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Just building a million latrines won't solve Africa's sanitation crisis
Empowering local communities to solve their own problems is the best way to improve health across the continent
A local market in Port Harcourt, shows rthe scale of Nigeria's sanitation problems. Photograph: Gillian Shaw/Rex Features
The deadline for the world to meet its millennium development goals
is now only four years away, yet in sub-Saharan Africa, there are still
570 million people without adequate sanitation, and it will be another 200 years before just half of the population of this region have access to a safe, private toilet.
In Nigeria where I live alongside one-fifth of the continent's population sanitation coverage stands at just 32%.
And while we wait for the pundits, politicians and policymakers to
do something about this, our children die at the rate of 4,000 a day.
That's the equivalent of one child dying in the time it takes to read
this paragraph.
I have seen many technologies designed to solve our problems
parachuted into Nigeria. Some work, most don't. I am continually amazed
at the products thrust at us and the astonishment that then follows when
something that we have had no consultation on fails to work in our
local context. The lesson should be simple: know the area, know the
people.
It is only through talking and listening to the people on the
ground that we will be able to make long-lasting and sustainable moves
out of poverty. This is especially pertinent when trying to educate
people about sanitation and hygiene and bringing about a change in
behaviour.
All too often I have seen latrines built and used as broom
cupboards or goat sheds while the people carry on the way they have
always known - using the great outdoors. Those trying to help scratch
their heads and wonder why the latrines aren't being used. If only it
were that straightforward, then we would probably have made a lot more
progress on the sanitation MDG target than we have so far.
Local knowledge is everything. WaterAid conducted its own research
across west Africa into different ethnic groups' attitudes to going to
the toilet. The results go some way to explaining why simply building a
latrine is only half the battle.
In many rural areas in west Africa, the practice of open-air
defecation is ritualised and bound in tradition. Beyond individual
differences, the members of a group or society are united by similar
ways of thinking and behaving, and will react to situations in similar
ways. Our research showed that reasons for resistance to using a latrine
included beliefs that one might be possessed by demons, lose magical
powers or live a shorter life. Some believe a toilet is meant only for
wealthy people or that, if somebody feeds you, you should in turn
defecate in their field.
For many in so-called modern cultures who take the use of a safe,
private toilet for granted, these reasons may sound funny, even
ridiculous. However, it soon becomes sobering to think that each of
these beliefs may be directly linked to disease, debilitation and death.
WaterAid is adapting an approach known as community-led total
sanitation (CLTS) in west Africa. First conceived in Bangladesh, it is a
concept that has been sweeping across south Asia with impressive
results, and many are hoping that it can bring similar results to
Africa. It is based on an understanding that the people themselves have
the solutions and are best able to determine which interventions will
enable them to attain a self-defined, collective destiny.
Instead of focusing on the supply and installation of sanitation
hardware to communities, CLTS focuses on changing attitudes and
behaviour through community mobilisation to stop open defecation, and to
build and use latrines.
Participants have reported that they find the approach engaging,
participatory and, most notably, empowering putting them in control of
their own destiny, in a context in which, more often than not, death by
disease is accepted with fatalistic submission to the 'will of God' or
the hex of an enemy or the local witch.
Empowering local communities especially women with information
that allows them to make decisions pertaining to their health and
wellbeing ensures that they "own" the desired change. It is they who can
be credited for the health benefits of safe sanitation and hygiene
practices. It is they who commit to the necessary behaviour change, they
who hold themselves and their peers accountable.
Here, help is not coming from outside, but from within - and people are in charge of their own destiny
UN says case for saving species 'more powerful than climate change'
Goods and services from the natural world should be factored into the global economic system, says UN biodiversity report
The Brasilian Nut Tree "Castanheira" is protected in Brasil, but plenty had been logged. Photograph: Daniel Beltra/Greenpeace
The economic case for global action to stop the destruction of the natural world is even more powerful than the argument for tackling climate change, a major report for the United Nations will declare this summer.
The Stern report on climate change, which was prepared for the UK Treasury and published in 2007, famously claimed that the cost of limiting climate change would be around 1%-2% of annual global wealth, but the longer-term economic benefits would be 5-20 times that figure.
The UN's biodiversity report dubbed the Stern for Nature is expected to say that the value of saving "natural goods and services", such as pollination, medicines, fertile soils, clean air and water, will be even higher between 10 and 100 times the cost of saving the habitats and species which provide them.
