Guyana has made significant progress in implementing strategies and interventions aimed at achieving the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) but much more is still to be done in order for the country to meet the 2015 deadline, the Minister of Foreign Affairs says.
With just seven years to go there are still many challenges in the various sectors and, in some sections of society, there is not enough awareness of the goals. Guyana’s Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper, produced in 2000, outlines a strategy to put Guyana on track to meet these goals.
Guyana was one of 147 countries that signed on to the Millennium Declaration, adopted by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly, in September 2000. The MDGs were drawn from the actions and targets contained in that Declaration that was adopted by 189 nations and signed by 147 heads of state and governments during the UN Millennium Summit.
The first MDG is to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger; the second, to achieve universal primary education; the third, to promote gender equality and empower women; the fourth, to reduce child mortality; the fifth, to improve maternal health; the sixth, to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases; the seventh, to ensure environmental sustainability and the eighth, to develop a global partnership for development. Each of these goals has targets that are to be met by the designated time. There is a total of eighteen targets for the eight goals.
Since the signing of the declaration two MDG reports have been prepared, one in 2003 and one this year. This year’s report was spearheaded by the Monitoring and Evaluation Unit at the Office of the President and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) with support from the donor community and civil society.
Guyana’s progress
So far Guyana has made significant strides in meeting the MDGs. According to a July 2007 report by Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dr Rudolph Insanally, a wide range of constitutional, regulatory and institutional reforms were implemented as a package of second generation reforms that specifically targeted strengthening governance and creating more responsive institutions. “Unfavourable external developments in Guyana’s export markets, two floods during 2005 and 2006, internal political instability and a protracted and destabilizing crime wave all contributed to depressing the country, slowing the pace of policy implementation and dampening the effectiveness of the reforms,” he said.
Insanally said Guyana was able to make steady progress toward most of the goals over the years, though the pace may be insufficient to achieve some of the targets for 2015. In comparison to the 2003 report, he said, “We have advanced significantly in our effort to eradicate extreme hunger, combat HIV/AIDS and achieve environmental sustainability.”
According to the report, for Goal One, Guyana has made substantial progress towards halving poverty and is well-placed to eradicate poverty. Data from 2005 show that there is a clear decline in the number of children under five suffering from malnutrition. When compared with the baseline for 1995, Guyana has already met the target. The report said that to combat hunger, the government is targeting school and health clinics. The two main school initiatives to address short-term hunger and improve children’s performance in the classroom are the Ministry of Education’s Milk and Biscuit Programme and the Hot Meals Programme for the hinterland regions. These are being funded by the World Bank.
Guyana is also on track for meeting Goal Two as statistics have shown that the rate of children repeating classes has declined from 4% in 1996 to 1% in 2002. These figures reflect changes in the school curriculum as well as targeted programmes for needy children and stronger parent-teachers associations. The focus is now to sustain the record at the primary level and to ensure universal secondary education by 2009. In order to achieve this, school uniforms are provided for needy children, schools are being built and renovated, lunch programmes implemented and training and incentives are provided for teachers in the hinterland region.
In relation to promoting gender equality and the empowerment of women, Guyana has signed on to the Convention for the Elimina-tion of all forms of Discrimina-tion Against women and the Inter-American Convention for the Prevention and Eradication of Violence Against Women.
According to the report, Guyana is on its way to meeting if not surpassing Goal Four; reducing child mortality. However, there are discrepancies in the two sets of available data, relating to the infant mortality rate and under-five mortality rate. Data from the Ministry of Health suggests that Guyana met its child mortality targets while the World Health Organisation said that more needs to be done. A few programmes including the Integrated Management of Childhood Illness have been developed to deal with child health.
Progress has also been recorded as regards improvements in health care provided to pregnant women. The Basic Nutrition Programme is still being implemented and the Reproductive Health Care Pro-gramme is being expanded. How-ever, focus has been placed on the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections through training sessions in all ten regions.
Goal Eight, which covers combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, is also progressing. The infection rate of HIV/AIDS in pregnant women has dropped from 5.6% in 2004 to 2.6% in 2006. Pregnant women are currently being tested at pre-natal clinics and treated when necessary. There are several other initiatives ongoing to combat the infection, including the provision of maternal support to orphans and vulnerable children and the deployment of mobile treatment teams of technical personnel to the hinterland regions.
In relation to malaria and other diseases, government has implemented a number of public education measures targeted at the prevention, early detection and treatment. However, Guyana has not yet developed country-specific indicators to track the quality of its global partnerships. Nonethe-less, the Debt Manage-ment Unit and the Ministry of Finance track quantitative economic and financial data relevant to this goal.
Government is also committed to the principle of sustainable development – Goal Seven. This is demonstrated in the priority given to environmental protection in the National Development Strategy as well as the Poverty Reduction Strategy. So far the key initiative taken to improve economic growth and reduce poverty is to improve the business environment to attract investments and prioritizing investments in the social and economic infrastructure.
In conclusion the report said that Guyana has made reasonable progress towards achieving the MDGs but while these goals are unchanged from the assessment in 2003, improvements in specific targets have strengthened the likelihood that they will be achieved.
MDG workshop
Recently, UNDP in collaboration with the government held a one-day seminar on the role of the civil society in achieving the MDGs. The objective of the forum was to strengthen all levels of society to raise awareness of the goals and contribute to their implementation, within the participants’ organizations and communities, and to make known what progress has been made globally and in Guyana. More than 100 persons from various sectors including the media, non-governmental organizations and those in the education system participated in the session.
During the morning session presentations were made on Guyana’s progress on each goal. The afternoon session was interactive and participants were put into groups to discuss raising awareness of the goals in communities. Participants told Stabroek News that they were happy to be a part of the seminar, the first of its kind locally.
However, many said public awareness exercises should have been done earlier. Anil S
ingh, from Wildfire Advertising, said that the seminar was “an excellent opportunity for the UN to diffuse knowledge about the goals to the public,” and he believes a forum of this kind was long overdue since implementing the plan had started sometime ago.
