The UN, the US, and development cooperation: time for a reunion.

My first thesis is that we need more official development assistance (ODA), not less, whatever the current mood might be. Let me take on this subject by dispelling two myths.

The first is that the developing world is doing pretty well and that things are basically on track. The second myth is related: that to the extent some countries are not in good shape - and some obviously are not - "it's their own damn fault", to borrow a phrase from that American philosopher (and singer) Jimmy Buffett. These countries should just get their policies straight, including adjusting to the transformative world market, and enjoy the ride, the argument goes.

Indeed, it is true that there have been remarkable successes in human development. Average life expectancy in the developing world has increased by over one third in the last 30 years. More than 70 per cent of the people in developing countries now have some access to health services. Primary school enrolment has increased to over 80 per cent.

But the world is a big place - complicated, diverse and unfair. Contrary to some rather hopeful claims, much of the developing world is not "making it". Desperation and devastation are still the lot of many people. Some 1.3 billion people live in absolute poverty, with incomes of less than a dollar a day, and poverty is growing as fast as populations. Sixty per cent of humanity lives on less than $US2 per day. Over a hundred countries are worse off today than they were 15 years ago. Each year, 13 million to 18 million people, mostly children, die from hunger and poverty-related causes.

These facts, and others, should shock us. We must not allow ourselves to become numbed by them, particularly when the world economy is expanding as rapidly as it has been.

I would submit that the defining concern of international affairs in the decades ahead will be the struggle for equity: equity within nations, equity among nations, equity for future generations, equity between men and women.

Without sustained progress to a more equitable world, growing poverty and joblessness, population pressures, the decline of environmental resources, and the widening gap between the haves and have-nots will breed despair and instability. They have already begun to do so, and the list of countries in or near crisis is growing.

No one would attribute today's problems solely to underdevelopment, but it is surely part of the disease; and development - sustainable human development - must always be part of the cure.

But isn't trade, not aid, the answer? Can't private investment replace development assistance and do the job better? Won't privatization and structural adjustment do the trick? Consider these points:

* Eighty per cent of direct foreign investment in the developing world goes to only a dozen countries - all middle income countries, with the exception of China. Just 5 per cent goes to Africa, and 1 per cent to the 48 least developed countries. There is simply no correlation between need and foreign investment.

* Unless special development cooperation measures are launched, the recent trade liberalization agreements are expected to benefit much of the developing world to only a limited degree, and much of Africa, perhaps not at all.

* Meanwhile, the debt burden on the developing world continues to mount, now reaching $2.1 trillion. Sub-Saharan Africa's debt payments are larger than its expenditures on health and education.

Today's challenges of poverty, growing inequality, and peace and stability will not, and cannot, be met without continued international cooperation and without new and additional financial aid resources.

A new framework for international cooperation is needed, and ODA must be reformed and "reinvented".

This brings me to my second message: the United Nations has a special role in development assistance.

The United Nations should be made into a stronger human development agency, so that there are fewer internal conflicts and less need for relief and peace-keeping operations. Unfortunately, while the images of retreating soldiers flashed across our TV screens, we did not see the images of thousands of UN-financed workers immunizing poor children, promoting agriculture and food security, providing safe drinking water or building capacity for countries to better manage their own affairs and participate in an expanding world market.

In building a strengthened United Nations, and in making the United Nations a more effective development assistance institution, the United Nations Development Programme is of great importance. The United Nations today is a diverse collection of bodies with specialized and sometimes overlapping mandates. UNDP is the largest UN development-oriented institution, with the broadest mandate and a multi-thematic approach to sustainable human development.

UNDP's "capacity development assistance" seeks to help developing countries, and those in transition, develop their capacities principally in three broad areas: (1) in addressing their poverty challenges through framing integrated anti-poverty strategies, through providing the poor with livelihoods, and through advancing women, who comprise 70 per cent of the poor; (2) in strengthening their governmental institutions to carry out sustainable human development policies and to promote democratization and economic and social reforms; and (3) in sustaining their environmental resources, on which future prospects, particularly the prospects of the poor, depend.

