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'Economic regression in Third World due to external problems'

GENEVA: The economic regression in the Third World indicates that their problems are mostly external not internal, said Ambassador Munir Akram, Pakistan's permanent representative to UN here on Monday night.

Speaking on the "the right to development" at the 56th session of the Commission on Human Rights, Munir said, "the problem of development is not solely, or even primarily, the problem of inadequate domestic policies."

This assumption, the ambassador said, is confirmed by the fact that the greatest impact of the recent global economic crisis was in those countries that were the "most successful" and the most "integrated" in the global free market economic system.

He said unfortunately most countries have been unable to develop, despite sincere efforts, to liberalise, deregulate and integrate themselves into the global economy.

"The statistics are grim, and speak for themselves," he said quoting the facts that "income disparity between the richest 20 percent and the poorest 20 percent of the world people has been more than double in the last 30 years. Only 33 countries managed to sustain 3 percent annual growth in GNP per capita during 1980-96, for 59 countries GNP per capita declined and around 1.6 billion people are economically worse off today then they were 15 years ago."

A few developing countries did succeed in realising development goals through export-led policies, he added.

But, Munir said, the hard-won gains by the South East Asian economics disappeared overnight in the recent crisis the crisis whose causes were entirely beyond their control and had a devastating social impact. APP