The United Nations is ignoring the critical role of jobs and income equality in its 15-year strategy to fight world poverty and hunger - to the detriment of developing nations, the world body's own researchers said in a surprising critique released Friday.
The UN says it is on track to halve the number of people living on less than US$1 a day by 2015, and that the picture is mixed for other Millennium Development Goals, or MDGs, in the fields of health, education and the environment.
But the plan agreed to by governments in 2000 has serious failings, the Geneva-based UN Research Institute for Social Development said in its report.
People need jobs to combat poverty, the report essentially argues, calling for a shift in focus away from safety nets and welfare programs. It also urges new approaches to addressing rising income inequality.
"Despite an ambitious agenda, the MDGs nonetheless represent a cautious approach to social development," the 360-page report says. "A number of critical issues and obstacles to overcoming poverty have not been addressed."
The criticism is surprising, given the United Nations' decade-long advocacy of the goals as the greatest hope for eradicating extreme poverty, hunger and disease around the world. Each UN agency contributes and, despite some unwillingness among governments to fund certain programs, there is o official opposition.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has summoned world leaders to another summit Sept. 20-22 in New York to adopt an action plan to achieve all the goals in the next five years.
Few UN officials contacted would comment on the report except in broad terms.
One, Nick McGowan a spokesman for the UN Development Program, described it as "a welcome and timely critique of conventional wisdom and current policies that seek to reduce poverty."
The report, titled "Combatting Poverty and Inequality," doesn't offer clear data to back up its most contentious assertions.
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