STRATEGIES ADOPTED TO TACKLE POVERTY IN DIFFERENT REGIONS - SAARC

SAARC Secretariat Background Paper

8th Consultative Meeting of 

Executive Heads of Sub-Regional Organizations

Evolving a regional strategy on poverty eradication is understandably difficult if not impractical. One of the reasons being the different levels of economic development in each country within a region. Even within a state, different regions need special treatment because of cultural, social and geo-economic differences. As a consequence, the priorities for development of certain sectors are also different. However, each country has its own strategy on how to address poverty issues. It has also been found that each country has different levels of resource constraints, which directly and indirectly affect their ability towards implementation of poverty alleviation programs. Although conscious of the fact that there is no single universal path to achieving poverty eradication targets, the Leaders of SAARC over the years identified eradication of poverty as one of their major objectives. All the Member States of SAARC are particularly conscious of the problem caused by this wide spread incidence of poverty which not only creates vulnerability, dependence and helplessness but also deprive the societies in South Asia of the productive energies of a substantial segment of their population often contributing to instability and social unrest. Poverty alleviation, therefore, remains a social, economic and political priority of the Governments of the Member States of SAARC.

 

          The foremost objective of the Charter of the organization is to promote the welfare of the peoples of South Asia and to improve their quality of life. Another related objective is to accelerate economic growth, social progress and cultural development in the region and to provide all individuals the opportunity to live in dignity and to realize their full potential. Other relevant objectives include promotion of active collaboration and mutual assistance in the economic, social, cultural, technical and scientific fields and cooperation with international and regional organizations with similar aims and purposes.

   

          Within the parameter of these broad objectives, the major components of the strategy that could be adopted to tackle poverty are identified as follows:

a.  In-depth understanding of the poverty situation of the Region with recent trends and future projections.

b.  On the basis of the prevailing poverty situation, formulation of a regional strategy with practical goals  and effective means of implementation.

c.  One the basis of best practices available within the region, development of regional poverty alleviation projects for demonstration and  dissemination and as learning tools.

d.  A regional follow-up and monitoring mechanism to constantly oversee all efforts to alleviate poverty within the region.

e.  Engaging partners of development, as in a fast globalizing world no region can independently solve its problems and a continued engagement with the relevant United Nations bodies, other regional organizations and development partners can strengthen the Regional Strategy to deal with poverty.

          The five components enumerated above presently comprise the backbone of the SAARC regional strategy to tackle poverty. As mandated by the Eleventh SAARC Summit held in Kathmandu in January 2002, the first SAARC Regional Poverty Profile has been prepared recently. The reconstituted Independent South Asian Commission on Poverty Alleviation (ISACPA) has also finalized its Report recently outlining the strategy and recommendations to tackle poverty. Work is in progress to carry out the feasibility study for regional poverty alleviation projects. The SAARC Three-tier Mechanism on Poverty Alleviation has been revamped and the third round is being initiated recently. Collaboration with UNDP, ESCAP and other regional organizations to share expertise and experiences is taking place regularly. Discussions are going on with the World Bank to pursue collaborative arrangements to strengthen the Three-tier Mechanism and other areas in poverty alleviation. 

 

I. Poverty Situation: Regional Poverty Profile

 

Although in percentage terms, poverty has decreased marginally in South Asia, the  region nevertheless has the largest share of the world's poor, comprising around 40 percent of its population of 1.35 billion. The region is home to over 43 percent of the world's income poor. Some 522 million people in South Asia live on less than $1 a day. Moreover, the UNDP Human Development Index (HDI) rates South Asia lower than all regions other than sub-Saharan Africa in terms of average achievements in basic human development. It is now common knowledge that poor people live with acute vulnerability to disease, crop failures, labor market fluctuations, floods, cyclones and other natural disasters. 

 

          The Eleventh SAARC Summit acknowledged that investment in poverty alleviation programs contributes to social stability, economic progress and overall prosperity. It emphasized the need to promote sharing of the best practices and experiences among the Member States and to this end, instructed the Secretary-General to disseminate such information to the Member States on a regular basis. It directed the Council of Ministers to review, on a continuous basis, the regional poverty profile to be prepared by the Secretary-General with the assistance of the related UN agencies, nodal agencies and independent research institutions specialized in the field.

