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Rich Countries Should Play Due Role in Poverty Reduction
United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Monday that the rich countries have an indispensable role to play in reducing global poverty.
"It is only natural that the poor countries of the world, which have so few resources of their own, should look for help to the rich ones," Annan told the opening meeting of the 24th special session of the U.N. General Assembly.
He urged the rich countries to further open their markets, to provide deeper and faster debt relief, and to give more and better focused development aid.
"Many of those rich countries have acute social problems of their own," Annan said. "But none of them can be indifferent to the social conditions in which so many people in poor countries live."
At the same time, the U.N. chief said that the leaders and peoples of developing countries should also "show real determination to mobilize their own resources, above all their own human resources, to deal with their own social problems."
Otherwise, he cautioned, those changes are less likely to come, and will bring few real benefits even if they do come.
Talking about the relationship between economic growth and social development, Annan pointed out that social and economic welfare are not separate concepts.
"Without economic prosperity, no country can provide for all the social needs of its citizens. But nor can any country be called truly prosperous so long as many of its citizens are left to fend for themselves against ignorance, hardship and disease," he said.
"Nor yet can any country achieve prosperity by subordinating all social concerns to the achievement of a few quantitative benchmarks," he said. "What matters in the last resort is the quality of life, a big part of which is the feeling that you belong freely to your society, and that it also belongs to you."
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