International Development CommitteeWritten evidence submitted by RESULTS UK

1. Summary of Key Points

1.1 There must be a coordinated, transparent and inclusive process which leads to a single framework of global development goals for post-2015.

1.2 The framework should be universal in scope, committing all countries to development goals. It should be based on shared acknowledgement of all countries’ responsibilities for poverty reduction and should hold all countries to account for defending and advancing universal human rights. It should be an integrated framework of universal goals tailored to national contexts.

1.3 There must be greater recognition of the interrelated nature of development challenges, while not undermining specificity of focus. The framework must address inequality and prioritise inclusive development that benefits all, including the most marginalised and vulnerable. This can be achieved through a human rights framework and by ensuring that disaggregated data is used to report progress for all sections of society. There must be ownership of the new framework at national, regional and global levels.

1.4 Financing the new framework will demand more stable and predictable funding for existing mechanisms, as well as greater coordination and transparency. New innovative financing mechanisms should be explored.

1.5 There is a pressing need for careful evaluation and analysis of the evidence on private sector involvement. A vital consideration must be whether private sector initiatives are reaching and benefiting society’s most marginalised and vulnerable who cannot access state-provided services.

1.6 While beginning to focus on post-2015, individual countries and international bodies must not stop working to meet the existing MDGs.

1.7 The new framework must reflect the huge challenges that remain in the existing MDGs “issues”, particularly education and health, as well as focusing on inclusive economic development as a means of addressing inequality.

2. About RESULTS UK

2.1 RESULTS is an international grassroots advocacy organization working to generate the public and political will to end hunger and extreme poverty. RESULTS supports a network of volunteers across the UK and in five other countries (Australia, Canada, Japan, Mexico and USA). RESULTS works in partnership with decision-makers, experts and civil society to take effective action and to speak out in favour of anti-poverty measures that really work. RESULTS UK is a member of the Global Campaign for Education UK and the ACTION Global Health Advocacy Partnership. We provide the secretariat to the APPGs on Global Education for All, Global Tuberculosis, and Microfinance.

3. Lessons From the MDGs

3.1 By providing specific, easy-to-communicate and measurable targets, the MDGs helped to galvanise global efforts to meet the needs of the world’s poorest. The MDGs led to the set-up of crucial international financing mechanisms to channel resources and expertise, such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria and the GAVI Alliance. Ultimately, the MDGs have significantly addressed development challenges, whether by increasing enrolment in school, reducing deaths from TB or by ensuring that more children have been immunised against more diseases than ever before.

3.2 While targets on poverty reduction, slums and water have already been met, at the current rate of progress, 1 billion people will still be living in extreme poverty by 2015, 61 million children remain out of school, and one in five children do not receive the most basic vaccinations.1

3.3 The aggregated global targets masked drastically increasing inequalities. There was a tendency to reach for the “lowest hanging fruit” in order to meet the MDGs. The overall number of people living on less than $1.25 a day decreased from 1.9 billion in 1990 to 1.3 billion in 2008. Yet this reduction was overwhelmingly concentrated in one country (China) while the absolute number of people living in poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa increased.2

3.4 A post-2015 framework needs a greater focus on addressing the needs of the most vulnerable and marginalised. As one example, the word “disability” does not feature anywhere in the MDGs. Disability may have been perceived as a “niche” issue at the time, but we now know that disability is a cause and a consequence of poverty. Disabled people make up 15% of the world’s population, yet it is estimated that 20% of the world’s poorest people are disabled.3 UNESCO estimates that one third of all children of primary school age who are not in school have a disability, and over 90% of disabled children in Africa do not go to school.4 While overall progress against the MDGs is being made, the most vulnerable are being left further behind.

3.5 The phrasing and selection of some of the goals, targets and indicators, and the need for easy measurability have been barriers to progress. MDG 2 is an example where global attention focused on one quantitative indicator—enrolment in primary education—as the key measure of success at the expense of measures such as completion of primary education (actually one of the indicators), transition to secondary education, quality of teaching and learning outcomes.

4. How should the “Sustainable Development Goals” relate to the “Development Goals”?

4.1 It is vital that the SDG and post-2015 agendas converge into a single coordinated, transparent and inclusive process which leads to a single framework of global development goals.

4.2 The SDGs lack a vital focus on health. Continued and increased focus on health priorities post-2015 is essential to ensuring that progress made so far is not lost. Promising progress has been seen in childhood vaccines and in reducing HIV incidence, AIDs-related mortality and tuberculosis rates. However, nearly 20 million children per year still do not receive the most basic vaccinations,5 15 million people living with HIV need antiretroviral treatment, and there is a worrying rise in rates of drug-resistant TB. The progress made to date can only be maintained through new post-2015 strategies that continue to emphasise health care, health systems strengthening, delivery mechanisms, research into adapted technologies, and community-systems strengthening.