Ninety per cent of the core programme resources given to UNDP goes to countries with per capita incomes of less than $750 per year, countries which contain 90 per cent of the world's absolute poverty as measured by the World Bank.

In Central America, in Gaza, in Cambodia, Angola, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Rwanda and elsewhere, UNDP is working on the "three R's - reconciliation, reintegration and reconstruction". When almost half the United Nations' ODA is relief, there can be no higher calling for the UN's largest development agency. And let us not forget: reconstruction, for us, is just another name for poverty reduction and good governance in post-crisis situations.

I have argued for a renewed commitment to official development assistance. I have identified the special role I see for the United Nations within an enhanced framework of multilateral cooperation. Now, finally, I would like to bring the discussion even closer to home: to America.

The embarrassing fact is that the United States is dead last in the OECD in terms of ODA as a percentage of GDP. Some wit has labelled this phenomenon "generosity deficit disorder". It is a moral failure. It is, in my view, un-American.

The United States would do well to heed French President Jacques Chirac in his recent address before Congress: "Among all these [global] dangers", he said, "the most serious . . . is underdevelopment. The continuation of our aid to those in need is a moral obligation for all of us. It is also the best way of defusing a time bomb that is a threat to everyone." Noting that Europe, which faces similar budget pressures, each year gives three times more than the United States to developing countries, he said: "All over the world, men and women believe in America and Europe, in the generosity of their history, in their dedication to mankind. Let us not disappoint them!"

Americans might add: let us not disappoint ourselves. America's calling does not end at its shores. Remember Wait Whitman's inspirational words: "O, America, because you build for mankind, I build for you." America must not turn its back on work undone, particularly the great project of global peace and development it helped initiate in 1945.

Remember, too, the words on the Statue of Liberty. "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free . . . Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door." Today, they cannot come to us, or few can. But we can, and must, go to them.

Make no mistake about it. The policies the United States adopts today, in the wake of the cold war, with regard to development assistance, the developing world and the United Nations - these will be defining decisions for America. They will determine what values the country stands for in the community of nations, and whether it can see beyond the closing of today's stock market.

It is important for the United States to have this debate about the direction of its international commitments-engagement versus isolationism - but it is even more important that America's better instincts win the debate.

None of the admirable goals that the international community has pursued around the world - not peace, not human rights and democratization, not environmental protection, not population stabilization, not an end to hunger and extreme deprivation, not control of drugs and diseases - not one of these can be accomplished except in the context of development - equitable, sustainable development.

And that kind of development does not have a snowball's chance in hell of succeeding unless we forge a new framework for development cooperation, and back it up with real commitment and financial resources. The world expects more of America, and America cannot afford to do less.

These obligations of our country extend as well to the United Nations. The United States, of course, led in shaping the original vision of the world Organization. As far back as in June 1945, the United States Secretary of State reported to President Truman on the results of the San Francisco Conference in the following words:

"The battle of peace has to be fought on two fronts. The first is the security front where victory spells freedom from fear. The second is the economic and social front where victory means freedom from want. Only victory on both fronts can assure the world of an enduring peace . . . No provisions that can be written into the Charter will enable the Security Council to make the world secure from war if men and women have no security in their homes and their jobs."

The United Nations must reform and renew itself in order to become a powerful force for realizing this vision of global human security. And it is both fitting and necessary for the United States to provide genuine leadership in this historic effort.

RELATED ARTICLE: The Six Strengths

Let me also enumerate the special strengths - the "comparative advantages" and "core competencies" - which the United Nations brings to the development table.

1 The United Nations provides a unique forum for raising public consciousness, defining the international development agenda, and building the consensus needed for action. Once forged, consensus is translated into international norms and agreements, integrated into national development priorities, and supported through the UN's operational activities.

2 The neutrality of the United Nations means that it does not represent any particular national or commercial interest, or interests or "donors" generally. The United Nations can therefore develop special relationships of trust with countries and their people, and can provide stable, long-term capacity-building assistance free of short-term political or economic objectives. This is very important, because trust facilitates some things essential to successful development cooperation, including candid policy dialogue, cooperation on sensitive matters such as political and economic transitions, and capacity-building for better and more open and transparent governance.

