UNDP report points to lack of development

The 14 countries of the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) face great challenges in confronting poverty, HIV/AIDS and discrimination against women, according to the UNDP-commissioned SADC Regional Human Development Report launched on Thursday in Windhoek, Namibia. To overcome these challenges, the report calls for SADC countries to pursue a policy of ‘deep integration’ to increase economic growth and job creation. SADC should also increase cooperation in combating HIV/AIDS, strengthen the fight against crime and set up effective mechanisms for conflict prevention and resolution, says the report. Deep integration would need increased trade and investment within the region, monetary harmonisation, the co-ordination of macro-economic policy and orderly and planned labour migration. The report also recommends strengthening SADC structures, giving more power and authority to the SADC Secretariat. The report calls the HIV/AIDS pandemic a “major disaster” for the region, which has the highest infection rates among teens and adults ages 15 to 49 in the world: Botswana (36 per cent), Swaziland (25 per cent), Zimbabwe (24 per cent), Lesotho (24 per cent) and South Africa (20 per cent), according to the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) More than half the people of Angola and Mozambique face a life of poverty, measured in terms of short life expectancy, illiteracy, lack of access to health services and safe drinking water, and a high percentage of underweight children. Mauritius has the lowest level of human poverty, 12 per cent, based on the same social indicators, followed by South Africa with 20 per cent and Lesotho with 23 per cent. The report measured the quality of life in the region through the Human Development Index, based on life expectancy, access to schooling and higher education, adult literacy rates and income per person. For the region as a whole, the human development declined by 5 per cent between 1995 and 1998. There are several causes. Life expectancy has been falling because of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, slow economic growth has left many in poverty, and armed conflict rages in Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). For further details: http://www.undp.org