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Just over a year ago, Member States of the United Nations
gathered at the Millennium Summit to set out an agenda for the 21st century
– a plan for achieving freedom from fear, freedom from want, sustaining the
resources of our planet, and renewing the United Nations. They pledged to free
their peoples from “the abject 
and
dehumanizing conditions of extreme poverty, to which more than a billion people
of them are currently subjected” and resolved “to halve, by the year 2015, the
proportion of the world’s people whose income is less than one dollar a day”.
Just over a month ago, tragic events brought home to us the need for the international community to work together even more closely in addressing the complex challenges of our time. Following the 11 September attacks, the world economy is expected to slow down significantly, threatening to unravel hard-won gains in development. The World Bank already estimates that as a result, a further 15 million people could find themselves living in poverty next year.
It is clear that additional efforts will be required urgently if we are to meet the goals set out in the Millennium Declaration. Countries must devise more effective poverty reduction strategies. Growth must be encouraged, but the benefits of growth must also be distributed more widely. Governments must ensure that their expenditures on education and health reach the poor. Development strategies need to focus on rural areas, where three quarters of the world’s poor live. Official flows of capital must increase, to make up for smaller private flows. Broader, faster and deeper debt relief is needed.
On this International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, let us resolve to keep our focus firmly on the goals that the world’s leaders have set for the new millennium. Governments worked together to give us the Millennium Declaration, and they must work together, for the sake of the most vulnerable on this earth, to translate that vision into reality.
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International Labor Organisation |
A press conference was held at the RF Ministry of Labour and Social Development on October 19, at which Support to the Development of a Poverty Alleviation Strategy in Russia, developed by Russian experts in cooperation with the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the UN Poverty Theme Group, was unveiled.
Opening the conference, ILO Moscow Program Coordinator Rimma Kalinchenko told the journalists present that the conference was dedicated to the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, which, at the initiative of the UN, has been observed on October 17 since 1993.
Vladimir Zinin, Head of the Ministry of Labour's Department of Personal Income and Living Standards, noted that the Strategy was developed in accordance with the ILO Plan for Cooperation between the ILO and the Russian Federation. Having praised the authors' work highly, he called it "a miniature encyclopaedia on the problems of poverty". At the same time, the document contains nothing revolutionary; it is valuable because it examines all aspects of the problem of poverty, and all ways of combating it.
Mr Zinin recalled recent measures taken by the Russian government. From January 1, 2002, the minimum wage in Russia will be raised to 450 rubles. The size of pensions earmarked for the support of the indigent will also increase. On October 11, the government approved a program for eliminating the differences in the socio-economic development between regions during the period 2002–2010.
Liliya Ovcharova, Head of the Group of Experts, said that the document was prepared primarily by domestic experts from the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Economics, the Institute of Socio-Economic Problems of the Population, Moscow State University, the Scientific Research Institute of Labour, and the Institute of Nutrition, utilizing a rich variety of international experience.
Ms Ovcharova explained why the Strategy was designed to assist in the alleviation of poverty, and not in the raising of incomes: the reason for poverty in Russia is not a factor of economic collapse, but one of inequality.
In the first quarter of 2001, more than 30% of the population had incomes lower than the subsistence level. One-tenth of the population did not have enough money to buy even the minimum required quantities of the cheapest and most basic foods. In the last ten years, the percentage of pregnant women suffering from anaemia because of an inadequate and unbalanced diet has grown by 3.4 times. This is what the "portrait of poverty" looks like.
Here too is a “profile of poverty”. Among the demographic groups in the population, children have the highest risk of being destitute. There is also a feminization of poverty underway, due to the impoverishment of fatherless families, and as a result of an increased risk of poverty for women in the elderly pensioners age groups who live alone. These traditionally poor families, with their high maintenance burden, make up approximately 1/2 of all categories of impoverished citizens. The second half is composed of the "new poor". These are families with one or two children and two able-bodied parents whose incomes do not allow them to give their family any kind of dignified life.
In the last decade, the percentage of poor people in Russia has grown from 6% to 30%. Only 40% of this rise in poverty has been the result of falling incomes, while 60% has come from a rise in inequality.
Unemployment is increasing the scale of poverty's expansion. If one of the adults in a family does not work, this leads to poverty in a majority of cases. Meanwhile, Russia has joined the category of nations with a high level of unemployment. According to data from the RF State Committee for Statistics, the overall number of unemployed, as measured using ILO methods during the period 1992 through 2000, grew by almost a factor of three, reaching 8.5 million people in 2000. The level of unemployment increased during the same period, from 5.2% to 11.7% of the economically active population.
The main source of income for Russia's population remains wages, the differentation of which has grown by a factor of four over the last ten years. The low level of wages is one of the main reasons for the more than 200% drop in the population's average real income. In 1999, 42.3% of all workers were paid wages that were less than subsistence level. Real net wages in the year 2000 were only 32% of the 1990 level, while the minimum wage in the first half of 2001 were 12.7% of the subsistence level.
