[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 126 (Monday, September 20, 2010)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7199-S7200]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS
Mr. LUGAR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the attached
editorial by Bono for the September 19, 2010, New York Times be printed
in the Record. The editorial notes the language that I championed with
Senator Cardin on requiring U.S.-listed extractive companies to reveal
their payments which was incorporated in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street
Reform and Consumer Protection Act.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record as follows:
[From the New York Times, Sept. 19, 2010]
M.D.G.'s for Beginners . . . and Finishers
(By Bono)
I've noticed that New Yorkers, and I sometimes try to pass
for one these days, tend to greet the word ``summit'' with an
irritated roll of the eyes, a grunt, an impatient glance at
the wristwatch. In Manhattan, a summit has nothing to do with
crampons and ice picks, but refers instead to a large
gathering of important persons, head-of-state types and their
rock-star retinues in the vicinity of the United Nations
building and creates, therefore, a near total immobilization
of the East Side. Can world peace possibly be worth this?
Never, never . . . Eleanor Roosevelt, look what you've done .
. . .
Recent global summit meetings, from Copenhagen to Toronto,
have frankly been a bust, so the world, which may not know it
yet, is overdue for a good multilateral confab--one that's
not just about the gabbing but about the doing. The subject
of the summit meeting at the United Nations this week is one
whose monumental importance is matched only by its minuscule
brand recognition: the Millennium Development Goals,
henceforth known as the M.D.G.'s (God save us from such dull
shorthand).
The M.D.G.'s are possibly the most visionary deal that most
people have never heard of. In the run-up to the 21st
century, a grand global bargain was negotiated at a series of
summit meetings and then signed in 2000. The United Nations'
``Millennium Declaration'' pledged to ``ensure that
globalization becomes a positive force for all the world's
people,'' especially the most marginalized in developing
countries. It wasn't a promise of rich nations to poor ones;
it was a pact, a partnership, in which each side would meet
obligations to its own citizens and to one another.
Of course, this is the sort of airy-fairy stuff that people
at summit meetings tend to say and get away with because no
one else can bear to pay attention. The 2000 gathering was
different, though, because signatories agreed to specific
goals on a specific timeline: cutting hunger and poverty in
half, giving all girls and boys a basic education, reducing
infant and maternal mortality by two-thirds and three-
quarters respectively, and reversing the spread of AIDS,
tuberculosis and malaria. All by 2015. Give it an A for
Ambition.
So where are we now, 10 years on, with some ``first-world''
economies looking as if they could go bang, and some second-
and third-level economies looking as if they could be
propping us up?
Well, I'd direct you to the plenary sessions and panel
discussions for a detailed answer . . . but if you're, eh,
busy this week . . . my view, based on the data and what I've
seen on the ground, is that in many places it's going better
than you'd think.
Much better, in fact. Tens of millions more kids are in
school thanks to debt cancellation. Millions of lives have
been saved through the battle against preventable disease,
thanks especially to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS,
Tuberculosis and Malaria. Apart from fallout from the market
meltdown, economic growth in Africa has been gathering pace--
over 5 percent per year in the decade ending in 2009. Poverty
declined by 1 percent a year from 1999 to 2005.
The gains made by countries like Ghana show the progress
the Millennium Goals have helped create.
At the same time, the struggles of places like Congo remind
us of the distance left to travel. There are serious
headwinds: 64 million people have been thrown back into
poverty as a result of the financial crises, and 150 million
are hungry because of the food crisis. And extending the
metaphor, there are storms on the horizon: the poor will be
hit first--and worst--by climate change.
So there should be no Champagne toasts at this year's
summit meeting. The 10th birthday of our millennium is, or
ought to be, a purposeful affair, a redoubling of efforts.
After all, there's only five years before 2015, only five
years to make all that Second Avenue gridlock worth it. With
that in mind I'd like to offer three near-term tests of our
commitment to the M.D.G.'s.
1. Find what works and then expand on it. Will mechanisms
like the Global Fund get the resources to do the job?
