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MDG : Millennium Development Goals : Ban Ki-moon Launch of UNDG
Ban Ki-moon addresses a press conference on what is needed to move towards a sustainable future beyond 2015. Photograph: Paulo Filgueiras/UN
Ban Ki-moon addresses a press conference on what is needed to move towards a sustainable future beyond 2015. Photograph: Paulo Filgueiras/UN

Ban Ki-moon: We must do better to achieve global partnership promise

This article is more than 10 years old
World should renew vow to bolster aid and agree comprehensive trade deal to help realise development goals, UN report says

The world must renew its commitment to increasing aid and reaching a trade deal to make progress on the millennium development goals (MDGs), according to a UN report.

The report, published in the runup to next week's special session at the UN on the MDGs and what follows their 2015 deadline, focuses on the global partnership for development (MDG8), the vaguest of the eight goals. MDG8 covers aid, trade technology and access to affordable essential medicines.

"The picture is mixed," said the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon. "We can do better. The best way to prepare for the post-2015 era is to demonstrate that when the international community commits to a global partnership for development, it means it, and directs its resources to where they are most needed."

The report sketches out a policy package to rekindle confidence and enthusiasm in the partnership: greater international co-operation in tax matters; a renewed commitment to meet aid pledges; international agreement to enforce minimum labour standards; and a comprehensive trade deal instead of regional arrangements.

"The multilateral trade system cannot long survive governments making alternative ad hoc trading arrangements when progress in global trade talks remains elusive," it says.

The plea for movement on a trade deal comes before a ninth ministerial conference of the World Trade Organisation in Bali, Indonesia, in December. Ministers are seeking to break the logjam in the stalled Doha trade talks, which were supposed to help developing countries. They were formally declared at an impasse in December 2011.

In the absence of a Doha deal, regional trade agreements (RTAs) have proliferated – 274 are in operation and more are in the works, including a trans-Pacific partnership agreement (TPP) the US began negotiating in 2009. The TPP has run into stiff opposition. A second initiative is a biregional association agreement between the EU and Mercosur, the Latin America trading bloc that includes Brazil and Argentina.

"Concluding the Doha round in all its aspects and under its original mandate is the best way to ensure a greater role for trade in development, which can help boost prospects for realising the MDGs," the report says.

With RTAs, the report argues, producers in the developing country may find themselves competing against subsidised producers in the developed country, as in the areas of agricultural and technology-intensive products. For example, in 2012, support to farmers across the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) amounted to $259bn. The part of this support directly linked to production – the most trade-distorting type – represents about half of the total.

On official development assistance (ODA), the UN again called on donor governments to reverse the two-year drop in aid and make greater efforts to reach the UN targets of 0.7% of gross national income (GNI).

ODA fell 4% last year, to $125.9bn from $134bn in 2011. Bilateral aid from 25 countries in the development assistance committee (DAC) group of rich countries to sub-Saharan Africa fell for the first time since 2007, to $26.2bn in 2012. The combined DAC donors' ODA was equivalent to 0.29% of GNI.

The report says prices for essential medicines in developing countries are too high, but notes progress in access to medicines to treat HIV and Aids, as well as an increase in local production of other essential medicines.

Essential medicines remain insufficiently available in developing countries, especially in low- and lower-middle-income countries, according to the report. Essential medicines were available only in 57% of public and 65% of private health facilities in 2012.

Prices in low- and lower-middle-income countries were, on average, more than three times higher than international reference prices in public sector facilities and more than five times higher in private sector facilities. The report encourages pharmaceutical companies to make essential medicines more affordable and to develop new medicines.

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