To mark the UN's International Day for Biological Diversity tomorrow, hundreds of British companies, charities and other organisations have backed an open letter from the Natural History Museum's director Michael Dixon warning that "the diversity of life, so crucial to our security, health, wealth and wellbeing is being eroded".
The UN report's authors go further with their warning on biodiversity, by saying if the goods and services provided by the natural world are not valued and factored into the global economic system, the environment will become more fragile and less resilient to shocks, risking human lives, livelihoods and the global economy.
"We need a sea-change in human thinking and attitudes towards nature: not as something to be vanquished, conquered, but rather something to be cherished and lived within," said the report's author, the economist Pavan Sukhdev.
The changes will involve a wholesale revolution in the way humans do business, consume, and think about their lives, Sukhdev, told The Guardian. He referred to the damage currently being inflicted on the natural world as "a landscape of market failures".
The report will advocate massive changes to the way the global economy is run so that it factors in the value of the natural world. In future, it says, communities should be paid for conserving nature rather than using it; companies given stricter limits on what they can take from the environment and fined or taxed more to limit over-exploitation; subsidies worth more than US$1tn (ฃ696.5bn) a year for industries like agriculture, fisheries, energy and transport reformed; and businesses and national governments asked to publish accounts for their use of natural and human capital alongside their financial results.
And the potential economic benefits are huge. Setting up and running a comprehensive network of protected areas would cost $45bn a year globally, according to one estimate, but the benefits of preserving the species richness within these zones would be worth $4-5tn a year.
The report follows a series of recent studies showing that the world is in the grip of a mass extinction event as pollution, climate change, development and hunting destroys habitats of all types, from rainforests and wetlands to coastal mangroves and open heathland. However, only two of the world's 100 biggest companies believe reducing biodiversity is a strategic threat to their business, according to another report released tomorrow by PricewaterhouseCoopers, which is advising the team compiling the UN report.
"Sometimes people describe Earth's economy as a spaceship economy because we are basically isolated, we do have limits to how much we can extract, and why and where," said Sukhdev, who visited the UK WHEN as a guest of science research and education charity, the Earthwatch Institute..
The TEEB report shows that on average one third of Earth's habitats have been damaged by humans but the problem ranges from zero percent of ice, rock and polar lands to 85% of seas and oceans and more than 70% of Mediterranean shrubland. It also warns that in spite of growing awareness of the dangers, destruction of nature will "still continue on a large scale". The International Union for the Conservation of Nature has previously estimated that species are becoming extinct at a rate 1,000 and 10,000 times higher than it would naturally be without humans.
The greatest promise ever made the millennium development goals
Welcome to the Guardian's new website plotting the world's progress on tackling poverty, hunger, infant mortality, adaptation to climate change and economic development
Our new Global development site will track progress on the United Nations' millennium development goals. Photograph: Martin Godwin/The Guardian
Welcome to the Guardian's new website dedicated to global development, which launches today, 14 September.
Poverty, hunger, infant mortality, adaptation to climate change, economic development: these are the issues affecting the lives of billions of people across the developing world, and on this site we will show you where to find the latest information and discussions taking place across the web. We will be bringing you the sharpest blogs, as well as reporting from the Guardian's award-winning team of foreign correspondents and expert commentators.
Some of the most interesting and influential voices in development have joined our advisory panel, including Nobel prize winner Amartya Sen, and US economist Jeff Sachs. Follow their work through our site and take a look at our blogosphere, a selection of 20 of the most distinctive blogs from around the world, from experts to activists, to those working on the ground to achieve social change.
Our special focus will be to track the millennium development goals, the greatest promise the world has ever made. Huge progress has been made in many areas on education in Africa for example, or on poverty in Asia but in many places the challenge to meet the goals by 2015 is enormous, as I argue in my blog today.
Next week, a UN summit in New York will focus on progress so far, and where we are falling behind in a bid to rally the political will from the world's governments. Follow Larry Elliott and Sarah Boseley's blogs and on Twitter; tell world leaders what you think. Post questions to Andrew Mitchell, UK development secretary, part of the UK delegation to New York, who will be online on the site tomorrow afternoon to answer them. Or explore our data sets on the goals using information from the Guardian's datastore. The datastore brings together development data sets from around the world to create a unique, dynamic, searchable repository, organised by various indicators and by goal.