 

Immediately after assumption of the duties as the Secretary-General of SAARC in early 2002, he initiated the task of preparing a Regional Poverty Profile (RPP). A Steering Committee under his Chairmanship to oversee different aspects of the work involved in the preparation of the Profile was constituted. The Steering Committee was also in charge of monitoring and coordinating the progress of work. With the collaboration of UNDP/UNOPS, a Start-Up Workshop was held at the Secretariat on 27-29 May 2002 with the participation of representatives of Nodal Agencies and relevant research institutions and UNDP representatives from Member States. Representatives from ADB, World Bank and ESCAP also participated at the Workshop. While choosing the indices, the participants were conscious of the various Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which the Leaders had already committed to. On the basis of various poverty indices, a common format was developed by a Consultant. Subsequently, various country level teams mostly comprising participants of the Workshop collected data on the format and submitted their inputs on national poverty profiles. Each team also reported on best practices on poverty alleviation in the respective country. The regional dimension of the Profile was brought about by another Consultant from the region. The Steering Committee also remained active throughout the exercise. The draft Profile was sent back to the Nodal Agencies for comments and suggestions.

 

The objective of the Profile is to 

•     Provide an instant and up to date pen picture of the poverty situation in each SAARC Member Country, its recent trends and future projections.

•     Promote sharing of best practices and experiences on poverty alleviation among Member States.

•     Serve as a monitoring tool as far as the poverty scenarios of the SAARC Member States are concerned.

•     Enable governments to tackle poverty in a systematic and well-targeted manner.

•     Serve as an advocacy tool to stir up policy makers into action.

•     Use it as a policy tool to promote regional cooperation, especially with regard to designing a regional programme/project for tackling poverty.

•     Foster a ‘constituency of support’ of CSOs, donors, etc for poverty reduction.

Given the complexity of the problem of measuring poverty in different geo-economic settings and the variations of available data in the Member States, the task remained a difficult one till the end. SAARC also attempted to evolve an empowerment index for the region and accordingly developed a framework. 

 

Major Inferences of the RPP:

 

          a) Statistical Capacity Development

 

•     The preparation of RPP is a participatory process fully owned by the SAARC countries as indicated by involvement of nominated country teams in discussing and designing the approaches and methodologies and submitting data as well as descriptive reports on status and changes in different poverty variables in their respective countries.

 

•     Specific features of statistical systems in different countries and shorter lead-time for preparation of the national poverty profiles posed considerable statistical challenges in drawing up the RPP due to several data gaps and cross-country data incomparability. This report has indicated the same with a view to harmonizing and streamlining them in future editions of RPPs.

 

•     Some of the possible reasons behind data gaps are due to:

 

i)              Differences in data needs as focused by RPP and data normally/routinely collected by statistical systems in the countries

ii)             Marginal status of number of data items suggested for RPP in the mainstream statistical routines (census etc.); and

iii)           Conceptual progress on defining poverty and its manifestations not followed by development of needed statistical methodologies.

 

•     There is need to enhance statistical capacity to improve quality and comparability of database in the region, and devise better statistical methodologies to collect and report them. 

 

b) Understanding multi-dimensions of Regional Poverty Profile

 

•     In the context of permanent relevance and role of indicative (natural, cultural, social, economic and political) circumstances, in shaping the poverty alleviation processes and possible means to address them, RPP should specifically try to internalize them while analyzing poverty situation in the Region.

 

•     The available data for RPP despite differences of size of countries and level of development indicate several similarities between different countries. Some of these similarities relate to variables such as rate of per capita cultivated land (0.2 to 5 ha); domestic savings to GDP ratio (13 to 20%); percentage of GNP spent on education (2 to 4%) and health (1 to 2%); life expectancy (60-63 years excluding Sri Lanka and Maldives).

 

•     An important similarity among SAARC countries is notable in terms of reduction in rate of population growth, extent of reduction of people below poverty lines, improvement in social and human development indicators.

 

•     An important inference from the variable data is that the structural transformation of SAARC economies reflected by declining share of primary sector activities (e.g. agriculture) and increasing share of secondary and tertiary sector activities (e.g. services) in GDP/GNP is clearly visible.

 

•     However, due to continued absolute increase in population and persistent inequalities, the above mentioned positive changes have not been able to substantially reduce the extent of economic poverty, and improve social indicators of change. The countries continue to spend very small share of GNP on social sector activities.

 

•     To improve the analysis of poverty issue, the comparable regional database should be strengthened.

