STATEMENT OF THE DIRECTOR-GENERAL TO THE HIGH-LEVEL SEGMENT OF ECOSOC, WHICH IS TO CONSIDER THE CONTRIBUTION OF HUMAN RESOURCES DEVELOPMENT, INCLUDING THE AREAS OF HEALTH AND EDUCATION, TO THE PROCESS OF DEVELOPMENT

New York, 1 July 2002

It is a great pleasure for me to join, once again, your deliberations on economic and social issues of global importance. The topic you have chosen for this year's High Level Segment is of particular relevance to development and to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. FAO is pleased to provide you with its perspective, and to listen to those of others, on the occasion of this important policy dialogue.

Human resources are at the centre of development: both as an instrument for its achievement and as its ultimate beneficiaries. Human resources development should and must be an integral part of economic and assistance strategies for the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals.

The Trio of Hunger, Health, and Education

The document before you examines in depth the health and education dimensions of human resources development. Considerably less attention is given to hunger, which has strong linkages to both.

Hunger undermines the contribution human resources can make to development. It compromises people's ability to improve their lives. It erodes labour productivity and is linked to learning disabilities, absenteeism and high drop-out rates among school children.

"Food security, hunger and malnutrition dominate the health of the world's poorest nations." to use the words of my colleague Dr. Brundtland, Director-General of WHO. Some 60 percent of the 11 million childhood deaths in developing countries every year are associated with malnutrition. Children in the developing world may die of measles; those in the developed world usually do not. The determining factor of this difference is undernourishment or malnutrition, which causes or exacerbates health problems by suppressing the immune system.

For these various reasons, hunger is not just an effect of poverty, but also a cause. Where prevalent, its alleviation is a pre-condition for sustainable poverty reduction. In societies where hunger is widespread, overall growth is also compromised, with a yearly decline of nearly one percent in the economic growth rate.

FAO has estimated that if the Millennium Development Goal of halving hunger by 2015 was met, the economic benefits of a more productive workforce would be in the order of US$ 120 billion a year, resulting inter alia, in higher incomes and greater demand for goods and services. These calculations are similar to those made by WHO relating to the benefits of achieving health goals, and and their combined potential economic benefits are considerable. In conclusion, the costs of not addressing health and hunger problems are high. Moreover, there are non-economic benefits from hunger alleviation. For example, a USAID study has suggested that halving the number of hungry by 2015 would lower the cost of peacekeeping and humanitarian operations by US$ 2.5 billion per year.

Because of their close linkages, it follows that this trio of challenges Ð hunger, health and education Ð should be addressed more closely together than has previously been the case. They should also be explicit components of broad-based poverty reduction strategies and programmes, particularly where they constitute obstacles to development. The sequencing of investments among these sectors must be determined by their interrelationships, in order to exploit potential synergies. Ensuring sustainable access to food, health and education are not only valid goals in themselves, but have sizeable potential benefits in economic and social terms, thus making them prerequisites for the achievement of other Millennium Development Goals, most notably poverty reduction.

Human resources development must go beyond the social sectors

However, human resources development must go beyond the social sectors to include the productive and service sectors. It must enable the potential benefits of trade, aid, technology and knowledge to be tapped by even the poorest countries. The recent conferences in Doha and Monterrey have stressed the importance of trade and aid for development. Yet it is often the absence of capacity that prevents countries from reaping their benefits.

This is particularly true with regard to agricultural trade. In addition to problems of market access for agricultural products, developing countries also frequently face problems of quality and standards. It is thus necessary to adopt legal and regulatory measures, build institutions and scientific capacities, all requiring human resources of adequate level and training.

As a follow-up to Doha, FAO has strengthened its programme of technical assistance aimed at enhancing capacity in these areas. To this end, it is working closely with WTO, the World Bank, UNCTAD and trade-focussed NGOs.

Outcome of the World Food Summit: five years later

Given the direct relevance of hunger to this discussion of human resources development, I would like to close by briefly informing you on the outcome of the World Food Summit: five years later, which was held in Rome from 10 to 13 June 2002.

The purpose of the Summit was to sound an alarm that we are not on track to halve hunger by 2015, as agreed at the World Food Summit in Rome in 1996, and reiterated at the UN Millennium Summit in New York in the year 2000.

Why are we not on track? Quite simply, because political will and resources to achieve this goal have not matched the promises made and the commitments made.

Since 1996, although 70 per cent of the poor depend directly or indirectly on agriculture for their livelihoods, employment and income:

	neither developed nor developing countries have assigned adequate priority to hunger reduction, through agricultural and rural development;
	on average, developing countries spend less than 10 percent of their public expenditure on agriculture; and,
	during the 1990s, concessional aid for agriculture from developed countries, as well as from international financial institutions, declined by 50 percent.

I believe that the recent World Food Summit helped to flag the lack of political and financial commitment to reduce hunger, despite the high economic and social costs which the persistence of hunger means for developing countries and the international community as a whole.

The Declaration adopted by the Summit should serve to catalyze new and innovative ways to get back on track to halve hunger by 2015. These included:

	recognition of the need for an international alliance against hunger of all concerned partners;
	inter-governmental negotiations of a set of voluntary guidelines for the progressive realization of the right to adequate food;
	reversing the overall decline of agriculture and rural development in the national budgets of developing countries, in ODA and in total lending in international financial institutions, within the framework of the Monterrey Consensus; and,
	implementing the outcome of the Doha WTO Ministerial Conference, especially the commitments regarding the reform of the international agricultural trading system, with the particular view to promote food security and alleviate poverty.

The Summit also was an occasion for FAO to present a first draft of an Anti-Hunger Programme which could be considered by all interested development partners including, in particular, governments of developing countries and the international donor community. The programme indicates priorities for incremental public investment necessary to achieve the target of halving the number of undernourished by 2015. Total annual costs are in the order of US$ 24 billion, which represents roughly five cents for every 100 dollars earned in developed countries or 2.5 percent of OECD support to agriculture in 2001. This Anti-Hunger Programme should be the basis for a dialogue among development partners.

Conclusion

As our understanding of the linkages among the Millennium Development Goals deepens, so too does our conviction that multi-sectoral approaches offer possibilities for their achievement. ECOSOC can encourage meaningful multi-sectoral action among UN system secretariats for the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals. The trio of goals relating to hunger, health and education offers a potentially fruitful area for such approaches to be tested.

It will require the mobilisation of considerable political will and resources from both developed and developing countries. ECOSOC is well-placed to lead political efforts boldly and relentlessly to this end. Not only are there valid moral reasons for wsuch efforts, there are also compelling economic and social ones.

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