A CAMPAIGN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT GOALS
The International Anti-Poverty Pact

1. The International Council on Social Welfare (ICSW) is a democratic global alliance representing thousands of non-government organisations that are actively involved in promoting social welfare, social development and social justice at local, national and international levels. Our membership network comprises community-based and representative organisations in more than seventy developed and developing countries around the world.

2. ICSW has conducted an extensive series of global and regional forums since 1999 in order to consult our membership and many other civil society organisations about issues relating to poverty and social development. One key outcome of these consultations is a framework for an International Anti-Poverty Pact as the centrepiece of a Campaign to achieve the International Development Goals agreed at the UN Millennium Summit in 2000.

THE INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT GOALS

3. The Millennium Summit was the most representative and authoritative gathering of world leaders ever to be assembled. The Summit formally adopted nine International Development Goals for reducing extreme poverty, child and maternal mortality and HIV/AIDS as well as for improving access to food, water, education and shelter (see Millennium Declaration, para 19). Most of these goals had been proposed several years earlier by the OECD countries that provide direct financial assistance for developing countries.

4. These International Development Goals (IDGs) have substantial strengths. They focus on areas where inadequate development is especially damaging for people and nations and where improvement would provide especially great economic, social and environmental benefits. Most of them are numerical and measurable, and all have specific target dates for their achievement. They are appropriately ambitious but are not so unrealistic as to lack credibility.

5. The IDGs will not be achieved, however, unless urgent and substantial improvements are made in the mobilisation of relevant resources at both national and international levels. They also will not be achieved unless there is a clear and agreed timetable for that mobilisation and compliance with that timetable is openly and effectively monitored. This will require the same degree of specificity in commitments to resource mobilisation as is already in the IDGs.

AN INTERNATIONAL ANTI-POVERTY PACT

7. The UN Secretary General has proposed a Campaign to help achieve the International Development Goals. ICSW believes its centrepiece should be adoption and implementation of an International Anti-Poverty Pact. The Pact should include the nine IDGs and match them with a similar number of new resource commitments that are also specific and time-bound. The Pact should be negotiated by governments through the United Nations and should be for overall achievement by 2015.

8. The nine specific, time-bound International Development Goals involve

• halving the proportion of people whose income is less than US$1 per day;
  
• halving the proportion of people who suffer hunger;
  
• halving the proportion of people who cannot access safe drinking water;
  
• reducing maternal mortality by three-quarters;
  
• reducing under-five child mortality by two-thirds;
  
• enabling all children to complete a full course of primary education;
  
• achieving full gender equity in access to all levels of education;
  
• reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria and other major diseases;
  
• achieving significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers.

Each of these goals was agreed for achievement by 2015, except the last which was for 2020.

9. These goals should be matched in the Pact by nine specific, time-bound commitments in relation to mobilisation of resources. ICSW proposes the following areas as the highest priorities for inclusion in this part of the Pact:

• improving the provision and application of official development assistance;
  
• improving arrangements for debt cancellation and debt relief;
  
• enhancing the flows and benefits of private investment for developing countries;
  
• reducing unfairness for developing countries in international trade agreements;
  
• enhancing the efficiency, fairness and sustainability of taxation systems;
  
• reducing corruption and misappropriation of public resources;
  
• strengthening corporate governance and responsibility;
  
• discontinuing excessive military expenditure and arms trade;
  
• enhancing equity and security in land ownership.

10. These proposed areas involve a balance of contributions from developed and developing country sources. For example, improvements in official development assistance (ODA) and debt relief are to be accompanied by reductions in military expenditure and in public and corporate corruption. They also involve a balance between mobilising public sector resources through taxation, ODA and debt relief, and mobilising private sector resources through business enterprise, investment and trade. The proposed Pact also recognises that, while tax reform is necessary to help generate and sustain adequate levels of public revenue, heavy emphasis must also be placed on better use of existing revenue.

11. The Anti-Poverty Pact should initially include one or two specific actions under each of the nine resource commitment headings. For example, these actions could involve specific increases in ODA, establishment of a debt arbitration mechanism, reductions in specific trade barriers, and establishment of an international tax forum. This first round of agreed actions under the Pact could be for achievement by 2005.

12. Towards the end of this first phase, a further round of specific actions could be agreed for achievement by 2010, with a third round being agreed later for 2015. This approach reflects the inevitable time lag between providing resources and achieving their full impact on the IDGs. It also reflects the fact that resource commitments are likely to be vague or meagre if the deadline is too close and to be unduly delayed and uncertain if the deadline is too far away.

13. The fundamental purpose of the proposed Pact is to achieve credible and sustained commitment to achievement of key International Development Goals by the agreed date of 2015. It should be a brief document of firm commitments. Lengthy descriptions, rhetoric and analysis are readily available from other sources and their inclusion in the Pact would serve only to delay its adoption and divert attention from its key operative commitments.

14. ICSW believes that the UN Secretary General should be asked to prepare a report in time for consideration by the 2002 meeting of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) proposing a framework for the Pact and also a process and timetable for developing a detailed draft for finalisation as a resolution of the General Assembly.

[For further details of the proposed International Anti-Poverty Pact, see also
ICSW’s paper Financing for Development: Proposals for Action (2002).]