 

          c) Profiling the Poor

 

•     For operational and effective policy purposes, a differentiated profile of poverty situation is more important than having only aggregated picture of poverty in a country.

 

•     One of the simplest ways to have a disaggregated picture of poverty is to address the questions such as: (a) who are the poor? (b) where do they live? and (c) why are they poor?

 

•     To have an integrated response to these questions, one can use a framework encompassing the biophysical, economic, socio-political (institutional) and human-resource development related contexts.

 

•     The inferences about the three questions are further reinforced and concretized (for different countries) using descriptive accounts furnished by the country reports.

 

•     Accordingly (with some inter-country differences):

 

(a)  The poor consists of categories of groups and individuals such as urban slum dwellers, landless and marginal farmers, women and women headed households, casual and agricultural labourers, and artisans and other self-employed, etc. catering to low-income customers and poor markets.

(b)  Most of the poor live in isolated and marginal locations, (and tribal areas) with high-risk and limited earning opportunities. They also belong to backward, poorly governed, over populated states, districts etc.

 

          d) Poverty and Participation

 

•     Despite considerable improvement in development efforts, widespread poverty continues to be the striking feature of SAARC countries. An important reason behind this is lack of clear and focused attention to poverty in past development strategies since 1950s. Poverty was equated with under development and hence poverty was addressed indirectly.

 

•     This analysis on major thrusts of development strategies revealed that poverty reduction occurred as a byproduct of strategies focused on infrastructure development, sector specific strategies, etc.

 

•     Even the people-centred interventions (in terms of titles) did not include poor as partners in fighting poverty.

 

•     Some of the key attributes of strategies which led to exclusion of poor from development gains have been identified as top-down approaches, macro- micro disconnects, supply-driven approaches, primarily based on administrative-technocratic approaches, and neglected institutional aspects, and decentralization without social mobilization.

 

          e) Empowerment Approach to Poverty Reduction

 

•     Empowerment approach to poverty reduction was emphasized as a major thematic area of RPP. Through a Start-Up Workshop country teams were equipped to furnish information on different empowerment indicators. A methodology to prepare empowerment scores for the whole region was also evolved.

 

•     However, for several reasons such as shortage of time, non-availability of data on different indicators and marginal status of different data items in national statistical systems, the data reported had several gaps in terms of missing information and non-comparability of data. Hence the intended "scorecard on empowerment" could not be prepared. Yet the exercise had an educative value for the future.

 

•     In place of "reported data", the descriptive notes of each indicator were more informative. Most of these notes suggested that the empowerment processes in most of the SAARC countries have been initiated and nationwide or in scattered areas of the countries they have made visible headway. 

 

          f) Success Case Replications

 

•     They manifest the scattered but positive impacts of development intervention.

•     They reflect the multi-stakeholder partnership in promoting economic and social (education/health related) betterment.

•     Role of NGOs and charitable institutions in supplementing the efforts of the state on the covered subjects.

•     Multiplication and replication of these best practices should get greater attention of poverty reduction efforts.

•     They are too few in relation to magnitudes of problems, but they offer the leads for the future.

•     These success stories reinforce the findings on visible progress on several fronts by SAARC countries.

 

II. Regional Strategy:  

 

The Leaders in Colombo Summit in 1991 decided to establish the Independent South Asian Commission on Poverty Alleviation (ISACPA) to come up with a Regional Strategy to deal with the menace of poverty. The Commission conducted a radical, in depth study of the poverty experience in South Asian countries and submitted their report and recommendations. The Report of the ISACPA was considered during the Seventh SAARC Summit in Dhaka in 1993 and was adopted unanimously.  The Summit reiterated its commitment to empowering the poor for enhanced growth, consistent with human development and equity. The Agenda of Action approved by the Summit had, inter-alia,  the following elements:

 

•     Social Mobilization --- A strategy of social mobilization involving the building of organizations of the poor and their empowerment through appropriate national support mechanisms, with the assistance of respective Governments;

 

•     Decentralized Agriculture --- A policy of decentralized agricultural development and sharply focused household level food security through universal provision of 'Daal-Bhaat' or basic nutritional needs;

 

•     Decentralization of industrialization-- A policy of decentralized small scale labor intensive industrialization, with the choice of efficient and cost-effective technology;

 

•     Human development-- A policy of human development, including the enhancement of the social role and status of poor women, the provision of universal primary education, skill development, primary health care, shelter for the poor and protection of children;

 

•     National level policy to support the above initiatives with adequate financial resources.