Coming up is John Vidal's blog of his journey across Latin America with award-winning photographer Dan Chung; comment and analysis on the big debates on the future of aid does it work? Can aid budgets survive the age of austerity? How can the world feed itself? On this site, there will be regular podcast discussions, videos from some of the most startling and important stories around the world. Visit our resources pages linking you to campaigns, reports and content across the web, plus guidance for teachers and schools.
Now, it's over to you help us build this site into a global conversation on the biggest challenges facing the world; tell us what you know, why you are interested and what or who you think we should be writing about at the talk point or email us at development@guardian.co.uk.
Why is the Gates foundation investing in GM giant Monsanto?
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's investments in Monsanto and Cargill have come under heavy criticism. Is it time for the foundation to come clean on its visions for agriculture in developing countries?
A Romanian farmer shows genetically modified soybeans in the village of Varasti. Photograph: Reuters
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which is sponsoring the Guardian's Global development site is being heavily criticised in Africa and the US for getting into bed not just with notorious GM company Monsanto, but also with agribusiness commodity giant Cargill.
Trouble began when a US financial website published the foundation's annual investment portfolio, which showed it had bought 500,000 Monsanto shares worth around $23m. This was a substantial increase in the last six months and while it is just small change for Bill and Melinda, it has been enough to let loose their fiercest critics.
Seattle-based Agra Watch - a project of the Community Alliance for Global Justice - was outraged. "Monsanto has a history of blatant disregard for the interests and well being of small farmers around the world [This] casts serious doubt on the foundation's heavy funding of agricultural development in Africa," it thundered.
But it got worse. South Africa-based watchdog the African Centre for Biosafety then found that the foundation was teaming up with Cargill in a $10m project to "develop the soya value chain" in Mozambique and elsewhere. Who knows what this corporate-speak really means, but in all probability it heralds the big time introduction of GM soya in southern Africa.
The two incidents raise a host of questions for the foundation. Few people doubt that GM has a place in Africa, but is Gates being hopelessly na๏ve by backing two of the world's most aggressive agri-giants? There is, after all, genuine concern at governmental and community level that the United State's model of extensive hi-tech farming is inappropriate for most of Africa and should not be foist on the poorest farmers in the name of "feeding the world".
The fact is that Cargill is a faceless agri-giant that controls most of the world's food commodities and Monsanto has been blundering around poor Asian countries for a decade giving itself and the US a lousy name for corporate bullying. Does Gates know it is in danger of being caught up in their reputations, or does the foundation actually share their corporate vision of farming and intend to work with them more in future?
The foundation has never been upfront about its vision for agriculture in the world's poorest countries, nor the role of controversial technologies like GM. But perhaps it could start the debate here?
In the meantime, it could tell us how many of its senior agricultural staff used to work for Monsanto or Cargill?
Anger as billions in aid is diverted to war zones
Charities fear that national security priorities rather than need will determine development spending
A girl at a communal water pump in Kabul. Britain is to double the amount of aid spent on countries such as Afghanistan. Photograph: Rodrigo Abd/AP
Britain is to double to ฃ3.8bn the amount of aid money spent on war-torn countries such as Afghanistan, raising fears among charities that national security priorities will determine development spending.
As David Cameron warned that Britain would be "mad" not to direct money to broken states, Save the Children warned that poor, but stable, countries in Africa might lose vital funds as the new National Security Council prioritises aid spendi
Patrick Watt, Save the Children's director of development, said last night: "What is the real driver of aid allocation? Is it poverty, is it need and the ability to use money effectively or is it the agenda of the National Security Council? We do need to have a balanced approach to aid allocation that reflects the principles of the 2002 International Development Act which stipulates that all aid should be for poverty reduction."
An Oxfam policy adviser also expressed concerns about aid being delivered through "military structures" that could risk civilian aid workers.
The row broke out after the government decided, in the strategic defence and security review, to double by 2014 the ฃ1.9bn that is spent on what are known as "fragile and conflicted states". This echoes the thinking of Andrew Mitchell, the international development secretary, who told the Guardian in January: "We would build on what [the Department for International Development] is today and make it even more successful and perhaps wire it in a little bit better into the Whitehall constellation."
It is understood that the government is planning to narrow the list of priority fragile countries, which currently includes Nigeria and Kenya, to just five. They are expected to be Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Iraq.
The strategic defence and security review, published today, highlighted spending in Afghanistan to show the importance of military and civilian co-operation on aid. It highlighted Yemen to show the importance of preventing conflict in the future.
