Supporting Developing Countries through the U.N.

The fight against poverty in developing countries such as Africa is still underway. Developed nations such as Japan, America and those in Europe have continuously sought a concrete plan for strengthening support for developing countries.

Aimed at things such as poverty reduction, the United Nations Millennium Summit adopted a declaration that called on developed countries to “grant more generous development assistance, especially to countries that are genuinely making an effort to apply their resources to poverty reduction.”

It is probably natural for Prime Minister Kan, U.S. President Obama and about 140 heads of state to share a sense of impending crisis given present conditions.

The Millennium Development Goals included eight spheres of achievement to be worked on between 1990 and 2015, including reducing by half the amount of the impoverished people who live on only $1.25 a day and aiming for the spread of the completion of elementary education.

The significance of the coordination of advanced nations to explicitly lay out target values for supporting developing nations is huge. Reducing developing countries’ poverty and making society more stable will, as a result, contribute to world peace and security.

However, the time frame for the achievement of these goals is drawing to a close in five years, and progress is not swift. The financial crisis and the deterioration of developed countries’ financial affairs are feared to mean the slowing down of the pace of support for developing countries.

The population living in poverty was reduced from 1.8 billion in 1990 to 1.4 billion in 2005, and then it seemed like the “reduction by half” goal could be implemented. But, in the center of Africa, south of the Sahara Desert, the problem of poverty is still serious. Developed countries should relentlessly react to the present situation and rise up with all their strength to achieve these various goals.

The realms of health and education are especially, and conspicuously, lagging in support. The death rates of infants and nursing mothers are high, and approximately 72 million children did not receive schooling.

Prime Minister Kan spoke at the summit and declared that for the sake of the enrichment of mother and child health and the elevation of educational standards, from now on for five years Japan will donate $8.5 billion (720 billion yen) as new support measures.

It is possible to say that support was whittled down to these two fields because Japan is capitalizing on its experience in the postwar period. Arranging a concrete amount of support can also be valued highly.

The problem, however, is that Japan keeps curtailing its official development assistance (ODA) budget.

Japan’s ODA budget has been reduced to half of its 1997 peak. Formerly, it was the world’s number one contributor, but now it has fallen to number five. It also couldn’t meet its publicly announced international commitment of increasing ODA spending to $10 billion by 2009.

Through this, international trust in Japan has fluctuated, and Japan’s influential voice and presence are also liable to decline.

ODA is a necessary diplomacy tool. Along with pledging new implementation of sound support measures, the prime minister should hasten to increase the ODA amount.