the anti-poverty outcomes specified in the International Development Targets.

     The mobilisation of resources should include both international and national resources, both developed and developing countries’ resources, and public sector, private sector and individual resources. A first phase of mobilisation could be agreed for implementation by 2005 and could include specific actions in each of the following areas:
  • official development assistance;
  • debt cancellation;
  • taxation of speculative financial transactions;
  • implementation of trade agreements;
  • reductions in military expenditure;
  • anti-corruption systems;
  • land reform.

     ICSW urges governments to agree at the Special Session in Geneva upon the key elements to be included in the Pact and to establish an independent task force to prepare a detailed draft for consideration and finalisation at the Millennium Session of the General Assembly later this year. ECOSOC should be principally responsible for facilitating and monitoring implementation of the Pact, and the General Assembly should agree to review implementation of the Pact on International Poverty Day each year (October 17).