Watt said: "One of the concerns is that the countries that will lose out will be poor but stable countries like Ghana or Tanzania that will potentially see a slight reduction in aid but almost certainly won't see any increase. You will end up in a slightly perverse situation, if we're not careful, where countries with a lot of poor people that happen not to be on the geopolitical radar are losing out."
Joan Ruddock, the veteran campaigning Labour MP, challenged the prime minister about the change. "I have always supported the case for greater conflict prevention," Ruddock said. "But conflict prevention needs to be understood and practised by the military themselves. How will the prime minister guarantee DfID's continuing and proper focus on women, children and achieving the millennium [development] goals if one-third of the budget should be reallocated to conflict prevention which is something quite different?"
The prime minister replied: "I would say that conflict affects women and children and it is broken states that have the worst records on poverty and development. Paul Collier's work, the Bottom Billion, about broken states backs up the case for using our DfID budget yes for meeting the Millennium Development Goals, yes for vaccination and malaria reduction and all of those extremely worthwhile things but we're mad if we don't put money into mending broken states where so many of the problems of poverty come from."
Mike Lewis, a policy adviser for Oxfam, said: "We are concerned about aid being delivered through military structures such as the provincial reconstruction teams in Afghanistan. All the evidence is that not only does getting military actors in a war zone to deliver aid put civilian aid workers at risk of attack and indeed those who are supposed to be the beneficiaries of that aid but it is also badly spent aid. In the Afghanistan case it is to schools that are in the wrong place and don't have any teachers. If we are going to spend the ringfenced aid budget well that means spending it through those who have the expertise to spend it properly and that is the civilians."
Andrew Mitchell is carrying out a "bilateral aid review" of DfID spending in all 90 countries which received aid money from Britain. The department's offices in each country will have to bid for funds which will be allocated, ahead of the start of the new financial year, in January.
UN warned of major new food crisis at emergency meeting in Rome
Environmental disasters and speculative investors are to blame for volatile food commodities markets, says UN's special adviser
July's wildfires in Russia have led to a draconian wheat ban, pushing up prices. Photograph: Maxim Shipenkov/EPA
The world may be on the brink of a major new food crisis caused by environmental disasters and rampant market speculators, the UN was warned today at an emergency meeting on food price inflation.
In a new paper released this week, Olivier De Schutter, the UN's special rapporteur on food, says that the increases in price and the volatility of food commodities can only be explained by the emergence of a "speculative bubble" which he traces back to the early noughties.
"[Beginning in ]2001, food commodities derivatives markets, and commodities indexes began to see an influx of non-traditional investors," De Schutter writes. "The reason for this was because other markets dried up one by one: the dotcoms vanished at the end of 2001, the stock market soon after, and the US housing market in August 2007. As each bubble burst, these large institutional investors moved into other markets, each traditionally considered more stable than the last. Strong similarities can be seen between the price behaviour of food commodities and other refuge values, such as gold."
He continues: "A significant contributory cause of the price spike [has been] speculation by institutional investors who did not have any expertise or interest in agricultural commodities, and who invested in commodities index funds or in order to hedge speculative bets."
A near doubling of many staple food prices in 2007 and 2008 led to riots in more than 30 countries and an estimated 150 million extra people going hungry. While some commodity prices have since reduced, the majority are well over 50% higher than pre-2007 figures and are now rising quickly upwards again.
"Once again we find ourselves in a situation where basic food commodities are undergoing supply shocks. World wheat futures and spot prices climbed steadily until the beginning of August 2010, when Russia faced with massive wildfires that destroyed its wheat harvest imposed an export ban on that commodity. In addition, other markets such as sugar and oilseeds are witnessing significant price increases," said De Schutter, who spoke today at The UK Food Group's conference in London.
Gregory Barrow of the UN World Food Program said: "What we have seen over the past few weeks is a period of volatility driven partly by the announcement from Russia of an export ban on grain food until next year, and this has driven prices up. They have fallen back again, but this has had an impact."
Sergei Sukhov, from Russia's agriculture ministry, told the Associated Press during a break in the meeting in Rome that the market for grains "should be stable and predictable for all participants." He said no efforts should be spared "to the effect that the production of food be sufficient."
"The emergency UN meeting in Rome is a clear warning sign that we could be on the brink of another food price crisis unless swift action is taken. Already, nearly a billion people go to bed hungry every night another food crisis would be catastrophic for millions of poor people," said Alex Wijeratna, ActionAid's hunger campaigner.
