UN Panel Endorses Entrepreneurship as Key to Eradicating Poverty
Peter Heinlein
United Nations
02 Mar 2004, 00:15 UTC
http://www.voanews.com/article.cfm?o...2B29B70C4A6D2D
A United Nations Commission has endorsed entrepreneurship as a key to eradicating poverty in developing countries. Secretary-General Kofi Annan formed the commission last July to study how private sector potential might be unleashed to alleviate poverty.
It is an idea that might have been ridiculed in the halls of the United Nations a few years ago. A report issued Monday at U.N. headquarters concludes that the primary responsibility for achieving growth and equitable development lies with the developing countries.
The report, written by a panel of internationally recognized leaders in business, development economics and government from both the industrialized and developing world, says countries mired in poverty are almost always victims of their own bad domestic policies.
The panel, headed by Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin and former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo, says the eradication of poverty is dependent on domestic policy reforms that would spur local business.
In unveiling the report, Prime Minister Martin called it an example of fresh thinking on ridding the world of poverty. "Make no mistake, this is a new pillar of development. Unleashing local private enterprise supported by strong indigenous domestic and democratic institutions," he said.
The Canadian leader said new solutions are needed to attack poverty because, despite great progress over the past 50 years, a fifth of all people on earth are living on less than $1 a day. "For too long, development specialists have overlooked or downplayed the role of indigenous entrepreneurship in creating badly needed economic growth, providing employment, and increasing the quality of life in many countries," he said.
Former Mexican President Zedillo, an economist who is currently director of the Center on Globalization at Yale University, says unless entrepreneurship is allowed to blossom, progress in alleviating poverty will be impossible, even when all other ingredients for economic growth are in place. "In many developing countries, the private sector fails to rise to its potential in creating wealth and defeat[ing] poverty because property rights aren't truly protected, and government regulation of businesses is excessive and of bad quality," he said.
The panel's conclusions are certain to be controversial. They sparked a barrage of questions from skeptical journalists, many of whom openly disagreed with the findings.
Lending his full weight to the conclusions, however, was Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who sat between the co-chairman during their press briefing. In brief remarks, he congratulated the panel for outlining a series of concrete steps for eradicating poverty in developing countries.
Mark Malloch Brown, U.N. Development Program administrator and a driving force behind the panel's work, said the conclusions were evidence of secretary general's influence in changing the world body's ideological outlook.
"I think this is part of the continued intellectual revolution you have led at the United Nations. This wouldn't have happened a few years ago," he said. "A group sitting around you at the podium in the press room, announcing a report on the private sector. Ernesto [Zedillo] would, at different points in our deliberations, say 'it's almost as extraordinary where we're sitting to be talking about these issues as what we're saying.'"
The panel concludes that while there is no one solution for all poor countries, the primary responsibility for eradicating poverty lies with local governments. In saying so, the panel members seem to be suggesting a shift in the world body's economic philosophy.
In his summary, co-chairman Ernesto Zedillo said the message is precise, and should be compelling: poverty will remain intractable in countries lacking a vigorous private sector. Therefore, impediments to its development must be removed.
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Even the United Nations has realized that the key to eliminating poverty in the world involes embracing Capitalism over Socialism. We have won a great victory!
A belief or principle that guides action or assists comprehension or judgment: staked out the house on the theory that criminals usually return to the scene of the crime.