960413

International seminar

on Human Development

opens tomorrow

ISLAMABAD: An international seminar to formulate global plan for acceleration of pace of human development in the developing countries, will be held in Bhurban, Murree, on April 15-16.

The seminar titled, "A Global Strategy for Human Development", being held under the auspice of Human Resources Development (Islamabad) and State of the World Forum (San-Franciso) has also been co-sponsored by Friedrich Ebert Stiftung.

The seminar will identify a new global agreement between the North and the South to reduce current global disparities in income and human development.

The seminar is being given a wide media coverage. Cable News Network (CNN) will telecast the proceedings live through its world news network.

Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who was invited to inaugurate the two-day seminar, has expressed her regret, in a letter to Dr. Mahbub-ul-Haq, President, Human Development Center, due to prior commitments.

She, however, expressed her sincere hope that the seminar "will achieve the noble objectives of accelerating human development and bring the poor and the rich nations closer to each other".

Briefing the newsmen, about the seminar, Dr. Mahbub-ul-Haq said the seminar will focus on the widespread human development in poor countries.

He informed that the recommendations of the seminar will be discussed in a seminar, to be participated by the top leaders, on October 2, in San Francisco (California).

At present, 850 million are illiterate; 1.3 billion have no access to safe drinking water, 2.5 billion lack access to any form of sanitation; around 800 billion people receive no health service whatsoever.

Over 1.3 billion people are mired in absolute poverty where they cannot meet the daily necessities of life. The income gap between rich and poor nations has widened to 60 times now from 30 times in 1960. The seminar will discuss a concrete strategy to overcome such extensive human deprivation and poverty.

Dr. Mahbub-ul-Haq said, the seminar will particularly focus on the situation in South Asia in a special session to be addressed by some of the leading policy makers from within the region.

South Asia, he said, now lags behind all other regions in the development world in key human development. The Development Index in South Asia is 20 per cent lower than the average for the developing world and only one-half of the level in the industrializing tigers of East Asia.

Highlighting major points, Dr. Mahbub-ul-Haq said, the seminar will discuss the "20-20 compact" discussed at the Social Summit, held in Copenhagen in 1995, under which it was agreed upon that developing countries would spend 20 percent of their budget in social sector. Besides, the donor countries would also allocate 20 per cent, of the funds for the social uplift.

But, he regretted, that at present, the developing countries are spending 10 per cent while donors spending is merely 7 per cent in the social sector.

The overall world economic growth, he said, was contributed by physical infrastructure upto 16 per cent and natural resources 20 per cent, whereas the Human resources accounted for about 64 percent of the world economic growth.

He said, the world is now realizing that the poverty, assuming alarming proportion, is gradually becoming a global threat. It will transcend the physical boundaries in future.

Like the problems relating to pollution and migration, the world needed global approach to deal with the rising rate of poverty.

A distinguished group of around 40 intellectuals and opinion makers are participating in the Bhurban seminar.

Chairman Senate Wasim Sajjad, Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Social Sectors, Shahnaz Wazir Ali, Sahibzada Yaqub Khan and Qazi Alimullah will represent Pakistan among others.

The delegates from 13 countries include internationally eminent persons like Nafis Sadiq, Executive Director, UNFPA, Richard Jolly, Special Adviser to UNDP Administration, Paul Streeten, Professor Emeritus of Boston University, Lourdes Arizpe, Assistant Director General of UNESCO, Shahid Javed Burki, Vice President of World Bank, Lord Meghand Desai, Director London School of Economists, Lal Jayawardena, Special Adviser to the President of Sri Lanka, Yoichi Kawada, Vice President of Soka Gakkai International of Japan, Abdul Muhith, former Finance Minister of Bangladesh and Roza Otunbayeva, foreign minister of Kyrgyzstan.-APP