STATEMENT BY AMBASSADOR BYRON BLAKE, DEPUTY PERMANENT REPRESENTATIVE, PERMANENT MISSION OF JAMAICA TO THE UNITED NATION ON AGENDA ITEM 56(a): "ERADICATION OF POVERTY AND OTHER DEVELOPMENT ISSUES: IMPLEMENTATION OF THE FIRST UNITED NATIONS DECADE FOR THE ERADICATION OF POVERTY) 1996-2006); (b): WOMEN IN DEVELOPMENT and (c); HUMAN RESOURCES DEVELOPMENT (New York, 14 November 2005)

Mr. Chairman,

On behalf of the Group of 77 and China, I would like to address Agenda item 56 (a), entitled Eradication of Poverty and other development issues: implementation of the first Decade for the Eradication of Poverty: (1997-2006), (b) "Women in Development," and (c) Human Resources Development. We thank the Secretary-General for his comprehensive and useful reports contained in documents A/60/314, A/60/162 and A/60/318.

Mr. Chairman,

This 60th session of the General Assembly is the end year of the decade for poverty eradication; it is the end year of the decade since the launch of the First Brussels Programme of Action for the Least Developed Countries; and it brings us into the final decade to achieve the Millennium Development Goals MDGs). It is a pivotal year. The first and axial Millennium Development Goal is to reduce extreme poverty by one-half by 2015.
The Millennium Project Report tells us that most countries and regions will not achieve the first MDG by 2015 on our present trajectory; the Secretary-General's Report, A/60/314 states, in relation to 2003, that "49.7 percent of the world's workers and their families (over 58.7 percent of workers in developing countries) live below the $2 a day poverty threshold." In assessing our focus at the $2 per day level, we need to recall that it is lower than the estimated $2.20 and $2.90 subsidy income earned by a cow, whose shelter is already provided, in Europe and the USA, respectively.

The Economic and Social Affairs Report on the "World Social Situation 2005 - The Inequality Predicament" shows that the percentage of the world's population living on less than US$2 per day fell by only 8 percentage point between 1990 and 2001. Fifty-three percent or over 2.74 billion persons were living on less than $2 a day in 2001 compared with 2.65 billion or 61 percent of the population in 1990.

According to the World Social Situation Report "The combination of transfer between poverty categories and various demographic and economic developments has resulted in a global increase in the number of people living in poverty since the late 1990s".

Persons who have moved from the absolute poverty category - less than $1 per day - have simply joined the less than $2 per day group.

Mr. Chairman,

One litmus test for evaluating the salience of the resolutions and programmes for this session and beyond must therefore be: Can the programmes place us on track to achieve and sustain the level of poverty reduction at least to meet the MDGs?

The Secretary-General has pointed in his Report to "Employment … as the missing link in the growth and poverty reduction equation." The Group of 77 and China agrees. There are at least two other missing links which demand our urgent attention; however. First is the ability of poor people to use their entrepreneurial talents to create their own employment and build wealth. Second, is the return they obtain for what they actually produce and for their labour. Policies which lead to decreasing prices for their output, reduction in the valve of wages and savings and constrain public sector expenditure, particularly, in rural areas rob them of income and perpetuate their poverty.

According to World Bank studies a pro-development Doha Round which benefits all development countries could increase real income in these countries by $350 billion by 2015, and lift an additional 140 million people out of poverty by that year, a decline of 8 percent.

We have heard in this room during this year leading researchers and directors from institutions such as the World Bank, ILO, and UNCTAD, and academics such as Professors Joseph Stiglitz, Dani Rodrik, Jeffrey Sachs and Gustav Ranis reveal results which demonstrate that many recent and current policies are working against the poor. A few of us were privileged on Thursday 10 November 2005 in a lunch-time side event moderated by H..E. Ambassador Aminu Wali, Chairman of the Second Committee to hear Professor Prabhat Patnack explain why these policies work against the poor. (Ii would be enlightening if the Chairman of the Second Committee could make the text of that presentation more widely available).

