Hard targets, watered-down commitments

The EU’s spending plans suggest it is losing sight of the importance of health and education to development.

In 2000, 189 nations took on a commitment to eradicate extreme poverty and multiple deprivations by 2015. This became known as the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Today, World Health Day, is a moment to take stock of what has been achieved and what needs to be done.

There is much to celebrate. Governments in developed and developing countries, and civil-society organisations the world over have done some excellent work. However, we are still a long way from attaining the health MDGs, a fact which should concern decision-makers and politicians across the EU.

The fourth MDG aims to reduce the mortality rates of children under five by two-thirds by 2015. Yet, according to the World Health Organization, in 2010 nearly 21,000 children were still dying every day.

The fifth MDG aims to reduce maternal mortality rates by three-quarters and give everyone access to reproductive healthcare. Yet in 2008, 1000 women died per day due to complications in pregnancy and childbirth.

The sixth MDG aims to have halted and reversed the spread of AIDS by 2015. Yet 1.8 million people died of AIDS-related illnesses in 2010.

Europe can, and should, do more to help developing countries to reverse these trends and achieve the MDGs. We do not pretend that this is an easy job in the current economic climate. What we do believe is that the benefits of eradicating poverty, reversing the spread of killer diseases and giving children the right to healthcare and basic education, are extremely simple to understand.

The EU, the world’s largest donor, has on many occasions committed itself to ensuring that the health MDGs are met. We welcome these commitments. We are, though, very concerned about some of the principal changes in the EU budget for health and basic education in the developing world contained in the European Commission’s proposal for the next long-term budget, for 2014-20.
 
The long-term budget – the multiannual financial framework (MFF) – is, of course, a hotly debated topic. We welcome the proposed increase of the EU’s external action budget (which includes foreign development assistance), taking it from 5.7% to 6.8% of the EU’s total budget, and in particular the proposed increase for the development co-operation instrument (DCI) by 17% in constant prices.

What is of huge concern is that, instead of earmarking 20% of the DCI to health and basic education, as it had promised, the Commission has earmarked this 20% to ‘human development’, a term that it defines very broadly, to include jobs and growth. This is a clear watering-down of the funds that were dedicated to basic health and education in the previous DCI.

Experts will agree that in the battle to eradicate poverty, these two areas of development aid – health and education – are of critical importance. In our opinion, at least 20% of the DCI should be dedicated exclusively to health and basic education. The European Parliament has made repeated calls in that direction in the past.

Along with many other non-governmental organisations, Plan EU has written to Andris Piebalgs, the European commissioner for development, to express to him our concerns on this distribution of funds and to highlight the vital importance of health and basic education to pulling people out of poverty. Without this change, we are extremely concerned about the situation for people with no access to the basic human rights that most of us take for granted.

The investment that my organisation alone has put into our health work initiatives has already saved many lives and helped elevate children out of poverty. In 2011, Plan trained 175,886 professional and volunteer health workers in early education and care skills, benefiting 18,416 communities. Across rural Senegal, for example, Plan-supported ‘health huts’ ensure that more than 90% of children are now receiving immunisation, compared with just over half five years ago. Those children can now go on to lead productive lives and contribute to the success of their communities and countries.

It is vital that the EU institutions look again at the earmarking of development funding within the MFF and the distribution of spending on health and basic education. To make World Health Day an occasion for celebration in the future, members of the European Parliament, policymakers and representatives need to ensure that the EU plays its part.