The Turning Point on Poverty

11 March 2010

Speech by Douglas Alexander, Secretary of State for International Development at the DFID MDG Conference.

Thank you Hilde (Johnson, Deputy Chief Executive of UNICEF) for that kind and suitably challenging introduction.

Your Excellency, ladies and gentlemen, distinguished guests, it gives me great pleasure to welcome you to the Department for International Development today, and to our conference – Agenda 2010: The Turning Point on Poverty.

It’s also a great pleasure to join Her Excellency Joyce Banda, Helen Clark and of course Hilda here on the stage this morning. I think it’s fair to say that for this session at least, we’ve got the kind of gender balance we need to see more of in the years ahead.

A year of challenges, a decade of progress

This time last year, we held another conference here in London. We gathered in the midst of turbulent times. The world had been engulfed by the most serious financial crisis for generations. The urgency of tackling climate change was already becoming apparent. The international system was frankly under great strain.

The deliberations of that conference in responding to those global events helped to inform a policy review here in the Department for International Development, which culminated with the launch of our new policy framework – our White Paper - last July.

That document set our commitment to take considered action in response to those emerging global challenges: protecting the poorest from the worst effects of the financial crisis; responding to the increasing challenge of climate change; and engaging with conflict-affected and fragile countries. The past twelve months have shown just how critical those priorities remain.

The poorest countries have not – as was once hoped - been insulated from the effects of the financial crisis. The World Bank today estimates that as a direct result of the global economic downturn, as many as 64 million more people will be pushed into lives endured iin extreme poverty. The combined effects of the food, fuel and financial crises have pushed the number of hungry people worldwide to more than a billion for the first time.

The past twelve months have shown clearly that the multilateral system designed in the middle of the last century needs reform to meet the challenges we face at the start of this new century.

And almost two months ago we saw in the starkest possible terms both the continuing need for humanitarian assistance, and the vulnerability of fragile states, when Haiti was struck by an earthquake that wrought the most tragic of human consequences.

These events have served to confirm the analysis we set out at our last year’s conference. Those of us engaged in this task of development are now working in a radically and rapidly changing environment, that will make the task of accelerating progress towards the Millennium Development Goals much tougher than it has been over the past decade.

Yet we must not allow these emerging challenges to blind us to the progress that has already been achieved. The commitment made at the turn of the millennium to ‘spare no effort’ to free men, women and children from poverty has helped to galvanise the action that brought 40 million more children into school. It has helped to increase the number of people with access to AIDS treatment from just 100,000 to over four million today. It has helped to reduce the proportion of the world’s population living in poverty from a third to a quarter.

And along with new challenges, our changed global context brings new opportunities. An understanding that as we enter this new decade, ‘our prosperity is indivisible’ – to quote the statement issued by the leaders of the G20 when they met here in London last year. And alongside this is the emerging understanding that our sustainability and our security are also increasingly indivisible.

These hallmarks of interdependence underline the belief that many of us in this room will have held for years. That the effort to tackle global poverty is not only morally right – it is also wise.

And this changing global context also requires a changed approach to the task of development. For while aid will be a necessary part of tackling poverty, it will not be sufficient.

So in addition to meeting our aid promises to the world’s poorest, the international community should employ the broadest range of instruments to make our world more equal, more stable and more sustainable.

From the ongoing climate talks to the role of the G20 in assuring a sustainable, inclusive global economic recovery. From reforming our international architecture to preventing and responding to conflict. In this new era of global challenges, we need a new set of global responses.

The road to New York

This is the new understanding that the international community will bring to New York in a little over six months time, for the UN’s MDG Summit. I believe that meeting will provide an opportunity for a turning point in our efforts to meet the Millennium Development Goals.

But those of us eager to ensure its success must engage now in that process. That is why I wanted today to bring together some of the world’s leading development experts, policy-makers, business leaders and practitioners.

So that we might together consider the lessons of the past ten years – the progress and the pitfalls that we have encountered.

So that we might together apply our collective wisdom and experience to ensure that over the next five years we make the very best possible progress.

And so that we might together produce a summary of our deliberations that will – along with other similar meetings due to take place around the world over the coming months - help in a very concrete way to pave the way toward an MDG Summit that reflects the urgency of this moment, and summons an ambition to match that urgency.