 

Since the adoption of the ISACPA Report in 1993, the World Bank and the UNDP have taken up pilot poverty alleviation projects in selected localities in each of the Member Countries. The "social mobilization" strategy as envisaged by the ISACPA has been put into practice across South Asia by the UNDP funded South Asia Poverty Alleviation Program (SAPAP). Many NGOs have also undertaken similar projects. Most of these poverty alleviation programs have focused primarily on social mobilization. 

 

          The Eleventh Summit decided to reconstitute the ISACPA to review the progress made in cooperation on poverty alleviation and suggest appropriate and effective measures for implementation. The first meeting of the reconstituted ISACPA was held at the SAARC Secretariat in Kathmandu on 30-31 March 2002 where the Commission decided on its Terms of Reference (TOR). It made a number of decisions regarding its work plan, methodology of work and work distribution. It also decided that the SAARC Secretariat would act as the Secretariat of the reconstituted ISACPA. Since then the Commission met in Delhi, Islamabad, Dhaka and at the Secretariat for its Second, Third, Fourth and Fifth meetings in June, September, November and December 2002 respectively. The Commission has now finalized its Report, which contains its recommendations, and is ready to formally present the same at the Twelfth SAARC Summit to be held in Islamabad. 

   

They have listed a number of strategic priorities, including mobilizing the power of the poor; prudent macroeconomics; mainstreaming the informal economy; enhancing gender and other equities; sustainable development and effective, harmonious and all-round co-operation among the countries of the region. They have also recommended a core set of targets in line with the MDGs but in some cases more ambitious that the MDGs. They have also addressed a number of implementation issues. These relate to coordination, decentralization, corruption, accountability and transparency, motivation, leadership and organizations, management of the policy process, role of funding agencies and GO-NGO relationship.

     

          It is expected that the RPP will add a complementary dimension to the ISACPA Report.

 

III. Regional Poverty Alleviation Projects 

 

At the Eleventh Summit held in Kathmandu, the Leaders underlined the urgent need to make the South Asian Development Fund (SADF) operational by making utilization of the existing funds. They also instructed the Secretary General to submit a proposal for seeking possible assistance from regional and international sources for the implementation of specific regional poverty alleviation priority projects. 

 

          The social mobilization strategy as envisaged by the first ISACPA has been put into practice across South Asia (except Bhutan) through UNDP sponsored South Asia Poverty Alleviation Program (SAPAP). SAPAP was conceived as a response to the 1993 Dhaka Declaration of the Heads of State or Government confirming the political commitment of South Asian Governments to eradication of poverty through a time bound strategy working both at the macro and micro levels, which was launched in early 1996. Despite many micro level success stories in Member States, SAARC never had any regional poverty alleviation program of its own. Having regional programs on poverty alleviation will have several advantages. Apart from its high demonstrative value these programs would offer immediate feedback through proper monitoring which can generate enough information and insight helpful for constant upgradation of the programs. 

 

          The Secretary-General has initiated the process of dialogue with regional and international funding sources, namely the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the interested UN agencies. However, in the absence of specific projects, it proved rather difficult to pursue any funding proposal as mandated by the Eleventh Summit. Therefore, the Secretariat presented a few priority project ideas to the Council of Ministers at its last Session (August 2002). At the instruction of the Council, the Governing Board of SADF at its Seventh Meeting in Kathmandu in September 2002 discussed four project proposals, namely (i) Project Proposal on Poverty Alleviation in the SAARC Region: A Comprehensive Approach, (ii) Project Proposal on Poverty Alleviation through Educating Poor Children, (iii) Project Proposal on Community-based Maternal and Child Health Care System in Remote Villages in the SAARC Region, and (iv) Project Proposal on Poverty Alleviation through the Promotion of Renewable Energy. 

 

          The Board decided to commission a comprehensive study on regional poverty alleviation projects under the Third Window of the Fund. The Report of the Board is awaiting approval of the Standing Committee. Meanwhile, the SADF Secretariat started the preparation for commissioning of the feasibility study.

