DEVELOPMENT-NICARAGUA:
Despite Efforts, MDGs
Still Distant Goals
By José Adán Silva
MANAGUA, (IPS) -
Despite the social plans
implemented by the
government of Daniel
Ortega, Nicaragua has
made little progress
towards meeting the
Millennium Development
Goals (MDGs), say
independent analysts.
Ortega, who took office
in January 2007, has
launched programmes like
Zero Hunger in rural
areas, Zero Usury, which
grants low interest
loans to poor women, and
an adult literacy drive,
besides making education
free once again for
children and teenagers.
Some 12,000 rural
families have benefited
from the Zero Hunger
programme, around 13,000
women have obtained
loans, and an estimated
110,000 adults have
joined the literacy
drive. In addition,
medicines have been
distributed free of
charge by the public
health system to more
than 450,000 people.
But sociologist Óscar
René Vargas told IPS
that Nicaragua has
failed to make headway
with respect to certain
MDGs, such as cutting
extreme poverty in half
by 2015, from 1990
levels.
According to a January
2007 United Nations
report, 14.9 percent of
Nicaraguans live in
extreme poverty -- just
4.5 percent less than in
1990.
Nicaragua is the second
poorest country in Latin
America, after Haiti,
with 47 percent of the
population of 5.6
million living on less
than two dollars a day.
"We are far from the
goal of reducing extreme
poverty to 9.7 percent
of the population by
2015," said Vargas,
referring to the first
of the eight MDGs that
were adopted by the
United Nations member
countries in 2000.
The other MDGs are to
halve hunger from 1990
levels, achieve
universal primary
education, promote
gender equality and
maternal health, reduce
child mortality, combat
HIV/AIDS, malaria and
other diseases, ensure
environmental
sustainability, and
develop a global
partnership for
development.
Vargas criticised
Ortega’s leftist
government for failing
to make therapeutic
abortion legal in cases
in which the woman’s
life is endangered, the
fetus is deformed, or
the pregnancy is the
result of rape. He said
that the criminalisation
of abortion under all
circumstances stands in
the way of efforts to
promote gender equality,
reduce infant mortality,
and improve maternal
health.
"There is no sex
education in public
schools, there are no
campaigns on the use of
condoms, and there are
no HIV/AIDS prevention
programmes, because the
Catholic Church does not
like those issues," said
Vargas.
Follow-up of compliance
with the MDGs is carried
out by the United
Nations Development
Programme (UNDP), which
has avoided making
pronouncements on the
grounds that there is
insufficient information
to measure progress just
one year into the
current administration.
In December, UNDP
economic adviser María
Rosa Renzi told the
press that Nicaragua had
risen two spots on the
agency’s Human
Development Index, to
112th position, in 2006.
She added, however, that
the country had failed
to curb the rise in
poverty, and that the
increase in gross
domestic product had not
benefited the poor
because of the unequal
distribution of wealth.
Javier Meléndez,
executive director of
the non-governmental
Institute of Strategic
Studies and Public
Policies, said that due
to the lack of official
information on
compliance and on the
results of social
programmes, "it is
practically impossible
to consider Nicaragua’s
progress towards the
MDGs as positive."
According to Meléndez, a
study by his institute
showed that the
government’s
anti-poverty policy "is
more rhetoric than
fact."
"Forty-five percent of
the budget earmarked for
the fight against
poverty goes to
bureaucratic costs, like
salaries, and there is
no official information
on compliance with
respect to the other 55
percent," he said.
Cirilo Otero, director
of the Centre for
Research on
Environmental Policies,
said environmental
protection is the area
in which the least
progress has been made.
The measures taken by
the government, he said,
are "temporary and
circumstantial
last-minute solutions"
rather than the
long-term initiatives
needed to meet the MDGs.
"Neither this government
nor previous
administrations have had
a policy of
environmental
conservation as agreed
in the MDGs," said
Otero.
He noted that Nicaragua
is nowhere near the
targets of halving the
proportion of people
without sustainable
access to safe drinking
water and appropriate
sanitation services,
which form part of the
7th MDG, on
environmental
sustainability. |