5. The coverage of future goals

5.1 With global challenges like climate change, insecurity and inequality, and much greater global inter-connectedness, the post-2015 framework should be universal in scope, committing all countries to development goals.

5.2 MDG 8 has been criticised as the only goal which laid responsibilities on developed countries and for being imprecise and lacking accountability.6 The new framework should be based on shared acknowledgement of all countries’ responsibilities for poverty reduction, including recognition of the global impact of domestic policies such as agriculture, trade, security, environment and migration. Post-2015 goals should have built-in focus on strengthening coordinated efforts of governments, private sector and civil society, and include targets for all countries to reach the most vulnerable and marginalised.

5.3 Since 2000, significant progress has been made in the implementation of global human rights laws, such as the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. It would be logical for these to form part of a post-2015 framework that holds all countries to account in defending and advancing these universal rights.

6. The process: the voices and challenges to global consensus

6.1 It is vital that the voices of the most marginalised and vulnerable people are heard in the post-2015 consultations. This means going beyond ensuring a fair opportunity to participate—it means making additional efforts to support the participation of those hardest to reach. Some have called for a “what the world wants” poll as one way of giving voice to the poorest.7 It also means practical support –eg: supporting those in the most remote areas to reach fora or to access internet services to allow them to participate; or ensuring that travel and visa restrictions do not prevent marginalised populations, such as sex workers, from crossing borders to attend debates.

6.2 There is a real risk of a breakdown in global consensus that will leave a fragmented, vague or unaccountable successor to the MDGs in 2015. There will be many different agendas, not least: the USA’s reluctance to be held to internationally-imposed obligations; China’s unwillingness to constrain its industrial growth; and countries in the developing world feeling that previous global targets were an unfair burden that tied national policies to the priorities of developed countries. The Doha Development Round of trade negotiations shows what can happen when such divides develop, with the negotiations currently having stalled for more than a decade despite wide acknowledgement that a successful outcome could vastly increase global competitiveness and growth prospects.

7. The target-based approach

7.1 The MDGs “target-based” approach has strengthened accountability and provided benchmarks for donors and implementing partners to aim for. In the worst cases, where global efforts have seen progress fall far short of the MDG targets, this has helped to galvanise additional focus and resources towards meeting the targets. Eg, the World Bank’s Education for All Fast Track Initiative—now the Global Partnership for Education—was created as an additional catalytic fund to help get countries in most need back on track with MDG 2; and the Global Fund’s “Big Push” campaign galvanised work towards meeting MDG 6.

7.2 There are several examples where targets and indicators set have been either the wrong targets (too ambitious or lacking ambition) or not the right measures to use. In the case of tuberculosis, the MDG target of reversing TB incidence by 2015 was already achieved by 2008, even though TB remains one of the world’s leading infectious disease killers and 1.4 million people die from TB annually. Meeting this target in advance of 2015 owes more to low aspirations than to success.

7.3 The MDGs failed to account for the interrelated nature of the goals and the improbability of meeting targets in isolation. Eg, the TB target cannot be reached without corresponding focus on nutrition (under MDG 1), gender (MDG 3), child mortality (MDG 4) and maternal health (MDG 5). Poor nutrition (1) reduces efficacy of medication and poor diet weakens immune response. Diagnosis and treatment of TB has not been equal across genders (3) and TB remains among the top ten killers of children worldwide (4). In developing countries TB remains the third leading cause of death among women of reproductive age and poses considerable risk for pregnant women and their babies (5).8

7.4 The targets for post-2015 must be grounded in ensuring inclusive development that benefits all, including the most marginalised and vulnerable. There are two approaches which could produce better targets. Firstly, anchoring future goals in a human rights framework. By focusing on universal rights, greater attention would be paid to ensuring equitable progress, whether in access to childhood vaccines or to education. Secondly, building the capacity of all countries to deliver disaggregated data to report progress on targets. By paying closer attention to progress broken down by gender, age, family income, urban/rural location, disability and other factors, post-2015 targets would ensure that development benefits the poorest and most vulnerable.

7.5 There must be ownership of the new goals at national, regional and global level. By setting global “one size fits all” targets, the MDGs undermined this ownership. While a global framework is vital, within it there should be scope for individual governments to set their own milestones, specific targets, monitoring and metrics. This view is reflected in the UN System Task Team’s report, which outlines an integrated framework of universal goals tailored to national contexts based on the principles of human rights, equality and sustainability, and seeking to deliver development across the four pillars of: inclusive social development; environmental sustainability; inclusive economic development; and peace and security.

8. Financing global goals

8.1 Alongside consideration of new mechanisms, existing mechanisms must also be drawn upon to ensure the post-2015 agenda is adequately funded. Donors must respect the articulation of demand through established mechanisms and ensure that they not only pledge money accordingly but also meet those pledges in a timely manner. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, for example, supports programmes that save an estimated 100,000 lives every month and 8.7 million people are alive today because of these programmes. But the Fund has struggled during the financial downturn, in part due to some donor governments’ failure to meet their commitments in a timely way. Stable and predictable funding for existing mechanisms will ensure organisations can develop long-term plans based not on donor priorities but on demand from countries in most need.

