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OPENING STATEMENT BY
MR. KIM HAK-SU
UNDER-SECRETARY-GENERAL OF THE UNITED NATIONS
AND THE EXECUTIVE SECRETARY OF THE ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL
COMMISSION FOR ASIA AND THE PACIFIC

Honourable Deputy Prime Minister,
distinguished participants,
ladies and gentlemen,

It is my great pleasure to be with you at this Public Lecture on Achieving the Millennium Development Goals in Asia and the Pacific.  At the outset, let me express our sincere appreciation to His Excellency General Chavalit Yongchaiyudh, Deputy Prime Minister of the Royal Thai Government for being with us despite his pressing duties of state.  His Excellency's presence here is a testimony to the commitment of the Royal Thai Government to promote the achievement of the MDGs not only in Thailand but also beyond.  We are very pleased to have Mr. Chakramon Phasukvanich, Secretary-General, National Economic and Social Development Board.  Under his able stewardship, NESDB has been at the forefront of the MDG campaign in Thailand.  My special thanks go to Prof. Jeffery Sachs -- our keynote speaker today -- whose inspiring and dynamic leadership has put the MDGs at the centre of global debate and discourse on poverty and development.

You may recall that UNESCAP and UNDP were the first two organizations within the UN system that came forward to forge a partnership to promote the MDGs in Asia and the Pacific region.  This partnership began in December 2001 with the signing of the first Phase of the project, "Supporting the Achievement of the Millennium Development Goals in Asia and the Pacific" by Dr. Hafiz Pasha and me.  I established the Poverty Centre within my office to implement this initiative, leading to the publication of the first regional report on the MDGs in June 2003.  Based on solid analysis and illustration of numerous best practices from the region, this publication was a wake up call for many countries and governments. It showed conclusively that swift and concerted action would be needed if the region were to reach the various targets by 2015, particularly those relating to non-income poverty targets.  With the successful conclusion of the first phase, I am pleased to announce that UNESCAP and UNDP have launched the second phase in February 2004. Like the first Phase, it is an analytical project with a broader sweep and a longer time frame to maintain the momentum achieved during the first Phase. In particular, greater efforts will be made to reach out to various stakeholders at different levels and promote the ownership of MDGs by all segments of the society.

Honourable Deputy Prime Minister,
distinguished participants,
ladies and gentlemen,

I believe that our region can achieve greater feats for its inhabitants in the coming years.  The region has continued to outperform all other regions in terms of economic growth and reduction in income poverty. The developing economies in the UNESCAP region achieved an average of 5.7 per cent growth in GDP in 2002 and is estimated to have achieved 6 per cent growth rate in 2003, significantly higher than any other grouping in the world.  However, future prospects could be mixed for the region as the China's economy seems to be slowing down, oil prices rise steeply, and export prices of agricultural products from mid-income countries such as Thailand begin to weaken.  All these will have marked impact on this region’s sterling success in reducing income poverty.

Based on data available for sixteen countries, there were some 766 million people in the region who lived below $1 a day (PPP) in late 1990s, a reduction of some 225 million people in poverty during the decade of 1990s.   But the region's overall achievement should not make us complacent as considerable inter-regional variations continue to exist. Moreover, the rate of change in poverty reduction has slowed down markedly after mid-1990s, indicting that the region is making less progress in combating hardcore poverty.  There is growing evidence to suggest that the hardcore poor forms a difficult target group to reach through policies and programmes that proved effective in early 1990s. We are also learning that we have to work along a broad front, as enunciated in the Millennium Declaration, to go beyond income poverty and meet the challenge of human poverty.

Once we delve more deeply into the different dimensions of human poverty, a disturbing picture emerges, reminding us of the enormous challenge that still lies ahead. The Asia-Pacific region as a whole produces more food than it needs.  Yet millions of people go hungry and millions of children remain malnourished.  The most severe problems can be found in South and South-West Asia where up to half of the children are underweight in a number of countries.  South-East Asia also has disturbingly high proportion of underweight children.  There are some 26 million children who are out of school in this region, and that figure does not include India and Pakistan.  Some 43 million children fail to complete grade five.  Significant disparities and discrimination exist in female education.  A worrying trend is that the ratio of girls to boys in tertiary education seemed to have dropped from early 1990s to late 1990s.  Child mortality rate and maternal mortality rate, although improving in some countries, are quite high in others.  Communicable diseases such as HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis continue to pose grave threats to several countries in the region with a large number of children orphaned by HIV/AIDS.  All these are a sad testimony to a region's failure to live up to its potential as the most dynamic segment of the world economy.  The root cause for this failure, I believe, lies in our inability to ensure that the fruits of economic growth reach those who need them most - the poor, the children, the women, the marginalized.

It is the shared responsibility of all of us to ensure that poverty, hunger, illiteracy, malnutrition, gender disparity, environmental degradation and HIV/AIDS disappear from our region by 2015. We owe this to our fellow human beings and we must redouble our efforts if we want to succeed. As we renew our collective pledge, it is worthwhile to recollect some of the fundamental values and principles which are enshrined in the Millennium Declaration.  First, the Millennium Declaration reminds us that men and women have the right to live their lives and raise their children in dignity, free from hunger and from the fear of violence, oppression and injustice. Second, no individual and no nation must be denied the opportunity to benefit from development. Third, human beings must respect one another, in all their diversity of belief, culture and language. Fourth, prudence must be shown in the management of all living species and natural resources. Fifth, global challenges must be managed in a way that distributes the costs and burdens fairly in accordance with basic principles of equity and social justice.

Excellency,
distinguished participants,
ladies and gentlemen,

We in UNESCAP believe that the MDGs are a framework to broaden and deepen the process of human development so that every citizen of this great region can benefit from that process. It provides a mechanism for an inclusive process in which all the stakeholders, particularly the poor, the marginalized, women, victims of HIV/AIDS and vulnerable groups can find a voice. I remain committed to ensuring that UNESCAP strives to support the achievement of the MDGs and usher a new era of peace and development in the region.

Thank you for your kind attention.