Most social benefits paid out are also below subsistence level, and amount to only 2% of the population's income. In addition, the poor are discriminated against in their access to social services, benefits, and welfare payments. Among the poorest members of the population, those whose need is greatest have no access at all to these benefits.
In order for the Support to the Development of a Poverty Alleviation Strategy to be effective, its authors believe it is necessary to implement it in three basic directions. First, conditions must be created which allow the working population to earn enough so that their families will no longer live in poverty. Second, an effective system must be put in place to support socially vulnerable groups among the population: the elderly, the disabled, families with a high maintenance burden, and the families of refugees. Third, discrimination against the poor in their access to free or subsidized social services must be fought.
In order to prevent further growth in the size of the indigent population, all major reforms should be carried out using the procedure recommended by the expert committee on social consequences. If the reforms worsen the plight of the vulnerable population, they cannot be approved without some sort of appropriate social compensation. Until positive growth in living standards leads to a substantial reduction in the scale of poverty, we must refrain from changes in the definition and measurement of poverty. Otherwise, the number of poor will rise as a result; and, as Ms Ovcharova noted, the poorest of the poor will not receive the resources they need.
Ms Kalinchenko recalled that the International Labour Organization took on this problem, at the request of the government of the Russian Federation, in 1999, in the wake of the August 1998 financial crisis. Even before the project`s beginning, a preliminary analytical report on the poverty situation in the Russian Federation had been prepared by Aleksandr Razumov, the ILO's consultant, Deputy Director of the National Center for Living Standards. The project was carried out with funds the United Nations received from the Swedish government. In implementing the project, the moneys earmarked for Russia by the UN were managed entirely by Jean-Victor Gruat, UN Resident Coordinator a.i. in Russia. A UN Poverty Theme Group was created specifically for this purpose. In addition to the ILO, it included international organizations of the UN System in Russia, the World Bank, the British Embassy's Department of International Development, and the TACIS Program.
To round out the project, a series of discussions were held on the research planned. Representatives from a number of ministries, the State Committee for Statistics, and different scientific research institutes took part in the first round of talks, held on June 22, 2001. The participants gave the draft document high marks, emphasized their strong interest in the project, and noted the need to continue its development on the regional level.
The Support to the Development of a Poverty Alleviation Strategy in Russia will be officially presented to the government in November.
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Jean-Victor Gruat has worked as Director of the ILO Bureau
in Moscow during almost four years and about a year of these four he has also
performed
the functions of UN Resident Coordinator a.i. Not long before compliting his
mission to Moscow Jean-Victor Gruat kindly agreed to answer “UN in Russia” questions.
We talk on the eve of International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. This problem is acute for Russia nowadays. How does ILO support the country’s efforts to solve the problem?
We started considering this issue from two angles: one that any successful action against poverty needs to aim at social reintegration and economic growth; second, that the whole of the Government and the society, and consequently the whole of the UN system and the international Community had a vested interest in jointly addressing Poverty issues.
Thanks to support received from the Swedish Government through the UN DGO in New York, the Resident Coordinator system in the Russian Federation could consider launching in the course of the year 2000 a small project on Support to the Development of a Poverty Alleviation Strategy, for which leadership was entrusted to the ILO as follow up to the Copenhagen World Social Development Summit. These works attracted apparently a lot of positive interest because of their integrated and innovative approaches. And they nicely supplemented other own ILO efforts in this field, which are numerous ...
The sphere of your activities covers the Central Asia states and other states as well. How has ILO succeeded in coordinating its work in different parts of this vast region?
Thanks to a strong team of international resident experts and national specialists, ILO Moscow could actually intervene on a regular basis in and for all of the countries it covers, and practically in all fields of the social and labour spheres. Most interesting part of the task was probably to build synergies among the various countries, and to bring in Belarus specialists to help Kazakhstan or Tajikistan, Kazakh experts to Russia or Georgia, Russian experts to all of the countries ...
What can you call the main result of your activities in Russia?
I would say, sustainability of renewed interest country wide for social questions, and the refusal of any fatalism in this area. Plus, a wider role recognised for social dialogue and tripartism. And, a deep respect in many circles for ILO values, principles and approaches towards social justice, which is not a small achievement these days.
What do you feel now leaving this country?
As we say in French, “la satisfaction du devoir accompli”. What had to be done was achieved, and often beyond expectations. Anyhow, I do not have the feeling of really “leaving” Russia, as previously I did not “leave” Gabon, Beijing or Geneva – my previous residential positions. We are lucky in the ILO that our Organisation gives us the opportunity to keep in very close contact with all of our offices, teams and constituents.
What I will miss, though, is the excellence of ILO team in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Almaty and Minsk – and the true daily friendship we developed over these almost four years.