Food prices are rising around 15% a year in India and Nepal, and similarly in Latin America and China. US maize prices this week broke through the $5-a-bushel level for the first time since September 2008, fuelled by reports from US farmers of disappointing yields in the early stages of their harvests. The surge in the corn price also pushed up European wheat prices to a two-year high of 238 a tonne.
Elsewhere, the threat of civil unrest led Egypt this week to announce measures to increase food self-sufficiency to 70%. Partly as a result of food price rises, many middle eastern and other water-scarce countries have begun to invest heavily in farmland in Africa and elsewhere to guarantee supplies.
Although the FAO has rejected the notion of a food crisis on the scale of 2007-2008, it this week warned of greater volatility in food commodities markets in the years ahead.
At the meeting in London today, De Schutter said the only long term way to resolve the crisis would be to shift to "agro-ecological" ways of growing food. This farming, which does not depend on fossil fuels, pesticides or heavy machinery has been shown to protect soils and use less water.
"A growing number of experts are calling for a major shift in food security policies, and support the development of agroecology approaches, which have shown very promising results where implemented," he said.
Green MP Caroline Lucas called for tighter regulation of the food trade. "Food has become a commodity to be traded. The only thing that matters under the current system is profit. Trading in food must not be treated as simply another form of business as usual: for many people it is a matter of life and death. We must insist on the complete removal of agriculture from the remit of the World Trade Organisation," she said.
Are we on the brink of another food crisis? The UN thinks so and we're bringing you the latest data on the prices of major commodities rice, maize and wheat
Millennium development goals: governments pledge ฃ25.5bn to eradicate world poverty
Nick Clegg backs drive to combat malaria which kills many pregnant women and children under five. 22.09.2010.
Bangladeshi children on a garbage dump on the banks of the Buriganga river in Dhaka. The UN today announced a ฃ25.5bn drive to eradicate world poverty. Photograph: Munir Uz Zaman/AFP/Getty Images
Governments, businesses and aid organisations yesterday made commitments totalling $40bn (ฃ25.5bn) backing the UN secretary general's plan to reach goals on alleviating world poverty and ill-health by 2015.
At a set-piece session at the United Nations, one leader after another stood up to promise to back Ban Ki-moon's strategy to achieve the eight millennium development goals (MDGs) by concentrating on the health of mothers and their children.
"We all know what works to save women's and children's lives, and we all know that women and children are critical to all of the MDGs," said the secretary general. "Today we are witnessing the kind of leadership we have long needed."
Britain's deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, committed the UK to double the number of women's and children's lives saved by reorienting Britain's aid programme to put their needs at its core in addition to new funding for malaria.
He acknowledged that all countries found it tough to justify more spending on aid during a recession but urged other leaders not to give up. "We have a job to explain to people back home that this isn't only the right thing to do for moral reasons, to heal the grotesque divisions between wealth and poverty in the world, to tackle human suffering, to restore a greater sense of balance between one part of the world and another, but that it's also in our own financial and our enlightened self-interest 22 of the 24 countries that are furthest away from the MDGs are steeped in conflict. Conflict breeds radicalism, extremism, terrorism."
In his first major address on the world stage his speech was followed by an address from President Obama Clegg also issued a demand that other countries do not shy away from their responsibilities. "My message to you today, from the UK government, is this: we will keep our promises and we expect the rest of the international community to do the same."
The fifth goal a pledge to cut the numbers of women dying in pregnancy and childbirth by three-quarters is the furthest behind of those agreed by the G8, the world's richest countries, in 2000. The deadline set for their achievement was 2015. In some countries, one woman in eight dies in childbirth, Ban said. A major push to improve their health will not only reduce deaths but help keep children alive and in education and out of poverty.
"In many parts of the world, women have yet to benefit from advances that made childbirth much safer nearly 100 years ago," he said. "Millions of children die from malnutrition and diseases which we have known how to treat for decades. These realities are simply unacceptable." The strategy, he added, included women's empowerment. "Women must lead the way," he said.
Not only donor countries but also developing nations promised to spend more on the poorest people in their societies. Tanzania promised to increase health spending from 12% to 15% of the national budget by 2015 and increase the numbers of health workers it trains and employs. Rwanda's president, Paul Kagame, who has played a prominent role in the summit and was warmly praised a few days ago by Ban as a "stellar leader", pledged to spend 15% of the budget on health by 2012. His country has already brought maternal mortality down from 1,071 to 383 per 100,000 births between 2000 and 2008.
Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, announced a new alliance on maternal health between USAID, the UK, Australia and the Gates Foundation, which will focus on the dearth of family planning in developing countries. Norway, Australia and France were among those promising substantial new money. Pledges also came from aid organisations, philanthropic foundations and businesses.
Machu Picchu train halted over water protests
Authorities suspend tourist route to ancient ruins amid protests over irrigation scheme that could leave town without water
Machu Picchu: the Inca citadel is only accessible by train or by an arduous hike.
Photograph: Jim Erickson/Corbis
Authorities in Peru have suspended train services to the Inca citadel Machu Picchu due to protests over an irrigation project that critics say could leave communities without water.
The train, which ferries about 1,500 tourists to the ruins daily, will be halted today and tomorrow while trade unions, university students, peasants and other groups hold a 48-hour strike in Cusco, a regional capital and jumping-off point for visitors to the archaeological site. Rail authorities said the train, which is the only way to reach Machu Picchu besides an arduous trek, would be suspended as a precaution until the strike ended and tension eased. In an apparently separate event, a forest fire flared about eight miles from Machu Picchu.
Violent clashes last week between police and protesters left one man dead and 44 injured. Protesters say the Majes-Siguas II irrigation project will leave the town of Espinar, 400 miles south of the capital Lima, without water. The project envisages a dam and water system to irrigate 95,000 acres of agricultural land in the region of Arequipa, part of a Peruvian government plan to boost agriculture and diversify the economy away from mining. Officials said the irrigation project could generate 150,000 or 200,000 jobs.
Authorities issued a decree guaranteeing Espinar's water supplies but residents's suspicion grew after the state investment agency, allegedly without consultation, awarded a concession to a private consortium called Angostura-Siguas. "The province of Espinar has its own needs that have never been considered," Nestor Cuti, a protest leader, told reporters. "With this concession we are condemned to have a lack of water for life."
The Peruvian prime minister, Jos้ Chang, said the government would negotiate if protests were halted. "We are sure we will be able to reach a solution that will be just for the town of Espinar."
Peru is one of South America's most volatile countries and is regularly rocked by protests. Access to water is especially sensitive given that Andean glaciers are melting and heavily populated coastal areas are near desert.
Authorities were today battling a forest fire in a nature reserve near Machu Picchu. The cause of the fire, which started yesterday, was not known, nor was the extent of devastation, said Nilo Chแvez, a tourism and ecology official in Cusco.
Millennium Development Goals: Unesco struggles to meet target to educate 70m children out of poverty
For Nigeria's poorest children, school is an impossible dream despite Millennium Development Goal to end illiteracy
Pupils sit at the entrance of a classroom at the Tattali orphan school in Nigeria's northern city of Kaduna. Photograph: Akintunde Akinleye
Jummai Nkwo will not let her daughter Mary go to school. "I'd like her to go, but it's just too expensive and I need her. I'm a widow. We have to work to keep everyone in the family fed. So she goes every day with me to the bush to cut wood and then we take it to sell in Abuja."
Mary, who is 12 but looks about seven, is plucking at the kitten embroidered on her grubby T-shirt as she listens. Would she like to go to school? Yes, she says shyly. She's seen two of her elder sisters go and she thinks it would be nice to learn things such as English. "I want to be able to take care of myself and my children," she tells me. But this modest desire makes her mother laugh, and after a while so do all the other women standing around the cooking pot as the evening porridge bubbles.
"Mary's job is to get the water," smiles one, and Mary is too embarrassed to say any more. Jummai didn't go to school, she says, and clearly she can't see the point. In any case, she removed Mary's sisters from the primary school, here on the outskirts of Nigeria's capital, when older men offered to marry them. They were just 14. Northern Nigeria, where up to 50% of girls never see inside a school, is not a good place for childish dreams.
The UN education body, Unesco, will tell the conference this week that 171 million people would be lifted out of poverty if students in poor countries could at least attain basic reading skills. Gordon Brown will make his return to the international stage with meetings at the summit to push the goal of education for all by 2015 "an achievement that would surely rate among mankind's greatest," he is expected to declare. Brown has signed up to work with the Global Campaign for Education, a lobbying group of NGOs and UN agencies.
Much has happened since the MDGs were formulated in 2000, but little in terms of their achievement. Particularly disappointing is MDG 2, which set out to achieve universal child education. It seemed one of the more accessible goals, and since 2000 massive amounts of development aid have been spent on the issue by rich countries. Britain's stated policy is to fund education in the developing world because it is "the best route out of poverty". The UK spent ฃ10m in 2008-09 on education in Nigeria alone.
