PLENARY REMARKS BY EVELINE HERFKENS
UN Secretary-General’s Executive Coordinator for the Millennium Development Goals Campaign
Thank you. It's wonderful to be here tonight. I often address this room in the daytime but I must tell you, you look like a much more exciting audience than the daytime group here.
The best way to explain the importance of the Millennium Development Goals is to actually quote the Swedish Campaign on the Millennium Development Goals. Just before Christmas last year they put a big message on the back pages of all the national newspapers saying: "the best Christmas gifts from all of us to all of us are the Millennium Development Goals". And then they came back a week later in the first paper of the New Year with another message: "the best New Year's intentions, the best New Year's resolutions are the actual implementation of the Millennium Development Goals".
That says it all. The Millennium Development Goals emerged out of a fantastic meeting in the year 2000 in these halls at the United Nations, where more heads of states and governments came together than ever before or ever since in any place in the world. They signed a package, which includes eradicating extreme poverty; getting all kids to school, including girls; gender equality; fighting maternal mortality and child mortality; reversing the AIDS pandemic; ensuring sustainable development in an environmental sense etc. Beautiful goals.
But one problem is that heads of state and ministers often go to meetings, sign something beautiful, and then they take the plane back from New York to return to business as usual. So the message from the Swedish campaign - that "it takes all of us to achieve these goals" -- is very important because we have to make our governments accountable for the promises they've made. Government after government and country after country after country. The UN can provide a platform but the UN doesn't have any instrument to force compliance. So it is us in civil society who are the most important campaigners, to actually make governments accountable for the promises they've made. It takes all of us.
What is the agreement? The agreement, which has been reaffirmed in other important conferences such as in Monterrey and again in New York, is that it is the primary responsibility of poor countries to fight poverty, to put policies in place so that kids go to school, to improve their health systems, and to take care that they have transparent public expenditure management to fight corruption. But we acknowledged here in these rooms that poor countries will not be able to achieve these goals unless rich countries achieve Goal 8. Goal 8 is about the global partnership - the need for rich countries to help poor countries to achieve all the Millennium Development Goals.
When I address audiences in developing countries I spell out what I think they should be doing. Tonight, addressing an audience of many people from the richest country in the world, I want to spell out what that means in rich countries like ours.
The rich countries have never been richer. But the efforts that they are doing in terms of giving aid to poor countries is, in terms of percentages of national wealth, less than it was ten, twenty or thirty years ago. Our efforts in this area are the lowest in over twenty years. We have to reverse that if we want to help countries achieve the Millennium Development Goals.
For an audience that is basically American I also must tell you that while the United States is the biggest donor in the world it is also the biggest economy in the world. So if you look what it does in terms of percentage of national income, I'm sorry to say that the US is on the bottom. The average American citizen does half of what a Portuguese or Greek citizen does; a third of what a British or a French citizen does and just an eighth of what a Scandinavian citizen does. So there's room to improve here. The goal, is double the present aid flows. That means an additional $50 billion annually by all 22 international donors, not just the US. I thought $50 billion was a lot of money and the US share would be perhaps $10 billion. But since hearing debates about $87 billion from the US for one country, I think this is peanuts. You can win a war but you can't win peace if you don't win the war on poverty. And the Millennium Development Goals are the roadmap to win the war on poverty.
But it's not just the amount of aid that's important -- the quality of aid matters too. One of the problems with aid from the United States is that very little goes to Sub-Saharan Africa. That's the part of the world that needs it most. And that is, as Graça Machel said earlier, the part of the world that is in danger of not achieving the Millennium Development Goals.
In Asia and Latin America most countries are doing fine. They can tax their own rich (to put it bluntly). But it's really Africa that needs your solidarity. We have to be there for Africans.
And it's not only aid. I want to say a few things about debt. Too many poor countries in Africa are paying far more back to us, the rich countries, for old debts than they can afford to pay for the primary health and education of their people. The Jubilee Campaign, which some of you have heard of, has led to some debt relief to some countries but not sufficient debt relief to sufficient countries. So we have to do more to provide debt relief. I am sure, President Obasanjo, that you are very much in agreement on this.
Then, finally, let's look at trade issues. I was a Development Minister and I was so frustrated because we had these wonderful projects where we were helping African farmers to increase in production of milk and helping women to grow tomatoes. But these farmers could never compete because the milk bottlers would always buy Dutch milk powder because it was so cheap. In Europe (and here we Europeans are the villains and not the Americans), we subsidize our own farmers to the extent that they produce more than we can ever swallow and then we dump the excess on the markets in poor African countries. Dairy farmers in Africa can't compete against Dutch milk powder and women that grow tomatoes can't compete against Italian tomato paste. There is a little problem also from the US, where cotton subsidies have led to the collapse of world prices for cotton. West African countries that produce cotton are unable to sell their stuff anymore. So there's a problem.
These are the issues that we, in rich countries, have to act upon. This is all achievable. The Millennium Development Goals are doable. Earlier, Bruce Klatsky talked about his grandparents. Maybe I can say something about mine. When my grandmother was born, more than a hundred years ago in the Netherlands, the chance that she would survive and live to celebrate her first birthday at that time was the same as today for a child in Sierra Leone, which is the poorest country in the world with the highest child mortality. Then when my mother - who is in the room today - was born in the 1920s, the chance that she would celebrate her first birthday, was the same as today in Angola. And then, when I was born in the early '50s, it was the same for me a child today in Romania.
Today in the Netherlands we are fine, thank you. The way we did this in Western Europe is very simple: basic investments in safe water (dirty water is the biggest child killer), free public education, free primary education for all, and a social safety net. In the Netherlands it took us a century. Japan and South Korea did it in fifty years.
We can do this at the global level. We are the first generation that has the resources and has the knowledge to put an end to poverty. And I want you to join us. To say "I refuse to miss this wonderful opportunity." Thank you.
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In October 2002, Eveline Herfkens was appointed as the United Nations Secretary-General's Executive Coordinator for the Millennium Development Goals Campaign. Prior to this, Ms. Herfkens was the Netherlands Minister for Development Cooperation. Ms. Herfkens has served as Permanent Representative of the Netherlands at the United Nations and other international organizations in Geneva and has been her country's Executive Director at the World Bank. Ms. Herfkens was a member of the Lower House of Parliament and has served as committee member and treasurer of Parliamentarians for Global Action; she has also been a member of the Economic Committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and joint organizer of the North-South campaign. Ms. Herfkens has also served on the council of the Labour Party, and has been chair of the Evert Vermeer Foundation, chair of the Dutch fair Trade Organization, and a member of the Development Committee of the Netherlands Council of Churches.