UN: Local approach needed to fast-track MDGs

UN: Local approach needed to fast-track MDGs
The Sun Star, 16.7.2011

WITH only five years left before deadline, a United Nations (UN) official told the Philippine government to provide additional support to local governments so that they can help meet internationally agreed-upon goals to reduce extreme poverty, among others.

Massive integration of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) -- a set of UN development targets including universal primary education -- in local development planning and decision-making remains a challenge, said UN Resident Coordinator Jacqueline Badcock.

Citing a report by non-government Social Watch Philippines, the UN identified governance as one of the challenges to achieving MDGs, along with financing, climate change, and lingering effects of global economic slowdown.


 
Economic growth barely made a dent in trimming the number of poor Filipinos, Badcock observed.

According to the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB), the poverty index went down from 45.3 percent in 1991 to 26.5 percent in 2009.

However, the actual number of poor Filipinos jumped to 30 million in 2010 from 28.1 million in 1991.

"The relatively encouraging national-country level data on the rate of progress of the Philippines contrasts with the reality at the sub-national level, thereby obscuring disparities and inequalities and creating false sense of inclusive progress," Badcock said in a forum at the University of the Philippines in Quezon City.

Earlier, Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Cayetano Paderanga said it is still a long way to go for the Philippines after failing to post significant gains in four of the eight MDGs.

These are eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, improving maternal health, and combating HIV/AIDS.

The country, on the other hand, claimed better developments on reducing child mortality, promoting gender equality and empowerment of women, particularly on eliminating gender disparity in primary and secondary education.

The Philippines also made progress in reversing the incidence of malaria and tuberculosis, and providing access to sanitary toilet facilities, Paderanga noted. (Virgil Lopez/Sunnex)