Commitment
Needed
THE country report
made public the other day by UNDP Team in Nepal is of much importance for the government,
planners, policy makers, development partners and stakeholders at this period of time when
‘the country is not yet on track to achieve the Millennium Development Goals as
targeted by the world leaders during the Millennium Summit in September 2000’. The
report, which the UNDP claims is the first such country report that has been produced
nationwide by the UN Team to bridge the MDGs with the particular country’s
development challenges, again comes at a time when the 10th Five-Year Plan is in the
offing and the coming year’s fiscal budget is underway. The well addressed report not
only reminds the governmental and non-governmental development agencies about the MDGs, it
also points out the shortcomings and challenges ahead. The millennium development goals
are more relevant in Nepal’s context because the goals set by the Summit 2000 address
all the problems that we face. As mentioned in the MDGs, Nepal suffers from extreme form
of poverty, fails to provide primary education to all the children, the concept of gender
equality fails when it comes to safe motherhood and child and maternal mortality rate and
fails again when it comes to stopping the spread of HIV/AIDS and other epidemics. But, as
underlined by UNDP resident representative in Nepal Henning Karcher, it is almost
impossible to know whether poverty reduction and human programmes and policies are
producing the desired results or not without monitoring, without tracking the progress of
quantifiable indicators such as income poverty, literacy rates, non-enrollment in primary
education and maternal mortality rates. Without such information acquired, strategies
cannot be evaluated and programmes cannot be made to materialize. The document is the
first progress report for Nepal on the status of attainment of the MDGs.
However, it is
discouraging to note that the report is pessimistic about halving the proportion of people
living in extreme poverty in the country by 2015. Currently, there are 38 per cent of
Nepalese who are supposed to be living below the poverty line. To reduce the number to 21
per cent by 2015 is definitely an uphill task on the part of the government. But it is not
impossible. If we are committed and continue to do our jobs honestly, with the support
from donor agencies and international development partners the country can make changes.
The power to shape the future of Nepal, as said by Dr. Karcher, lies in our hands.
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