Wake up call
Editorial
Guyana Chronicle
October 11, 2003
POVERTY, early pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections including HIV/AIDS among adolescents are among the major issues confronting humanity today.
That's according to the recently released State of the World Report entitled, "Making 1 Billion Count: Investing in Adolescents' Health and Rights."
The Report, compiled by the United Nations Population Fund, points to some alarming statistics that ought to be seen as warning signals for policy makers if the current slide into deepening human misery is to be arrested. According to the Report, the problems affecting young people, estimated at some 1.2 billion or one-fifth of the world's population, have not shown any improvement and may in fact have worsened over the past decade.
Of particular concern is the HIV/AIDS pandemic, which is spreading at an alarming rate, especially among the more youthful segment of the population. According to Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, Executive Director of the UN Population Fund, the current situation should be regarded as a wake up call to those in positions of authority to make the necessary resources available to enable and empower our young people to lead healthier and more productive lives.
Regrettably, this call by the Executive Director is not new. Despite commitments by the industrialized countries to make available 0.7 per cent of their Gross Net Product (GNP) to fight poverty and narrow the gap between the "haves" and the "haves not", development assistance continues to remain pitifully low, averaging under half of the agreed levels.
The much-publicized Millennium Development Goals, laudable as they are on paper, appear increasingly elusive. It is inconceivable that poverty could be halved by year 2015 given the current structures of global trade, which puts poor countries at the mercy of the more powerful nations.
It is not that the resources to fight poverty are not there. As the late Dr. Cheddi Jagan so eloquently articulated in his call for a New Global Human Order, enough funds to fight hunger and want can be generated by way of judicious cuts in military spending and modest taxes on oil and speculative capital transactions, among other measures.
Even more significant from the standpoint of sustainable human development is the need for an understanding of structural constraints, which impede growth and human development.
Key among these are inequitable trade between developed and developing countries, in which the latter countries continue to be cast in the role of exporters of raw materials and importers of manufactured goods at exorbitant prices. These naturally result in deteriorating terms of trade and consequential balance of payments difficulties.
To cope with such situations, these countries are forced to resort to the multilateral financial institutions where stringent "conditionalities" are being imposed on borrowing countries, which are often in conflict with national imperatives.
What is required is the political will to make things happen as against mere declarations on poverty issues.
As is so often the case, there is a mismatch between words and deeds, resulting in a perpetuation of a status quo in which the gap between the rich and the poor continues to grow, year after year.
The PPP/Civic Administration deserves credit for pursuing an approach to development that puts people at the center of its development agenda.
From the time it assumed office in October 1992, it has embraced a strategy of development with a human face, one that has found expression in a much better quality of life for the people of Guyana.