Mr. Chairman,

All the above demonstrate that the international community faces a major challenge to deal with poverty. In order to tackle poverty in a fundamental manner, therefore we must simultaneous address issues of quality employment, access to resources for enterprise development and international trade, monetary and fiscal policies. Appropriate policies and strategies in these areas will lead to growth with elasticity for employment creation and poverty reduction. The Group of 77 and China supports the position in the Secretary-General's Report that for policies to be poverty reducing they should promote faster growth and growth with higher elasticity for poverty reduction.

Mr. Chairman,

The Group of 77 and China can support the recommendations in the Secretary-General's Report. The Group is of the view, however, that in light of the dynamic nature of poverty creation and the short time to achieve the internationally agreed poverty reduction target there is need for more proactive responses at the level of the international community. The World Bank in its Global Monitoring Report 2004 posits that international cooperation to support the efforts of eradicating poverty of developing countries, including the middle income countries where as we know, 280 million people who live on less than 1 dollar a day and 870 million people who live on less than 2 dollars a day, should be pursued.

The recommendations in the Secretary-General's Report, therefore need to be strengthened to (i) enhance access to productive resources and to encourage entrepreneurship and enterprise development; (ii) increase international cooperation and coherence between international policies - in particular trade, fiscal and monetary policies - to make them pro-development in line with national policies and objectives; (iii) and enhance human resources capacity for higher, more creative and productive employment.

Mr. Chairman,

An increasing proportion of the poor, and in particular the working poor, are women. The Secretary-General's report on "Women in Development: the Impact of Globalisation on Women's Employment and Empowerment" A/60/162 responds to General Assembly resolution 58/206. It focuses on the benefits and challenges faced by women especially in the growing services sector and the perspectives of gender in the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS).

The Report draws to attention, inter alia, to

The Report draws a number of conclusions, which the G-77 and China would urge, be carefully evaluated to draw implications for action and to help us to formulate recommendations.

Mr. Chairman,

Human Resources development is vital, more accurately, indispensable to the achievement of sustained development and more specifically the achievement of the MDGs. It is also a barometer of the extent of achievement of the MDGs and development more generally.

The Group of 77 and China therefore welcomes the very insightful report of the Secretary-General on Human Resources Development in document A/60/318. The Report, prepared in response to General Assembly resolution 58/207.

In addition to recognizing the cross-sectoral and comprehensive nature of Human Resources Development and role in achieving national development and the internationally agreed development goals, the Report has, inter alia:

The Group of 77 and China welcomes the perspectives brought forward in the Report on many of these issues. The Group would wish to draw particular attention to the issues and challenges raised in respect of the migration of highly skilled people and people with advanced education. This area demonstrates vividly the incoherence between national and international policies as developed countries actively recruit or welcome the highly skilled and highly education - without consideration for the level of investment by developing countries in their development or the impact on the development prospectsof these states - and at the same time refuse to consider wider labour movement within the GATS.

The report demonstrates empirically that countries with small populations - less than 4 million - were the most negatively affected. The emigration of the highly skilled and highly educated prevents the attainment of the critical mass of human resources needed for long-term development. This ties back to the persistent call of the G77 and China for facilitation for capacity building in developing countries.

The recommendations is the Report for partnership and for managing the issue of the migration of the highly skilled and highly educated; for seeking to convert the "brain drain" into "brain circulation" to create a virtuous circle for development deserves serious consideration. The partnership however needs to be extended to consider other areas of labour mobility in a globalised and otherwise liberalized world.

The Group of 77 and China is of the view that some of these issues should be addressed in the High Level Dialogue on International Migration and Development in 2006.

Closing

Mr. Chairman,

This cluster of issues is at the root of what development is about. The poor, in particular poor women, are neither lazy nor risk averse. They crave opportunity. We have a responsibility through our discussions and resolutions, to facilitate and enable them to ensure that we do not allow even that which they do not have to be taken away from them by policies or otherwise.