POVERTY: UN researchers say its 15-year anti-poverty plan fails to address jobs, income equality

Bradley S. Klapper
The United Nations is ignoring the critical role of jobs and income equality in its 15-year strategy to fight world poverty and hunger — to the detriment of developing nations, the world body's own researchers said in a surprising critique released Friday.
The U.N. says it is on track to halve the number of people living on less than $1 a day by 2015, and that the picture is mixed for other Millennium Development Goals, or MDGs, in the fields of health, education and the environment.
But the plan agreed to by governments in 2000 has serious failings, the Geneva-based U.N. Research Institute for Social Development said in its report.
People need jobs to combat poverty, the report essentially argues, calling for a shift in focus away from safety nets and welfare programs. It also urges new approaches to addressing rising income inequality.
"Despite an ambitious agenda, the MDGs nonetheless represent a cautious approach to social development," the 360-page report says. "A number of critical issues and obstacles to overcoming poverty have not been addressed."
The criticism is surprising, given the United Nations' decade-long advocacy of the goals as the greatest hope for eradicating extreme poverty, hunger and disease around the world. Each U.N. agency contributes and, despite some unwillingness among governments to fund certain programs, there is no official opposition.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has summoned world leaders to another summit Sept. 20-22 in New York to adopt an action plan to achieve all the goals in the next five years.
Few U.N. officials contacted would comment on the report except in broad terms.
One, Nick McGowan, a spokesman for the U.N. Development Program, described it as "a welcome and timely critique of conventional wisdom and current policies that seek to reduce poverty."
The report, titled "Combatting Poverty and Inequality," doesn't offer clear data to back up its most contentious assertions.
But the UNRISD researchers say development approaches that are too complex can be harmful: various health, education and services providers employing different strategies for different population groups results in "high costs, poor quality and limited access for the poor."
But they also warn against a one-size-fits-all strategy for lifting people out of poverty.
The overarching argument is that wealth gains may be only temporary and limited to a few if developing nations don't simultaneously fight inequality.
The report notes that poverty in much of the developing world is linked to a general shift from agriculture to low-pay services. Countries face increased inequality — and perhaps poverty — if they don't manage this change, and if they promote the free market without adequate protection for the unemployed, pregnant, elderly and sick and disabled, it adds.
"Poverty and inequality must be considered as interconnected," the report says.
Jobs play a key role throughout the process, UNRISD says. It claims the U.N. and other groups have neglected the role of employment in their strategies to reduce poverty, offering little beyond the rhetoric of "decent work for all."
"Conventional wisdom must be upturned. It is often thought, for example, that jobs are a byproduct of economic growth," says the report. "Policies must address problems of insufficient labour demand, improve the quality of existing employment and facilitate labour mobility."
In June, the U.N. cited new World Bank estimates suggesting that the economic slowdown left an additional 50 million people in extreme poverty last year, and will leave some 64 million impoverished by the end of 2010 — primarily in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. Hunger may also have spiked in 2009 because of the food and financial crises, with over 1 billion people undernourished.
The U.N. says 211 million people are unemployed worldwide and that 470 million new jobs must be created in the next decade to keep pace with an expanding work force.
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