Energetic, efficient and effective, the fund saves a
staggering 4,000 lives a day. Even a Wall Streeter would have
to admit, that's some return on investment. But few are aware
of it, a fact that allows key countries--from the United
States to Britain, France and Germany--to go unnoticed if
they ease off the throttle. The unsung successes of the fund
should be, well, sung, and after this summit meeting, its
work needs to be fully financed. This would help end the
absurdity of death by mosquito, and the preventable calamity
of 1,000 babies being born every day with H.I.V., passed to
them by their mothers who had no access to the effective,
inexpensive medicines that exist.
2. Governance as an effect multiplier. In this column last
spring, I described some Africans I've met who see corruption
as more deadly than the deadliest of diseases, a cancer that
eats at the foundation of good governance even as the
foundation is being built. I don't just mean ``their''
corruption; I mean ours, too. For example, multinational oil
companies. They want oil, and governments of poor countries
rich in just one thing, black gold, want to sell it to them.
All well and good. Except the way it too often happens, as
democracy campaigners in these countries point out, is not at
all good. Some of these companies knowingly participate in a
system of backhanders and bribery that ends up cheating the
host nation and turning what should be a resource blessing
into a kind of curse of black market cabals.
Well, I'm pleased to give you an update on an intervention
that some of us thought of and fought for as critical: hidden
somewhere in the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill (admit it .
. . you haven't read it all either) there is a hugely
significant ``transparency'' amendment, added by Senators
Richard Lugar and Benjamin Cardin. Now energy companies
traded on American exchanges will have to reveal every
payment they make to government officials. If money changes
hands, it will happen in the open. This is the kind of
daylight that makes the cockroaches scurry.
The British government should institute the same
requirement for companies trading in Britain, as should the
rest of the European Union and ultimately all the G-20
nations. According to the African entrepreneur Mo Ibrahim,
who has emerged as one of the most important voices on that
continent, transparency could do more to transform Africa
than even debt cancellation has. Measures like this one
should be central to any renewed Millennium Development Goal
strategy.
And the cost to us is zero, nada. It's a clear thought in a
traffic jam.
3. Demand clarity; measure inputs and outputs.
Speaking of transparency, let's have a little more, please,
when it comes to the question of who is doing what toward
which goal and to what effect. We have to know where we are
to know how far we've left to go.
Right now it's near impossible to keep track. Walk (if you
dare) into M.D.G. World and you will encounter a dizzying
array of vague financing and policy commitments on critical
issues, from maternal mortality to agricultural development.
You come across a load of bureau-babble that too often is
used to hide double counting, or mask double standards. This
is the stuff that feeds the cynics.
What we need is an independent unit--made up of people from
governments, the private sector and civil society--to track
pledges and progress, not just on aid but also on trade,
governance, investment. It's essential for the credibility of
the United Nations, the M.D.G.'s, and all who work toward
them.
And that was the deal, wasn't it? The promise we made at
the start of this century was not to perpetuate the old
relationships between donors and recipients, but to create
new ones, with true partners accountable to each other and
above all to the citizens these
[[Page S7200]]
systems are supposed to work for. Strikes me as the right
sort of arrangement for an age of austerity as well as
interdependence. (The age of interrupted affluence should
sharpen our focus on future markets for our sake as well as
theirs.)
No leader scheduled to speak at the summit meeting is more
painfully aware of this context than President Obama, who one
year ago pledged to put forth a global plan to reach the
development goals. If promoting transparency and investing in
what works is at the core of that strategy, he can assure
Americans that their dollars are reinforcing their values,
and their leadership in the world is undiminished. Action is
required to make these words, these dull statistics, sing.
The tune may not be pop but it won't leave your head--this
practical, achievable idea that the world, now out of kilter,
can re-balance itself and offer all, not just some, a chance
to exit the unfathomable deprivation that brings about the
need for such global bargains.
I understand the critics who groan or snooze through the
pious pronouncements we will hear from the podium in the
General Assembly. But still in my heart and mind,
undiminished and undaunted, is this thought planted by Nelson
Mandela in his quest to tackle extreme poverty: ``Sometimes
it falls upon a generation to be great.''
We have a lot to prove, but if the M.D.G. agreement had not
been made in 2000, much less would have happened than has
happened. Already, we've seen transformative results for
millions of people whose lives are shaped by the priorities
of people they will never know or meet--the very people
causing gridlock this week. For this at least, the world
should thank New Yorkers for the loan of their city.
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