Tuesday January25, 2005

Meles hails rich nations to boost up aid

 By Tedla Yeneakal

 Following the release of the UN’s Millennium Project Report on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) on Monday, January 17, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi appealed to rich nations to considerably increase aid to Ethiopia to meet the MDGs by 2015.

The Prime Minister made the remarks at a meeting held on Tuesday, in the presence of senior UN officials, diplomats and Ethiopian ministers in Addis Ababa.

The MDGs are set to eradicate poverty and hunger, achieve universal primary education, promote gender equality and empower women, reduce child mortality, improve maternal health, combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, ensure environmental sustainability, and develop a global partnership for development. In order to do so, the project estimates that aid must be increased from current levels of around $50 billion a year, to $195 billion to achieve the MDGs by 2015.

However, the African Union and other organizations state that the targets to halve poverty by 2015 were astray with only 10 African nations out of 53 likely to achieve half of the eight goals. Consequently, the Prime Minister urged rich nations to increase the aid they give to Ethiopia by at least four times from the current abet. “Ethiopia receives around 13 USD per capita in foreign aid as compared to other African countries that receive around 30 USD,” Meles said. He urged rich nations to step up the amount of aid they give if the country is to overcome the deep-rooted poverty. Officials estimate that Ethiopia needs 122 billion USD over the next decade if it is to wipe out poverty and hunger. It currently receives 1.9 billion USD in aid annually.

The United Nations Millennium Declaration, which was adopted in September 2000, set 8 goals, 18 targets, and 48 indicators. Among the main target of the declaration, all to be met by the year 2015, are: halving the number of poor people; halving the number of people facing hunger; reducing under-five mortality by two-thirds and maternal mortality ratio by three-quarters.

In related news, three Rome-based UN agencies- the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the World Food Programme (WFP), and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)- on Tuesday, January 18, called for immediate action by developed and developing countries to ensure that the goals of the 2000 Millennium Summit will be achieved. Welcoming the Millennium Project Report, the heads of the three UN agencies jointly stated, “In a world that has abundant resources and can produce sufficient food to feed everybody, the extent of hunger is not only a moral outrage, but a manifestation of the world community’s collective failure to put in place policies and programmes with long-term vision.”