UN prods Philippines on Millennium Development Goals

MANILA, Philippines— The Philippines’ performance in meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) has remained “generally low” with barely five years into the deadline to achieve the goals set by the United Nations, according to a UN official in the Philippines.

Renaud Meyer, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Country Director to the Philippines, revealed the country’s dismal performance based on the MDG Report launched early this September.

“Accelerating progress to attain the MDGs requires increased resources to deliver what has been promised to those for whom the MDGs are not a reality,” said Meyer during a public forum on promoting human rights, justice, integrity and democracy at the University of the Philippines last week.

The MDGs are eight international development goals that all 192 UN member states and at least 23 international organizations have agreed to achieve by the year 2015.

They goals are to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger; achieve universal primary education; promote gender equality and empower women; reduce child mortality rate; improve maternal health, combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases; ensure environmental sustainability; and develop a global partnership for development.

According to Meyer, poverty incidence in the Philippines has risen from 30 percent in 2003 to 33 percent in 2006 as the population increased from 80 to 86 million.

He said that problems in providing access to primary education have been prevailing as 5.2 million Filipino school-age children have not entered school. Also, 53 percent of these school age children are not enrolled in Grade 1, while the majority usually drops out after reaching Grade 1, according to Meyer.

Meyer likewise said that the Philippines has been facing difficulty meeting MDG 5 on improving maternal health as 54 percent of pregnancies (1.9 million women) were unplanned.

He said the lack of access to reproductive health services has caused 11 mothers to die every day due to pregnancy-related causes. There is also concern on the high incidence of HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) cases with 126 new cases reported in 2009, the highest since 1984.

Meyer noted that meager resources due to corruption hurt the country’s chances in achieving the MDGs.

“We all know that corruption heavily impacts and diverts meager resources meant to deliver services to the poor. Concretely, this translates to lesser government budget to fund critical MDG services,” he said.

Meyer said that recent estimates put the cost of corruption at about 20 to 30 percent of the national budget.

“This means less classrooms, less hospitals, less kilometers of farm to market roads for farmers, less protection from diseases in remote communities, less potable water for waterless villages. In all these aspects, it is the poor who suffer the most,” he added. –Cynthia Balana, Philippine Daily Inquirer