Instead of striking a balance between ambition and realism, the MDGs have become [...]]]>
Instead of striking a balance between ambition and realism, the MDGs have become “money-metric and donor-centric”, “meaningless catch-all phrases.”
So says Jan Vandemoortele, a Belgian national, a United Nations senior official and one of the architects of the MDGs, in a thought-provoking article in the July issue of Development Policy Review of the Overseas Development Institute. (read it here)
Unrealistic goal? A crowded classroom in Guinea Bissau...
The author recalls that the MDGs were set up in 2000 as collective targets based on extrapolations of global trends. They are vague by definition; they are not one-size-fits-all.
Instead, one should look at countries’ historical backgrounds, natural endowments and specific problems, then adapt the Goals to each circumstance, as Mozambique, Cambodia and Ethiopia have done.
Otherwise, this puts undue pressure on the poorest countries and, given that most of these are in Africa, nurtures Afro-pessimism.
For example, the global target for education “is not realistic” for countries in conflict, he says.
True, targets do change. For example, water for all in 2015 morphed into the more feasible goal of halving the number of people without clean water.
Magic numbers
A mantra has evolved: if only there were more money and higher economic growth, the MDGs would be achieved. Who is fond of these “magic numbers”? Staff at global headquarters of aid organisations, says the author, because of their “excessive reliance on abstract concepts.” (he should know, with his long career as a top UN official).
..and their teacher. By M. Sayagues
Vandemoortele sees the MDG canon being usurped by interest groups to push their agendas or devalued “as a repackaged call for more foreign aid.”
Rather, the MDG should be a tool to examine disparities and inequities within countries. In his view, the poorest people continue to be excluded. Many of these are women. Without better sex-disaggregated data, the gender dimension of hunger, illiteracy, disease and poverty remains unexposed.
Most progress takes place among the better off, and inequality and inequity keep rising, says the author.
“The targets are often presented as a universal good that will not demand tough policy choices and hard trade-offs among social groups within a country,” he says.
The MDGs should usher in new thinking about inequalities if they are not to miss the point
What do you think? Send us your views.
]]>She was a brave little girl, who believed in her right to choose how to live her life. Aged 12, as a minor she remained nameless in the news.
She lived in Zimbabwe’s Eastern Highlands, the green, misty mountains along the Mozambican border. On weekends, people dressed in flowing white robes, the men bearded, [...]]]>
In Bissau - too young to carry the burden of marriage. Photo: M.Sayagues
She was a brave little girl, who believed in her right to choose how to live her life. Aged 12, as a minor she remained nameless in the news.
She lived in Zimbabwe’s Eastern Highlands, the green, misty mountains along the Mozambican border. On weekends, people dressed in flowing white robes, the men bearded, holding carved wooden canes, gather under the masasa trees. They belong to the Johanne Marange apostolic sect. Peaceful people – with a nasty habit of marrying young girls.
The girl was given as second wife to her older sister’s husband, a pastor in his fifties. She escaped to her uncle’s home but he brought her back. She got a beating, and escaped again. She sought the school teacher and he brought her back. She got another hiding, and escaped again. She went to the police, and they brought her back. Then she hanged herself.
That was in 2001. Her death was just a news blip among violent farm invasions.
Although against the law, child weddings continue in Zimbabwe, and likely on the rise due to poverty, says a new study by Women and Law in Southern Africa. Adults and social institutions still fail to protect girls.
Parents: criminals or ignorant?
Years later I did a story on child marriage in Gabu, in eastern Guinea Bissau. Interviewing parents and chiefs, I heard that misery, coupled with fear of AIDS and out of wedlock pregnancy, drove the practice.
The parents I talked to were ignorant and poor, not evil. They did not know any better. They lived in a failed state that fails to deliver basic services. Just to finish primary school in rural Bissau is a victory.
In April, a Mauritanian mother living near Cadiz, Spain, was sentenced to 17 years in prison for marrying her daughter, then aged 13, to a distant cousin, and forcing her to have sex with him.
The wedding took place in Mauritania in 2005 and the sex in Spain in 2007 when the husband visited his teen wife, who continued living with her parents. He got a 13-year jail sentence, and her illiterate father, 18 months.
The girl’s two younger siblings returned to Mauritania, where protests have unfurled.
Child marriage should be eradicated like smallpox – but is this harsh, family-splitting prison sentence the best solution?
A short stay in prison and extended community service at a Muslim NGO that promotes gender equality would emphasize education over repression.
From another perspective: what mechanisms does Spain have to teach its family laws to its immigrant cheap labour? Driving a car without a licence is not allowed. Work permits could be tied to a quick test: knowing Article 16 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, prison sentences for genital cutting and child marriage, and local laws that protect the rights of little girls.
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