 

IV. Monitoring Mechanism

 

          Members of the SAARC community continued to attach high importance to greater interactions among themselves and to the exchange of relevant ideas and information on poverty eradication. The Eighth SAARC Summit held in New Delhi in May 1995 thus endorsed the establishment of a Three-tier Mechanism for exchanging information on poverty eradication programs, in the context of the policies and strategies adopted, particularly exchange of information on technologies that are relevant to efforts at poverty eradication. The Three-tiers are as follows:

 

First-tier - Secretaries to the governments in the Ministries/Departments concerned with poverty eradication and social development in SAARC countries.

Second-tier – Finance/Planning Secretaries.

Third-tier – Finance/Planning Ministers.

 

          The First Meeting of the Group of Secretaries in the Ministries concerned with poverty eradication was held in New Delhi on 6-7 September 1995. The Group strongly emphasized the importance of social mobilization  of the poor as strategy for poverty eradication. The First Meeting of the Finance/Planning Secretaries was held on 8 September 1995 in New Delhi. The meeting considered the Report of the Group of Secretaries concerned with poverty eradication and social development and observed, inter-alia, that poverty eradication should be viewed in the overall context of accelerating economic growth. The meeting further suggested that information on the exchange of experience be disseminated on a regular basis amongst Member States. The First Meeting of the SAARC Finance/Planning Ministers, under the Three-tier Mechanism, was held on 3-4 January 1996 in New Delhi. The Ministers considered the reports of the First-tier and Second-tier meetings held earlier and recommended that the first two tiers may continue to hold annual meetings as stipulated by the Eighth Summit and that the Member States would designate appropriate nodal agencies for the establishment of networking arrangements to regularly exchange information and share experiences on poverty alleviation. With the Ministerial meeting in January 1996, the first round of the three-tier mechanism was completed. 

 

          The second round meetings under the three-tier mechanism began with the meeting of Group of Secretaries concerned with Poverty Eradication and Social Development on 6-7 April 1997 in Islamabad. The meeting emphasized orientation of macro-economic policies in poverty eradication efforts and stressed that social mobilization should continue to play an important role. Subsequently, the second-tier meeting of Finance/ Planning Secretaries was held in Islamabad on 8-9 April 1997. The meeting considered the report of the first-tier and recommended, inter-alia, independent evaluation of poverty eradication programmes in the Member Countries with a view to further fine-tuning these programmes and increasing their effectiveness. The evaluations were to be made public and shared among Member Countries. 

 

Pursuant to the decision of the Eleventh Summit, the Third Ministerial Meeting on Poverty Alleviation was held in Islamabad on 8-9 April 2002. Recognizing that the problem of poverty in South Asia needs to be tackled from a multi-dimensional aspect and agreeing that a focused and action-oriented plan is the need of the hour, the Ministerial Meeting resolved to adopt a Plan of Action to combat poverty in the region. The Ministers, united in their determination to reduce poverty, drawing upon the experience of the Member Countries and committed to achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), resolved to pursue the policies enunciated in the Plan of Action. The policies include internal as well as external measures ranging from good governance to sound macro-economic management to increased ODA flows and market access. With the holding of the Ministerial Meeting, the second round of meetings of the SAARC Three-tier Mechanism marked its completion.

     

Meanwhile, a new round of meetings starting with the meeting of the First-tier is being initiated in Colombo.

          

This Three-tier Mechanism can be further strengthened to include monitoring and follow-up role both nationally as well as regionally. One of the major bottlenecks in regional strategies is the lack of monitoring of the programmes, which are agreed regionally but implemented nationally. Unless regional organizations or some regionally agreed mechanism could be entrusted with the monitoring responsibility, implementation issues will remain unaddressed at least regionally. 

 

V. Engaging Partners 

 

          For any regional strategy to succeed, it is vital to cooperate with other regional and international bodies. The vast pool of knowledge and experience can be mutually beneficial for all. In this endeavour, SAARC has been regularly cooperating with a number of United Nations and other organizations in the field of poverty alleviation. For example, UNDP remains an important partner in this regard followed by a host of other UN specialized agencies, like UNICEF, WHO, UNIFEM, FAO, UNEP etc. UN ESCAP is another organization, which possesses a vast reservoir of knowledge, expertise and technical know-how and has helped SAARC in specific issues, including poverty alleviation. Moreover, by providing the forum of sub-regional organization meeting every year, it has afforded the opportunity to learn from other regions and their efforts and also at the same time, share our own efforts and ideas. Besides, we also have interactions with other financial institutions like ADB and the World Bank for various poverty alleviation initiatives in the region.

 

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