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Basic services like education and health get only 10% of aid and government spending. |
The World Summit for Social Development, meeting in Copenhagen in March 1995, endorsed the idea of doubling the current rate of investment in basic social services - nutrition, primary health care, basic education, clean water, safe sanitation, and family planning.
The Summit, attended by a majority of the world's political leaders, agreed on a set of non-binding `commitments' designed to end the worst aspects of world poverty. Among other recommendations, the Summit called for the 0.7% aid target to be met and for "interested developed and developing country partners to allocate, on average, 20% of official development assistance and 20% of the national budget, respectively, to basic social programmes."
Most estimates suggest that about 10% of aid and only a slightly higher proportion of developing country budgets are currently allocated to basic social services. The `20/20' proposal, if acted on, would therefore represent an approximate doubling of investment in social development.
Economic development, and the more equitable distribution of its benefits within and between nations, remain fundamental to ending world poverty. But a doubling of direct investment by governments in the meeting of basic human needs could, according to United Nations estimates, abolish the worst aspects of poverty from the planet within a decade.