MDGs

In 2000, 190 heads of government had embarked on mankind’s most ambitious project. All the countries of the world committed, at the dawn of a new millennium, to cut poverty rates by half by the year 2015.

The turn-of-the-millennium was a heady time. It was the best moment to get all of humanity together behind a program to reduce the ranks of the poor and cut the volume of misery humanity endures.

Cutting poverty in half by 2015 is the most salient feature of this UN-initiated program called the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Acting in concert, driven by the strong commitment of financial support from the world’s richest countries, the community of nations then thought the goal was eminently achievable.

Countries put in their commitments. Governments frantically assembled policies and programs aligned with the MDGs to deliver their part of this ambitious project. If poverty could be cut in half in 15 years, eradicating poverty for the remaining portion of humanity would be a cinch — or so it was thought.

The optimism of the early years began to abate halfway through the period set for this large-scale anti-poverty program. In 2001, international terrorism reared its ugly head. 9-11 happened. The war in Afghanistan began. Soon, the invasion of Iraq was carried out.

The war against terror diverted attention, resources and energy from the MDGs. The governments of the richest countries soon began to be consumed with the two wars and the assembly of new security apparatuses — such as the Homeland Security Department in the US — to deal with the problem of terrorism.

For the US alone, the staggering cost of waging the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan approximates the money required to build a modern health care system for the entire African continent. If not that, perhaps a modern educational system for the whole continent, home of the poorest of the world’s poor.

In addition to the distractions caused by the phenomenon of international terrorism, the world was shaken by a financial meltdown in 2008. The great majority of the world’s economies fell into deep recession as a consequence. The world’s most mature industrial economies, the very same ones expected to help drive the MDGs forward, were forced into financial fire-fighting, diverting hundreds of billions from state coffers to rescue ailing banks and stabilizing financial systems.

Last month, at the International Conference of Asian Political Parties (ICAPP), most of the political leaders present expressed doubt that the 2015 MDGs might be achieved. Poverty is so large a problem and the time left is so short.

Last month’s ICAPP meeting was held in China and was hosted by the Communist Party of China. In all, about 60 party leaders from all over Asia attended the meeting.

I recall attending the sessions of the maiden ICAPP meeting held here in Manila. I was introduced to Benazir Bhutto and we had a brief but lively conversation. That was before she eventually rose to become president of Pakistan — and subsequently felled by an assassin’s bullet.

Former House Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr., who envisioned the ICAPP and served as its founding chairman, refused to concede that the battle against poverty was lost. He lobbied his colleagues and crafted a resolution the ICAPP sent to the UN Secretary-General. The resolution, now called The Kunming Declaration after the Chinese city that hosted the conference, will be included in the forthcoming UN MDGs summit review that happens in September.

The principal proposals contained in the Kunming Declaration were introduced by the Philippine delegation headed by de Venecia. These are the establishment of an Asia-wide Anti-poverty Fund, the formation of the Asian Microfinance Fund and a reiteration of standing proposals for debt-equity swaps by donor countries for the world’s most indebted countries. The resources generated by the debt-equity swaps will be used exclusively to fund MDGs-related programs.

We all know how irrepressible a character JDV is. Expect him to be at the UN summit next month, quarterbacking his allied Asian political parties and buttonholing world leaders about the Kunming Declaration.

I have seen this man in action, having joined delegations to the Asian Parliament, the ICAPP and the global interfaith dialogue which de Venecia initiated as well. Once, in Tehran, JDV was granted an audience with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He pressed his advocacies with the Iranian president, particularly the establishment of an Asian Monetary Fund to help stabilize our currencies during episodes of financial volatility.

Ahmadinejad endorsed JDV’s ideas to the Iranian Prime Minister. As things turned out, the reformist Prime Minister became Ahmadinejad’s most bitter rival in the presidential elections that followed. Those elections, perceived to have been stolen, sparked street protests in Iran over the past year.

De Venecia, many years ago, produced a plan to cut down Philippine poverty rates dramatically. Referred to as Plan 747, it envisioned drastic poverty reduction by way of sustaining at least a 7% GDP growth rate for 7 years. The elements of that plan remain valid today as they were when Plan 747 was introduced.

We can only hope that, like JDV, the world’s leaders will not give up on the MDGs. It does not matter if we do not exactly achieve a 50% reduction in poverty five years down the road. The effort to liberate the world’s poor from the structural curse of poverty might take decades more. But it is a battle we cannot give up.

For this battle, we need unyielding advocates like JDV. The man will never retire. Term limits might have caught up with him, but since he lost the post of Speaker he has been around the world, like an undying whirlwind, rallying support for his causes.

JDV is well at home in this larger, global stage.