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United Nations

Skewed Third World Priorities

Thalif Deen writes from New York
*** The United Nations says developing countries would be capable of meeting human development needs if they stopped channeling their resources to arms, corruption and subsidies for the wealthy. ***
THE United Nations is taking an openly critical view of developing countries that keep complaining they are far too poor to finance their human development needs.
Given the choice between food and firepower, says the United Nations, most Third World nations are opting for guns over butter.
At least three New Yorkbased agencies — the UN Development Programme (UNDP), the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) — arc convinced that most developing nation have the necessary resources to give high priority to human concerns In their national budgets.
But what they lack, say the three agencies, is the political commitment to spend more on basic education, primary health care, family planning, child welfare, social security and the environment.
The UNDP, which is taking the lead role in trying to prod developing nations Into action, says that one way of resolving the problem Is to recast budgetary priorities in favour of human development
In an Interview with IPS. the UNDP's chief of media relations Peter Gall said the concept of human development will be woven into practically all of UNDP programming in the 1990's.
The UNDP will be asking some pointed questions at countries seeking assistance from the world's largest multilateral grant development assistance agency said Gall.
Is your military spending on • the increase? Are you spending more on defense and less on health, education and housing?
If you are already focusing on human needs, are you spending more on primary education? Or does a high percentage of your budget go to university education which favours the rich and the upper
middle classes at the expense of children at the lower end of the economic scale?
In its first annual Human Development Report released last year. UNDP pointed out the among the developing countries with the highest share of military expenditures were some of the world's poorest and least developed.
The eight countries singled out for criticism were Angola. Burundi, Sudan, China, Burma. Uganda. Yemen and Zaire.
The UNDP's second Human Development report, due to be released May 22, will take an even more critical view of counties that continue to give less priority to human development.
The report is expected to stress that political will, not finance, determines whether national budgets and foreign aid go to education and health — or Into arms, corruption and subsidies for the wealthy.
Discussing goals and strategies for the 1990's. Dr Nafis Spdlk, executive director of the UNFPA, says she would like to emphasize the need to give utmost priority to the
human side of development
"We need a common and Integrated approach based on the interdependence of sectors and nations. Such an approach must argue strongly for equal attention to both social and economic aspects of the development equation," she says.
A total of nine billion dollars a year would be needed for core population activities by the end of this century, says Sadik.
But this is insignificant, she points out. In comparison with other expenditures, such as global military spending, which the United Nations estimates at over US$1.3 trillion annually.
Unicef Executive director James P. Grant says that meeting the goals set out for protecting the lives and growth of children the world over In the 1990's would cost about US$20 billion a year.
Some of the money, he says, could come from the restructuring of present spending not only in favour of the social sector but also within the social sector.
Unicefs annual state of the Children report for 1991 says that developing nations as a whole are spending more on the military than on education and health combined.
Over 25 per cent of all present government expenditures In developing countries are devoted to three sectors: the military. Inefficient, state-con-
trolled companies and government subsidies, the report
Even within the social sector. the report says, there are hospitals in developing countries which reach at most 15 per cent to 20 per cent of the population but claim 80 per cent of the country's health budget
In education, more than half of the government spending is often earmarked to secondary and higher education for the minority — and the beneficiaries are usually from higher-income families. — IPS