3 The UN's universal presence means that it has the largest network of country offices and does not overlook any country. Moreover, the UN's extensive "field presence" is not superficial; its country offices are not liaison offices but major centres. The United Nations thus has a unique delivery capability, as well as unique capability to promote South-South cooperation.

4 The United Nations emphasizes bottom-up, country-driven programming of development assistance resources, without conditionalities. These facts, plus developing country participation in UN's governance, ensures ownership of UN development initiatives by the parties involved. Developing country ownership, in turn, is essential to sustainability and success.

5 The UN programmes focus heavily on the neediest countries, on the neediest people within those countries, and on those countries where building effective governance is critical. The United Nations has special strengths and experience in the social, human and governance aspects of development, both with Governments themselves and with civil society. If we use it properly, the United Nations has an important capability to promote participation in governance.

6 The United Nations has a comprehensive mandate, spanning social, economic and political issues. It can thus support political and economic transitions linked to development, such as processes of democratization and market development. The United Nations has a capability to mobilize, deliver and coordinate humanitarian assistance and to promote reconstruction and reintegration in post-emergency situations. It can link work in peace-building, refugees and belief, reconstruction and development, and it provides an ideal base for support for early warning and preventive development initiatives. This breadth is unique.

RELATED ARTICLE: The Five Pillars 

Let me highlight what I see as the five broad pillars of a new architecture for development assistance:

FIRST, we must broaden the scope of development cooperation - cooperation must include not only development assistance, but also trade, debt management, private investment and capital flows, private sector development, access to technology, and the arms race and military expenditures. The strictly government-to-government foreign aid of the past should go to the dustbin of history along with the cold war. The new development assistance must focus on being synergistic with private sector development and the strengthening of civil society as a whole.

SECOND, the relationship between industrial and developing countries needs to be redefined. Common interests and complementary needs of the rich and the poor must provide the basic rationale for new partnerships and compacts. Whatever today's threats to national security, more pervasive and insidious are the threats to human security - the social, economic and environmental threats in people's daily lives. These threats to human security - drugs, terrorism, environmental change, illegal immigration, crime, threats to peace and stability around the world - they do not need passports to cross borders. And solutions, too, must cross borders. These are global problems requiring cooperative, global solutions. We must act in concert, preventively, in the present to attack root causes of these threats because we cannot afford to cope with the future tragic consequences of neglect. And development cooperation is a key component of any attack on these root causes.

THIRD, a new development framework is needed to consolidate the emerging concept of sustainable people-centred development, or "sustainable human development" as we call it at UNDP. Too often, development cooperation has been shaped by short-term military, political and economic interests. We must now ensure that scarce funds address the most pressing needs of people, particularly the poor.

Development cooperation should seek to promote economic growth, but it should also seek to ensure that people reap its benefits. Economies exist for people, not vice versa. Growth should provide job-led, not job-less growth. Growth should replenish environmental heritage, not destroy it. It should strengthen the position of the poor, not marginalize them further. It should advance women, not keep them "in their place". These maxims have not been the predominant goals of development strategy in the past, or even of development assistance, and that is precisely why the world today is in so much trouble.

FOURTH, we must have the foresight to increase development assistance, not reduce it. We see every day the evidence that the assistance is needed. We are at last freed from the disturbing effects of the cold war. We now know much better - often from sad experience - how to succeed in development cooperation. Yet, right at this confluence of greater need and greater opportunity, we find, tragically, that resources are declining, not increasing. It is a trend that must be reversed or we will pay dearly later - perhaps with emergency relief; perhaps with peace-keeping forces; perhaps through the spread of disease, environmental problems, migrants and refugees, or terrorism. It is better to land development today than troops tomorrow.

FIFTH, we must learn from past mistakes and ensure that development cooperation supports the polity and not just the economy; that it is country-driven and not donor-driven. Assistance projects must be owned by the people they are intended to help, because these projects respond to their actual needs and because through their participation they themselves helped to design the projects.