Statement by
H.E. Ambassador Mochammad S. Hidayat
Deputy Permanent Representative
of the Republic of Indonesia to the United Nations
before
The Second Committee of the 56^th Session of
the United Nations General Assembly
on
Agenda Item 103:
Implementation of the First United Nations Decade
for the Eradication of Poverty

New York, 12 October 2001

Mr. Chairman,

Let me begin by expressing our appreciation to the representative of the Secretariat for his informative introductory remarks to the reports before us particularly on the "First United Nation Decade for the Eradication of Poverty (1997-2006) ". Let me also associate my delegation with the statement made by the distinguished representative of the Islamic Republic of Iran in his capacity as Chairman of the Group of 77 and China.

Mr. Chairman,

I am sure that, as we meet in this General Assembly, we can all agree that eradication of poverty is the most critical development challenge of the 21^st Century. The United Nations Millennium Assembly last year set the stage for giving top priority to the issue. The foreword to the Rural Poverty Report 2001 stresses that the world’s 1200 million absolute poor human beings are condemned to short lives stunted by malnutrition, ill health and illiteracy. It is also true that the very persistence of such poverty, amidst a world of abundance, greatly heightens the perception in many developing countries that they are largely shut out and marginalized from the benefits of globalization.

Moreover, in his report, "The Road Map towards the implementation of the Millennium Declaration ", the Secretary-General clearly stated that conflict and endemic disease tend to thrive in regions where people are poor and uneducated and in their turn they act as powerful inhibitors of education and economic growth. Since such a situation is no longer acceptable from either a moral or a real politic standpoint, the stakes for successfully combating poverty have risen higher than ever.

Nor are the prospects for the future any more promising. It its preliminary assessment of such an impact of the terrorist attacks of September 11, the World Bank asserted that, not only would the economies of the United States and other wealthy countries suffer, but that the poor countries would sustain an even heavier toll. The Bank has estimated that, due to the lack of safety nets in place, tens of thousands more children will die this year and 10 million more people are likely to drop under the poverty line this year. 

That is not to say, Mr. Chairman, that nothing has been done.  In fact, the international community has taken numerous initiatives over the years, including through of the United Nations global conferences of the 1990s, particularly that of the World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen in 1995. Within the context of the BWIs, significant initiatives have been made, including the formulation of the poverty reduction strategic paper (PRSP), which, we believe complement the efforts of achieving the goal to half the number of people living in poverty by 2015 as stipulated at the Declaration of the UN Millennium Summit. 

Nevertheless, despite these efforts, results are still disappointing.  The Secretary-General in his report entitled "First UN Decade for the Eradication of Poverty (1997-2006) ", stated that the prospects for all countries to achieve poverty reduction and other Millennium development goals by 2015 are extremely bleak. In this vein, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) announced, in February this year that poor countries would fail to reach the target mainly due to the fact that most attention had been focused on the poverty of mega-cities to the neglect of rural poverty where 75 per cent of the world’s poor actually live.

Mr. Chairman,

How then do we address these challenges in a purposeful and effective manner?  Particularly, how do we meet the Millennium goal of halving the proportion of people living on less than $1 a day by 2015?  In our view implementation should now take precedence.  Concrete action must be taken at the national, regional and international levels to help productively integrate the developing countries into the world economy.  To achieve this, we agree with the approach in the Secretary-General’s Road Map report, that it is essential that broad-based economic growth be accelerated and that the benefits must be equitably shared.  In short, the poor must be empowered to help themselves. This would require both the incorporation and acceleration of pro-poor development policies and programmes at the national level. In concrete terms, it would include, inter-alia, further strengthening efforts to improve the provision of public services and infrastructure for the poor, the promotion of their capacities, the reduction of their vulnerability and the increased voice of the poor in decision-making on development.   

But, Mr. Chairman, in today’s globalized world, national policies are not enough. International support is also critical. As indicated in the Secretary-General’s recommendations in his report, A/56/326, a conducive international environment for development is necessary to facilitate the integration of developing countries into the world economy.  In this regard, we believe that trade is a central engine of growth for development.  However, we also note from the report that over the past decade, despite the general reduction in trade barriers, restrictions on market access have posed enormous obstacles for the developing countries. We thus support recommendation 2 of the report to improve market access for agricultural and manufactured exports from the developing countries. Likewise, we should ensure that food and agriculture trade and overall trade policies are conducive to fostering food security for all through a fair and just system and that the forthcoming World Food Summit: Five Years Later, to be held in early November this year, will focus on how best the international community could contribute towards these efforts.

 Furthermore, we strongly believe that the international community should give top priority to the report’s recommendations on the provision of additional financing resources for development particularly in the form of ODA as well as the provision of faster, deeper and broader debt relief for HIPCs. Debt relief should also be extended to the heavily debt burdened low and middle-income developing countries. We sincerely hope that the international Conference on Financing for Development to be held in Monterrey, Mexico in March 2002 will vigorously address these questions.  In this regard my delegation supports the proposal by the Secretary-General to establish a world solidarity fund for poverty eradication.

For our part, the Indonesian Government, despite the difficult challenges it is facing, will continue it fight to combat poverty at all levels.   We fully support the Secretary-General in stressing that since the international community has emerged from an era of commitment during the 1990s, it should now strive to enter an era of implementation. Let us therefore resolve that, out of the ashes of the recent tragic events and out of a heightened sense of awareness of the inhumanities associated with abject poverty, a new determination is born that will compel us to translate the goals of the Millennium Declaration into concrete action and to wipe the scourge of absolute poverty from the face of the world.

Thank you.