To begin that process today, I want to share with you the United Kingdom’s emerging thinking on the three areas for discussion in our expert round tables this afternoon: hunger and nutrition, health and education.

And I want to share with you our sense of some of the guiding principles that could help to accelerate progress towards meeting the Millennium Development Goals.

Let me turn first to the three focus areas for our expert round table discussions this afternoon.

Our focus areas: hunger and nutrition, education and health

Each of these MDGs – hunger and nutrition, education, child and maternal health - is significantly off-track. Yet we have also seen progress in each of these areas – over the past decade we have learned more about what works and how to deliver real change. Allow me to share with you the British Government’s latest thinking on each of these areas, beginning with hunger and nutrition.

Hunger and Nutrition

Two years on from peak international food prices, we know that as many as a billion people across the world today are still in the grip of a hunger crisis. The simultaneous shocks of food, fuel and finance have combined to cripple the buying power of the world’s poorest people.

With one in six people on our planet going hungry each day, it is clear that we need to radically increase our efforts towards tackling this problem. ‘Business as usual’ wasn’t going to get us to MDG1 in the good times – and it certainly won’t be sufficient to get us there now.

So the question we face today is this: how can we come together to not only increase food production, but also ensure the poorest people have access to that food; and that the most vulnerable – pregnant mothers and newborn babies – have access to decent nutrition?

This last aspect – poor nutrition – is perhaps the most neglected by the international community. That is why this Department, this week, is launching our first nutrition strategy, setting out our investments to treat both the symptoms and the causes of under-nutrition.

Overall we expect to improve the nutrition of at least 12 million children over the next five years – which amounts to some 10 per cent of all undernourished children in our world today.

Education

Many children around the world who lack access to food in sufficient quantity or quality are also among those 72 million who are this morning denied their right to an education.

It will be increasingly tough now to get each additional child into school. Not least because so many of those children are now by definition the ‘hardest to reach’ – whether because they live in rural areas, are disabled, live in fragile and conflict affected states, or indeed are girls from all walks of life.

And beyond getting children into school, our experience accrued over the last ten years has shown that we need to ensure quality of teaching and learning. Because alongside the 72 million children denied any form of education, there are many millions more – perhaps as many as 300 million in total – who, even if they are enrolled in school, are struggling to master basic reading, writing and arithmetic.

The task for all of us now – and which I hope will be addressed in the session this afternoon – is to use the knowledge we have gained from a decade of progress to identify how we can collectively deliver on the promise of a quality, basic education for all.

Health

The third of our expert round table discussions this afternoon will focus on MDGs 4 and 5 – maternal and child health. All of us here today know that the rate of preventable deaths both of children and of mothers remains shockingly high today.

Yet the experience of the past decade has shown that the right investments can save lives. The Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation has changed the face of global health care for children – averting some five million deaths worldwide. Such vaccinations represent a vital investment in our shared future.

That is why I can announce to you today that the United Kingdom will continue to play our part in this global effort - investing £150 million to help GAVI introduce vaccines that will avert more than 4 million deaths worldwide between now and 2015, including two new vaccines against diarrhoea and pneumonia – which cause so many avoidable deaths today.

While we have seen some progress in improving child health, there has been little to no progress in improving maternal health worldwide over the past decade. Yet the vast majority of maternal deaths can be prevented.

One of the greatest contributions that can be made to improving maternal and child health is removing the fees for health care that prevent many mothers from seeking the very help that the so desperately need.

Since free health care was announced in Burundi four years ago, the proportion of babies born in health units has increased from one-fifth to over a half. In Ghana, just a few months after the Government announced that pregnant women could receive free health care, more than 430,000 expecting mothers had registered to claim their new rights.

Indeed I saw for myself, on a visit to northern Ghana, the impact of free health care – when I met a group of pregnant mothers who told me that the would never have considered visiting a clinic before it was free to do so.

Last September at the UN General Assembly, at a meeting chaired by our Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, six countries announced their commitment to increase access to health for vulnerable people – giving up to ten million more people access to free health care.