8.2 There is a need for greater coordination and transparency within current funding mechanisms. Funding for MDG 2 basic education programmes is an example where the World Bank has been criticised for failing to meet its pledges—most recently changing the goalposts on its 2010 pledge to deliver an extra $750 million for education through the International Development Association (IDA).9 Meanwhile, the Global Partnership for Education, created as an additional catalytic fund to support countries most off-track to meet MDG 2, is not being effectively coordinated with IDA education spending to deliver increased funding to where it is needed most (primarily Sub Saharan Africa). This lack of effective coordination comes despite GPE being housed by the World Bank.

8.3 A post-2015 framework should look towards new innovative financing that can deliver long term stability and continuity in funding. There are good examples to learn from: UNITAID is financed primarily by a solidarity air travel tax and has raised more than $1 billion in four years to purchase life-saving medicines for more than 21 million people.10 Financial Transaction Taxes, being tiny taxes on securities transactions, could deliver similar development benefits.11 Mobilising private capital through mechanisms like the IFFIm is another avenue, which is both high-volume and reliable over time. Another example, Social Impact Bonds, leverage private capital to fund programmes and generate returns for investors upon successful outcomes.12

9. The role of the private sector

9.1 There must be careful examination of the benefits and risks of a shift to increase involvement of the private sector in development, an approach DFID openly supports. Private sector involvement should not undermine the principle that a state has a responsibility to provide basic services to its citizens. Yet there must also be pragmatism—the reality in many developing countries is that there are already a wide range of private and civil society actors delivering education, healthcare and financial services.

9.2 A vital consideration for private sector involvement is whether it is reaching and benefiting society’s most marginalised and vulnerable who are unable to access state-provided services. Evidence is mixed or insubstantial in many areas. For example, there is great debate about whether low-cost private schools are an effective way of improving access or standards of education for the world’s poorest or whether any positive impact is outweighed by a negative effect on equity (poor access for marginalised groups).13 Careful evaluation and analysis of the evidence needs to be done before private sector initiatives are wholeheartedly supported or scaled up as part of a post-2015 agenda.

10. What period should the new framework cover?

10.1 The 15 year timeline for the MDGs was a good balance between long term ambition and ability to measure meaningful progress. However, more important than debate about the overall time horizon for post-2015 is ensuring that the framework incorporates regular review and participatory monitoring to allow a transparent and accurate assessment of progress on the ground and the challenges in reaching targets. A more country-led target-setting and measurement approach, within the context of an overarching global framework, would help tackle this.

11. The content of future goals

11.1 Individual countries and international bodies must not stop working to meet the existing MDGs. With three years to go, we do not know which MDGs will be met, although we can guess the areas where it is unlikely that they will be. It seems doubtful that “children everywhere” will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling by 2015 (MDG 2), particularly as the number of out of school children worldwide has plateaued. Similarly, many parts of the world are likely to miss MDG 4 (“reduce by two-thirds the under-five mortality rate”).

11.2 The post-2015 framework must include current MDG “issues”, such as education and health. Education is one of the most effective means of increasing the health, wealth and stability of nations, and so it must remain a key goal. Within education, we must see a greater focus on equity and quality. While striving for basic education that is free, universal and compulsory, we should also be developing a goal and indicators that prioritise equity of access, particularly for the most marginalised and vulnerable, alongside quality provision of inclusive education and attention to learning outcomes. To reach these goals, we need to support teachers to provide the quality education every child deserves.

11.3 Health must also remain central. A health focus could act as a model for a new emphasis on the inter-linkages between goals while also striking a balance between integration and specificity of focus. The goal should be ambitious, seeking universal health coverage, but also targeted, recognising that despite progress made in the fight against the major diseases of poverty, gains could be lost if we lose focus. Too often, Health Systems Strengthening projects inadequately monitor their impact on health outcomes, so continuing to have specific targets for the main health challenges like HIV, TB and malaria is essential. Integrated goals would see universal health coverage linked to specific targets under other issues such as education, gender and nutrition.

11.3 The framework should also prioritise inclusive economic development as a means of reducing inequalities and poverty. A new indicator might focus on increasing access to secure, regulated savings accounts and appropriate insurance mechanisms. Evidence shows that access to savings helps reduce poverty and household financial instability,14 yet most people in developing countries do not have access to secure savings, and save either informally or not at all.15 Ensuring equitable access to financial services such as savings and insurance could be a crucial way to reduce inequalities. For smallholder farmers and other vulnerable groups, these services can play a key role in adapting to climate change (a key focus of the SDGs).16

October 2012