The situation with poverty in Asia is clearly improving, but it Africa poverty is becoming worse. While announcing the mid-term report on the "Millennium Development Goals," United Nations General Secretary Kofi Annan said while poverty has decreased more than ever before around the world, Africa's extreme poor are becoming even poorer. At a special summit in 2000 on the occasion of the new millennium, the UN announced that it would try to reduce the number of people who live on less than a dollar a day to half by the year 2015, based on figures from 1990.
According to the report, the percentage of extreme poor in East Asia fell from 33 percent in 1990 to 16 percent in 2001, from 19 percent to 10 percent in Southeast Asia and Oceania, and in South Asia from 39 percent to 29 percent. In sub-Saharan Africa, however, there was an increase, from 44 percent to 46 percent. The actual number of the world's poor has gone down, to 330 million, but in Africa their numbers grew by 86 million. Average daily income has dropped from 62 cents to 60, about W600. If the trend continues the ambitious plan to reduce global poverty by half will clearly fail in Africa.
The NGO's of the world that are working to eradicated poverty are planning to hold continuous protests at the upcoming G8 meeting next month to demand concrete measures for eradicating absolute poverty, including the cancellation of debt and increasing aid. Government development aid in advanced countries is 0.25 percent of their GDP. Recently the EU declared that it would increase that to 0.7 percent by 2015. In Korea the amount is only 0.06 percent, and they say only one percent of that goes to Africa. The government and private sector need to increase their interest in this problem.
The Hankyoreh, 11 June 2005.
[Translations by Seoul Selection (PMS)]
[Editorial] Take an Interest in African Poverty |
