Jornal Independente October 7 “Timor-Leste will not likely achieve any of the MDGs by 2015”, report By Rowena McNaughton DILI - A telling performance report released recently by the Timor-Leste Ministry of Finance analysing the nation’s progress towards achieving theMillennium Development Goals (MDGs) has revealed not a single goal is likely to be achieved by 2015, but stopped short of calling for radical new policies to be implemented. The report, “Millennium Development Goals Report 2014”, solidified widespread fears about the slow progress of development in Asia’s youngest nation, with data revealing the population still lagged well behind key development world standards in all eight goals, which include having 14per cent or less of the population living below the national poverty line and achieving 31pc or less of children under five being underweight by 2015. Statistics used in the report stated 41pc Timorese still lived under the poverty line (2009 data) and just on 37.7pc of children under five were underweight – a predicament the report said the government considered “one of the biggest development challenges faced by the country.” Amongst the pressing concerns to poverty reduction identified were; rapid growth in the working age population and need for new job creation to compensate, poor agricultural productivity, spending choices, urban migration and loss of labour force in rural areas and lack of accurate comparable data to properly analyse the situation. Between 15-30pc of agricultural production is said to be lost before harvest because of poor farming practices. “For cultural reasons people in Timor-Leste spend a high proportion of their incomes on funerals, weddings and other important social events,” the report said. “Thus an important challenge going forward is to better understand the reasons for this pattern of consumption and whether poverty could be further reduced and overall living standards increased by encouraging changes in consumption,” Vitamin deficiency was also labeled a “major challenge” with almost half of Timorese children under five found to suffer from vitamin A deficiency and 33.3pc and 62.5pc suffer from zinc and anemia deficiency respectively. “Some high income households have a diet which is too concentrated on staple foods like rice. Members of these households may not be hungry, but they may lack important nutrients and be malnourished.” In the report’s forward, Prime Minister Kay Rala Xanana Gusmao said that it was essential Timor-Leste’s development was seen in context of it being a young nation that had become independent under “extremely challenging circumstances with low levels of formal education, weak state institutions and poor infrastructure.” “Independence brought renewed hope and democracy. But periods of violence and instability between 2006 and 2008 hampered our economic and social development. This bitter experience taught us that peace must precede development and that it is naive to expect any country to develop without first establishing security,” Gusmao said. “We are proud of this progress, but recognise that more needs to be done, especially in reducing malnutrition and improving health and education.” He added that progress had been made in gender equality pointing to female representation levels in parliament and infant and under-five mortality which had declined by “approximately 50pc since 2001” as achievements. “For indicators such as reducing malnutrition, primary school enrolment, the proportion of the population with access to a clean water source and coverage of antenatal care there have been noteworthy improvements but the ambitious targets have not yet been met,” he said. However, despite the Prime Minister saying the report reiterated the nation’s pledge to achieving the MDGs and transforming Timor-Leste into an upper- middle-income country with a healthy and educated population by 2030, he did not elaborate on a change in development implementation. Speaking on Australian ABC radio Monday, Knut Ostby, UN Resident Coordinator for Timor-Leste, questioned the Prime Minister’s stance that conflict and insecurity were the nation’s biggest challenges to reaching the development goals, saying instead peace, development and human rights should be tackled collectively, and not separately. Ostby stressed that while good progress had been made in short time since independence in 2002, specifically in school enrolment and child mortality where Timor-Leste “beat many other countries across the region” - more needed to be done at the village level to push social and economic growth. “What drives development is the local people themselves. When we invest in people at the village level, the local level, then we achieve real growth,” he said. The achievement or lack there of the eight development goals designed a decade and a half ago, have long been subject of analysis by social commentators worldwide. In a recent review in the Guardian newspaper, veteran development reporter Bjorn Lomborg, questioned the analyses methodology. “Surprisingly, we have little information about what exactly we have achieved. While you can go on websites and, for instance, see how well Botswana is doing with poverty eradication, the truth is that most data is based on only one household survey – from 1993. Most of the available numbers are not based on data but on projections and estimates. In total, there are more gaps than real observations, and the observations themselves are often dubious,” he said. Lomborg said failure to address such key issues mattered because the world was now pushing on with the sustainable development goals (SDGs), a new set of targets that would take effect in 2016 and last until 2030. The MDGs were hailed as the “world’s greatest promise” committing world leaders to the pursuit of concrete, measurable improvements on global poverty, hunger, health, education and other key social issues by 2015. In June 2013, the UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, called the goals “the most successful global anti-poverty push in history.” The eight MDGs include; eradicating hunger, achieving 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. The full MDG report can be viewed here: https://mof.gov.tl/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/2Printer-FINALMDGs-RPT-20140908.pdf
Posted on: Sun, 12 Oct 2014 22:52:11 +0000
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