Solons, pay attention to millennium goals

The impeachment complaint has so occupied the minds of congressmen blood-thirsty for Chief Justice Hilario Davide Jr.’s head that the substantive issue of how the Philippines has fared in meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) has been put in the back burner. The legislators may not even know what the MDGs are all about. But reports assessing the strides made by the Philippine government should tell them that they should focus on substantive matters, instead of creating a crisis whose foreseeable benefit is the retardation of the country’s development and stability.

The United Nations General Assembly, at the historic Millennium Summit in September 2000, approved the Millennium Declaration, which embodies goals and targets that would collectively result in a significant change in the lives of the people, particularly the poor and most vulnerable. The eight goals, which are incorporated in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), are to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, achieve universal primary education, promote gender equality, reduce child mortality, improve maternal health, combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, ensure environmental sustainability, and develop a global partnership for development.

Two years after the Millennium Summit, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, declared in his report that for the world as a whole, extreme income poverty (defined by a dollar-per-day threshold) has declined from around 29 percent of the developing world population in 1990 to 23 percent in 1999. This puts the developing world, as a whole, close to target of halving poverty by 2015, he said. Extreme poverty in East Asia and the Pacific has already declined roughly by one-half, but in the sub-Saharan Africa, many of the 300 million people, still live in absolute poverty. The same negative trend holds true for the eradication of hunger and achieving universal primary education.

On gender equality, progress has been made in opening economic opportunities for women, but gender parity in political power falls short of the 30 percent target called for.

On child mortality and maternal mortality, Mr. Konan mentioned staggering death rates of children in Africa as a result of the resurgence of malaria, tuberculosis and the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

On peace, security and disarmament, SG Kofi Annan said the September 11 attack in the US gave impetus to the resolve to take concerted action against international terrorism.

The Philippine Progress Report on the MDGs shows a dismal picture. On poverty eradication, as of 2000, two per- cent of the country’s 76,498,735 population were core poor (food-poor or lived below subsistence). The magnitude of food-poor families increased from 2.4 million families in 1985 to 2.5 million families or 16.4 million population in 2000.

Poverty incidence (below the poverty threshold), has increased to 33.7 percent or 39.4 percent of the population in 2000. This means that an estimated 26.5 million Filipinos are living below the poverty line in 2000.

The Philippine report said malnutrition is still a major threat to the Filipino child’s survival, with the prevalence of underweight pre-school children 0-5 years old being 30.6 per cent in 2001.

In 2000, 88.5 percent of Filipino households had access to safe drinking water, although the provision of water supply facilities has been slower in rural areas than in urban areas.

On education, participation rate in elementary education level in both public and private schools improved from 85.1 percent in 1991 to 96.9 percent in 2000.

On gender equality, education is one area where women and men have almost equal status.

On employment, the labor force participation rate of women rose from 47.5 percent in 1990 to 52.9 percent in 1999. But men’s LFR were still much higher than women at 81.3 percent in 1990 and 86.3 percent in 1999.

The country has gargantuan development problems which legislators should look into and help find solutions. Legislators who sincerely want to be in the nation’s ser-vice, should look at these two reports.

* * *

E-mail: [email protected]