Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-06-19-Speech-2-254"
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"en.20070619.41.2-254"2
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".
Mr President, unfortunately, the Council is absent, something which the Socialist Group in the European Parliament is deeply disappointed about. In 2000, 191 world leaders committed to the Millennium Declaration to stamp out extreme poverty in the world by 2015 and to improve the health and well-being of the poorest. At the moment, one in five of the world’s population has no access to basic social needs, including education and clean drinking water. In exactly two and a half weeks’ time, we will be half-way towards the MDG deadline. The excellent report by Mrs Kinnock, which we back fully, takes stock of what we have achieved thus far.
Over the past seven and a half years, people have worked hard on realising these goals, and a number of great successes have been achieved. Particularly in Asia, where there has been a major reduction in poverty. The number of people who have to survive on less than 1 dollar per day has decreased there by over a quarter of a billion people since 1990. In Central America too, things are visibly on the up. In both regions, the number of undernourished children has decreased drastically. Child mortality has been cut by many percentage points. Hundreds of thousands of people in Central America and Asia have been lifted out of poverty, something which these regions and the whole world should be proud of.
What is still going wrong in Asia and Central America is the yawning gap between the rich and the poor. We have to help implement strategies for a fairer distribution of natural resources and of soil, for fairer taxes, less corruption and good governance. Too many people, despite all the growth and progress, are still deprived of basic social needs. This is what the focus of European aid programmes, via civil society, should be.
On one continent, the Millennium Goals have been getting further away instead of closer in recent years. Africa, despite separate valiant achievements, despite the efforts of many, is going downhill. It is unlikely that any of these Millennium Goals will be met there on time. Three quarters of the population suffer from AIDS/HIV in Sub-Saharan Africa.
The number of starving people has risen in that region by many tens of millions. How can we change the mindset of the groups that are successful? How can we help African businesspeople, women’s cooperatives and micro-credit banks help turn the tide? First of all, by placing centre-stage not only the victims, but also the successes, including, for example, the end of the wars, in Mozambique among other places, not to mention top African diplomats such as Kofi Annan, fashion houses from Abuja, wine farmers from South Africa, pilots from Ghana, top football players from across Africa and female ICT entrepreneurs. They are the ones who will change Africa. They are the ones that I want to form partnerships with. They are the ones on whom we should focus our European aid. They must receive trade benefits instead of being pestered with our dumped goods.
It is time for a new beginning. A turning point, albeit an uphill one. After all, if we combine quality and national resources with our genuine cooperation in the areas of aid and trade, Africa can rise from the ashes. Genuine cooperation means that we need to focus the European Development Fund and our aid budgets more on the Millennium Goals, education and health care.
You are right, Commissioner, MDG contracts are a good way of achieving this. This also includes the G8, which set real deadlines for major tasks. Genuine cooperation means generous economic partnership agreements. African businesspeople must be able to place their products on our markets with added value. If GSP-plus can help in this, then it should. Let us build an African team made up of good players, of winners, and let us give the African team the chance of winning this football game in the second half of the 2015 match for the MDGs. This will benefit Africa, and indeed, the rest of the world."@en1
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