Amnesty International Australia

Angela Dewan asks whether UN targets to reduce poverty will be met,and will they mean anything for human rights.

In September 2000, all 189 member states of the UN General Assembly met in New York for the Millennium Summit, which culminated in a pledge to end poverty and hunger, and ensure peace, good governance and human rights.

To put the agreement, called the Millennium Declaration, into action, the General Assembly came up with eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and 21 global targets to be achieved by 2015.

World leaders are due to meet this September in New York to discuss the progress of the declaration.

Progress towards achieving MDGs

Ten years on, developing countries have made much progress towards achieving the MDGs.

• Brazil has achieved half of its MDGs ahead of schedule, with the other half on track.
• Ethiopia is well on the way to achieving six of eight
• Cambodia has achieved one and is on track to meeting three others.

While goals involving some of the world’s gravest issues have motivated the developing and developed world, Amnesty International says the MDGs ignore states’ human rights obligations and will be pushing for human rights to be of greater signifi cance in development efforts.

Rights aims diluted

In the Millennium Declaration, states pledged to "fully respect and uphold the Universal Declaration of Human Rights" and "to strive for the full protection and promotion of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights". In setting the MDGs, however, these rights were watered down.

"For example, in the goal on environmental sustainability, there is a target to improve the lives of 100 million slum dwellers, but it doesn’t address the issue of land tenure," says Sarah Marland, Amnesty International’s Demand Dignity campaign coordinator.

Without the papers to prove tenure, slum dwellers in many countries cannot access health and employment services and often have no right to vote. They are constantly under threat of eviction and have little access to basics, like clean water and electricity.

Sarah Marland says that without better consideration of the cause of problems like slums, the most vulnerable people will continue to slip through the net and the MDGs’ achievements will not be sustainable.

Women specific target

"The MDGs are not considering who is living in poverty and why. Unless we take that into consideration, we are starting with the wrong premise."

Sarah Marland, Amnesty International's Demand Dignity campaign coordinator

Philip Wood, a spokesperson for the Asian Development Bank, agrees. "Gender inequality impacts all the MDGs," he says.

"For example, child undernourishment and low weight, part of MDG 1, is affected to a great extent by maternal health, nourishment and literacy, which is low when women are deprived [of their rights]. School enrolments and completion, MDG 2, are affected because discrimination works against girls attending school in many countries."

While MDG 3 strives for gender equality and the empowerment of women, these complex goals have been narrowed down to just one target - to eliminate gender disparity in education.

The three indicators for this goal are an increase in:

• The ratio of girls to boys in all levels of education
• The share of women in waged employment in the non-agricultural sector
• The proportion of seats held by women in national parliaments

Education and women in the workforce

But the relationship between the level of education and the number of women in the workforce and parliaments is not always a direct one.

In Indonesia, there is no disparity between the number of boys and girls enrolled in secondary school, yet women only occupy 18 per cent of seats in the Indonesian Parliament and 37 per cent of the workforce, according to the World Bank.

Sarah Marland says it’s not just a developing world problem - Australia is another classic example.

"About 30 per cent of seats in Australia’s Parliament are occupied by women," she says. "This is even though 99 per cent of girls finish school and we have a high number of women with a tertiary education.

"If you want real change in this area, you have to address gender discrimination."

Discrimination causing death

Though most of Indonesia’s MDG targets are on track or have been achieved ahead of schedule, it is having difficulty tackling its maternal mortality rate. The goal to reduce maternal mortality by three-quarters from 1990 figures will not be achieved in Indonesia, according to its National Family Planning Agency.

The maternity mortality target is off track in many developing countries. One woman dies every minute due to complications related to pregnancy and childbirth. In sub-Saharan Africa, the risk of maternal mortality is one in 26, and one in seven in some countries, including Niger.

Reducing maternal mortality

"Without gender equality, it will be difficult to sustain the human and social development on which the MDGs depend."

Philip Wood, Asian Development Bank spokesperson

One focus of Amnesty International’s Demand Dignity campaign is to reduce maternal mortality. The organisation believes most of these deaths are preventable and are a result of poverty, injustice and gender discrimination.

"The maternal mortality rate has dropped dramatically, so there has been progress with this goal," says Sarah Marland.

"But this problem is still not prioritised in health budgets. We need to pay attention to these kinds of rights, like the right to reproductive health services, to hope to achieve the MDGs."

Many countries trying to reduce the maternity mortality rate actually have policies that conflict with this goal:

• In Sierra Leone, where one in eight women risk dying during pregnancy or childbirth, forced marriage of girls as young as 10 is common. The failure to enforce a minimum marriage age is strongly linked to pregnancy-related deaths.
• In Burkina Faso, the trend of early marriage and pregnancy, low socioeconomics, poor access to reproductive health services and lack of decision-making power lead to preventable maternal deaths.

To strengthen existing efforts, Amnesty International is calling for any post-2015 goals to integrate human rights laws and conventions.

"That way, there is legal enforceability and a way to hold states accountable if they don’t deliver," says Sarah Marland.

ANGELA DEWAN is a Jakarta-based freelance journalist.

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