German Chancellor Angela Merkel yesterdayy warned a UN summit that aid to poorer nations cannot be open-ended, while Cuba, Iran and Zimbabwe blamed the West for the developing world’s ills.
Mrs Merkel’s keynote speech on the second day of the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDG) anti-poverty summit called for more emphasis on good governance by developing nations.
“Development aid cannot continue indefinitely. The task therefore is to use limited resources as effectively as possible. This can only work through good governance which taps that country’s potential,” she said.
“There is one thing we have to accept. The primary responsibility for development lies with the governments of the developing countries,” Mrs Merkel added.
“It is in their hands whether aid can be effective. Therefore, support to good governance is as important as aid itself.”
Mrs Merkel insisted that development assistance cannot be a substitute for the use of national resources to strengthen economies.
She said poorer nations must make greater efforts to promote a market economy and small businesses. “Without self-sustaining economic growth, developing countries will find the road out of poverty and hunger to steep to climb.”
The second day of the summit also saw speeches by Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe and other leaders from the developing world who blamed their people’s suffering on the West.
“Demanding liberal capitalism and transnational corporations have caused the suffering of countless women, men and children in so many countries,” Mr Ahmadinejad told the summit.
He called for fundamental reform of “the undemocratic and unjust” world order, in a chaotic speech to a half-empty assembly hall and for which there was no official translation.
“The most serious problems of the past millennia were derived from the inhumane and infected creeds, accompanied by unfair and cruel management,” Mr Ahmadinejad said, according to a text distributed by the Iranian delegation.
The controversial Zimbabwe leader followed soon after Mrs Merkel and blamed what he called “illegal and debilitating sanctions” for his country’s failure to cut poverty and hunger.
Zimbabwe’s economy went into freefall with the world’s highest recorded inflation after the Mugabe government enacted radical economic policies. Sanctions were imposed over accusations that he rigged his re-election.
He is now in an uneasy power-sharing government with opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, now the Prime Minister.
“We find it disturbing and regrettable that after we all agreed to work towards the improvement of the lives of our citizens, some countries should deliberately work to negate our efforts,” Mr Mugabe said.
Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla told the summit that his country was successfully meeting the eight key development targets set in 2000 despite the US blockade of the past five decades.
He launched a withering attack on the United States and other industrial powers.
“Foreign debt has been paid several times, but is multiplying; and the financial deregulation and corruption in developed countries have caused a global crisis with specially negative consequences for the underdeveloped countries,” the minister said.
Mr Parrilla warned that the West would feel the fallout from the troubles of poor nations.
“This problem will knock on the doors of all of us, whether through uncontrolled and unmanageable migration flows, by means of diseases and epidemics, as a result of the conflicts generated by poverty and hunger.”
The three-day summit is looking at ways to finance and give new political impetus to the MDGs, which most experts now predict will not be met by the 2015 target date.
The United Nations has estimated that at least $120 billion will need to be raised to hope to meet the targets which include cutting extreme poverty by half, reducing by two-thirds the number of children who die before the age of five, seeking fairer trade, and spreading technological progress.