The United Kingdom is supporting those countries to deliver free access to healthcare. I can announce to you today that in addition to that assistance, we are launching, with the support of the Danish Government, a Centre for Progressive Health Financing. This new centre will provide specialist expertise to those countries that want to provide free health care for women and children – indeed will help to make that vision a reality for millions of people.

These three areas that I have described – hunger, health and education – will form the core of our discussions and our deliberations today. But of course we need to see greater progress right across the Millennium Development Goals – from one to eight. That is why a further intention of this conference today is to identify principles for action that can be applied across the spectrum of the international development effort.

Principles for action

So how can the experience of the past decade guide us toward the correct principles? UNDP’s recent ‘Beyond the Midpoint’ report, which is being distributed here today, has reviewed the influencing factors for success or failure in some 30 developing countries. And there are certainly two themes which you will see recur throughout the report.

The first is that the destiny of developing countries will ultimately be decided – of course - by their own leaders, parliaments and peoples. The second is that overcoming gender inequality is central to delivering the MDGs – whether meeting the targets on hunger, health or education.

These insights may not come as a surprise to those of us in this room, familiar with the challenges we face. But the evidence within the ‘Beyond the Midpoint’ report should now channel our collective efforts to ensure that development is both country-led, and places a priority on empowering women and girls.

Yet to truly make this year a turning point on poverty, we will need to go further. In order to accelerate progress to ensure the maximum impact in the fight against poverty, I want to suggest three guiding principles for us to consider and discuss today: accountability, innovation and resilience. Let me say a little about each.

First – accountability. Too often over the past decade commitments have been made and then simply not delivered. Initiatives have been designed without involving those people intended to benefit. Too little information has been given regarding the allocation of resources. So how can we together build on the various transparency and accountability initiatives that we have seen over the past ten years?

Our second suggested question and principle for discussion is innovation. Whether new partnerships, new technologies or new forms of financing, we need to apply new approaches to delivering the MDGs in order to make the progress we all want to see.

Here at this department, we are determined to use innovative approaches where they can deliver results. Indeed I can announce to you today that we are working in a new partnership with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor to use mobile phone and other technology to bring banking services to some 30 million people worldwide.

Our third suggested topic and principle for discussion today is resilience. Recent global turbulence has highlighted the need to focus on reducing vulnerability, managing shocks and building sustainability in the very poorest countries.

Of course one of the greatest risks for developing countries over the coming years and decades will be climate change – the subject for our plenary session this afternoon. Climate change has the potential to make poverty the future for millions of people around the world.

That is why the UK has committed to put responding to climate change at the heart of our efforts to tackle poverty. Indeed I can announce to you today that working with PriceWaterhouseCoopers we will manage a network of climate change centres that will offer expertise to 60 of the world’s poorest countries – helping not only to protect their citizens against the impact of unavoidable climate change, but also to get their economies on to a low-carbon path to growth.

By so doing, we will help people to protect their lives and livelihoods – but also to build a better future for themselves and for their families.

Conclusion

The great challenges that together we are addressing today – responding to climate change, building economic recovery, overcoming conflict and of course, eliminating poverty – may seem at times daunting, indeed almost overwhelming. But let us take heart from the great challenges that have been overcome by previous generations.

The end of slavery, the end of segregation, the end of apartheid in South Africa. Each of these inequities was once seen by many as inevitable. A fact of life. Yet over time, cracks began to appear in those walls of oppression - as people of conscience set their talents and their determination to changing these deeply unnatural orders.

William Wilberforce, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela. Their names echo down the generations. Yet their lesson is that these great injustices were not overcome by one person, or even by a handful of people.

But rather that what began with small groups grew into mass movements made up of hundreds, thousands, indeed millions of people. Movements that swept aside injustices that had lasted for decades, even centuries.

So today surely is not the time for us to shrink from the challenge of meeting the Millennium Development Goals, but instead to summon the bold vision, the determination and the application that will be required to meet them.

For these goals have the power to save millions of lives, to give an education to every child, and to save millions from the pain of hunger. But only if we are willing to invest those goals with the power they require.

The experience of the past tells us that the road to justice may be long, but it can be travelled. Let us together begin to write the future today – and make this year truly a turning point in our efforts to end extreme poverty. Thank you.