Southern African presidents and prime ministers are joining other world’s leaders at the United Nations in New York this week to review progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), agreed five years ago with a target of 2015.

The Millennium Review Summit from 14-16 September is expected to note the challenges and impediments in the way of the goals, and adopt a declaration stating what the global community should do to accelerate efforts in achieving them.

However, after months of negotiating various drafts based on several competing agendas, some development organizations are sceptical that any agreement can be reached that will be beneficial to developing countries.

The World Development Movement (WDM) has compared the submission made by the Group of 77 (G77) developing countries and China with the draft declaration, to show how their concerns have been diluted.

Peter Hardstaff of the WDM said this was expected to be a summit on the MDGs ''to which all the governments have signed, and to agree necessary action. And it is turning into a horse-trading exercise.”

“Whatever happens, achievement of the MDGs is becoming a bargaining chip,'' he told the Inter Press Services (IPS) news agency.

The G77 and China want the declaration to:

• Reject any conditions attached to the provision of development assistance. The draft declaration contains no reference to removing any of the conditions that are currently attached to aid, loans and debt relief.
• State that the focus of the WTO Doha Round of negotiations should be on ensuring that the interests of developing countries are fully reflected. The G77 and China specifically note reaching the 2006 deadline for negotiations should not take precedence over an outcome which reflects the interests of developing countries. In contrast the subsequent draft declaration prioritises hitting the 2006 deadline, and makes no reference to it reflecting the interests of developing countries.
• Reaffirm the commitment of developed countries to provide 0.7 per cent of their national incomes in aid. The draft declaration ''invites'' developed countries ''to establish timetables in order to achieve the target of 0.7 per cent.''
• Specify that developing countries should have the policy space to formulate development strategies. The draft declaration makes no reference to protecting policy space.
• Emphasise the need to provide an immediate solution to the question of commodities and stress the need for more effective international action to address the problems of weak and volatile commodity prices. In reference to Africa, the draft declaration focuses on “market-based” arrangements with the private sector for addressing the problem of commodity prices, rather than the intergovernmental arrangement called for by the G77 and China.
• Make a reference to commitments made at the UN World Summit on Sustainable Development held in Johannesburg in 2002. The draft declaration makes no reference to the summit at all.

The summit could position developed countries against an increasingly unified developing world. G77 is the name for a grouping of 132 developing nations. China and the G77 have a population of 4.75 billion, or 76 percent of the world population.

The review summit will consider several amendments from the United States ''which sound like a complete reversal of even what is in the draft declaration,'' Hardstaff told IPS. US officials have been speaking of including UN reforms and action on terrorism in considerations at the summit. (SARDC)

Southern African News Features offers a reliable source of regional information and analysis on the Southern African Development Community, and is provided as a service to the SADC region.

This article may be reproduced with credit to the author and publisher.

SANF is produced by the Southern African Research and Documentation Centre (SARDC), which has monitored regional developments since 1985