But while the number of children out of education worldwide has fallen, from 105 million 10 years ago, there is still a long way to go. According to research by the Global Campaign for Education, 48% of children in sub-Saharan Africa still do not complete primary education.
Nowhere is this failure more stark than in Nigeria. On paper the country is Africa's third richest because of its immense oil wealth it is the sixth-largest producer in the world. Officially the country has 8.8 million children out of school, more than any other nation. But research by the Nigerian Federal Ministry of Education, seen by the Observer, indicates that the actual figure may be 19.2 million nearly half of all Nigeria's primary-age children.
Where education is provided, there are stark indicators that the quality of it is inadequate. "English is the official language and all primary schoolchildren must learn it," says Abuja-based campaigner Wale Samuel. "But it's common to find that even teachers cannot converse in English."
Two years ago, the education commissioner of Nigeria's Kwara state revealed that nearly 20,000 of the state's teachers had been made to sit tests in English and maths designed for nine- and 10-year-olds, but only seven of the teachers could reach the minimum attainment level. An editorial in Nigeria's Guardian newspaper commented that the Kwara scandal was "a symptom of a decadent system, where favouritism, corruption, compromise, incompetence and the like hold sway in every facet of life".
Wale Samuel, who co-ordinates the efforts of many small Nigerian NGOs trying to increase access to education, says the key to the problem is "more financing and better use of it" obvious things in a country that in recent history has rarely devoted more than 6% of its annual national budget to education, less than one-third of what South Africa spends (most rich nations spend about 12%). Many Nigerians blame the fact that their middle class has no interest in a system that it does not use, with children from more affluent backgrounds educated privately or abroad.
Recently, Nigeria's union of university lecturers threatened to release the names of all government officials who sent their children out of the country for their schooling. Wale Samuel acknowledges this problem, and says the country's elite must develop a "passion" for education: "We have to impress policy-makers that the social fabric is knotted together by quality education without it, you court disaster in Nigeria."
In Kaduna, a dusty state capital in Nigeria's largely Muslim north, I saw how the country's education system excludes the poor. Although Nigeria is committed to free primary education for all, unofficial fees charged by underfunded schools can amount to ฃ30 a term. That keeps children away, in a country where ฃ1 a day is a significant wage.
At the charity-run Tattali free school in Kaduna's back streets, children pay nothing. Its six mud-walled classrooms, none of them much bigger than a king-size bed, see an incredible 340 students a day, arriving in shifts. Among them are Zahra Mohammed and Sadiya Saidu, 14 and 15. Neither girl had ever been to school before this month; the village they came from had a teacher but no school building "He teaches the children under the trees." In any case, the fees for registration, sanitation, books and uniforms were more than their families could afford, they said, and no child they knew had ever been to school.
Both of them fought their families to come to school in Kaduna. "My mother said she didn't want me to come. 'You don't need school, you need to help in the house'," said Zahra. A relative found the money for her to travel to the city, while Sadiya was helped by her mother. "I was supposed to get married soon, my father had decided it, and I didn't want to."
In fact, Most of the young teenage girls at the Tattali school are running away from arranged marriages. Education is one way of avoiding these sorts of abuses of women Statistics show that, worldwide, girls with basic education marry later, have fewer and healthier children, and are less likely to catch HIV/Aids.
Sadiya and Zahra underline the real tragedy of the failed Nigerian system these children have a passion for education and are hungry for school. And there are good teachers who want to work. Akin Zuheini, who was teaching maths at the Tattali school, told me it was impossible to get a job in the state system, "unless you are connected to someone in power". Rukkaiyat Adamu, co-ordinator of the charity behind the school, said: "There's such a desire for education here that we run this school without holidays, all day and all night." Among her pupils are several mothers, attending school for the first time with their own children.
Wale Samuel likes to quote the 19th century British prime minister, Benjamin Disraeli: "Upon the education of the people of this country, the fate of this country depends." In Nigeria, mired in poverty and with a fast-increasing population, that fate troubles him deeply. "We live in a country that evaluates your worth according to whether you've been to school abroad. But that's myopic, and it is covering up an explosive situation a growing, angry, ill-educated young population without work."
Millennium development goals summit day two - live updates
Among today's highlights at the UN MDG summit, Hillary Clinton is set to unveil an initiative on clean cooking stoves
This page will update automatically every minute: On | Off 21.09.2010.
UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon speaks during the MDG summit in New York. Photograph: Justin Lane/EPA
6.40pm: Here's something that puts a different light on Nando's. The restaurant chain has been working with MTN, a multinational telecommunications group, Standard Bank, Africa's largest financial institution, as partners in the United Against Malaria (UAM) campaign. They want other businesses to join the campaign.
More on that clean stove initiative. Shell has pledged $6m to support Hillary Clinton's plan to prevent deaths and cut greenhouse gas emissions caused by the smoke from traditional cooking stoves.
6.36pm: Here is that key passage from Angela Merkel's speech.
There is one thing that we all have to accept: The primary responsibility for development lies with the governments of the developing countries. It is in their hands whether aid can be effective. Therefore, support to good governance is as important as aid itself. Today's emerging economies show that development policy can ultimately only be successful if there is national stewardship and national This also applies to mobilising the necessary resources. ODA funding can, apart from emergency situations, only be a contribution to national resources, never a substitute for them.
6.14pm: Ban Ki-moon has stressed the critical role of proper early feeding at one of the myriad fringe events at the summit.
"Under-nourished children are more likely to get sick. They cannot concentrate in school and often earn less as adults. They pay the price throughout their lives," he said, opening the forum, called 1,000 Days: Change a Life, Change the Future.
6.03pm: Rose Shuman, founder and CEO of Open Mind - Question Box, has a hard-headed piece on the MDGs. She thinks that they are too broad and favours a more targeted approach.
Just imagine billions of dollars of time and resource focused urgently and powerfully for two years only on maternal mortality; and then universal primary schooling; and then environmental sustainability; and so on. I suspect we would have a more powerful story of progress, learning, and deep improvement, something to rally around. If we are not to collapse under the weight of all that we yearn to accomplish, along with thousands of pages and hundreds of summit hours, we must focus, win, and focus once again.
5.54pm: The UN has lined up celebrities by the bucketload to support the MDGs. Antonio Banderas, Angelique Kidjo, Zinedine Zidane, Maria Sharapova and Annie Lennox are among the UN goodwill ambassadors and messengers of peace who have been enlisted. Here are the videos from Banderas and Zidane, which also features Didier Drogba.
5.41pm: If you want to read the speeches, including those of Ahmadinejad and Mugabe, you can find them all here. Here is an extract from Ahmadinejad to savour. Does he write his own stuff or does he have speechwriters?
It is my firm belief that in the new millennium, we need to revert to the divine mindset, to our true nature for which man was created and indeed, to the just and fair governance. Divine mindset based on the perfectionist and justice-seeking nature of mankind and on the monotheistic world-view is in fact, the very heavenly mindset which makes the man's blissful talents blossom. Such mindset is the mankind's guiding principle for a prosperous social life, adjusting his economic, cultural and political beings, free from egoisms, hegemonic tendencies and envies.
5.23pm: The Guardian's Madeleine Bunting applauds Hillary Clinton's initiative on clean cooking stoves - for one thing it might stave off deforestation in eastern Africa.
"Aid follows fashions over the last few years millions of malaria nets have been flooding in to Africa with dramatic results hopefully Clinton's initiative will set a new trend," Bunting writes.
5.07pm: William Easterly, professor of economics at New York University and co-director of its Development Research Institute, is well-known for his opposition to aid. He returns to the theme in this op-ed for the Financial Times - a direct riposte to Jeffrey Sachs's piece in the FT this morning.
"Current experience and history both speak loudly that the only real engine of growth out of poverty is private business, and there is no evidence that aid fuels such growth," says Easterly.
Some might question that, but few would quarrel with the following: "Of the eight goals, only the eighth faintly recognises private business, through its call for a 'non-discriminatory trading system'. This anodyne language refers to the scandal of rich countries perpetuating barriers that favour a tiny number of their businesses at the expense of impoverished millions elsewhere. Yet the trade MDG received virtually no attention from the wider campaign, has seen no action, and even its failure has received virtually no attention in the current MDG summit hoopla."
4.04pm: The Institute of Development Studies, a leading thinktank on development issues, has issued a report critical of the MDGs. The report says that without promoting equity and tackling the root causes of social exclusion, the goals betray the promise of social justice contained in the Millennium declaration.
"One of the problems of the millennium development goals is that they don't contain any hint of the social justice agenda. They talk about extreme poverty and trying to address the 20% of the poorest people, but there's no other sense in which the eight goals hold countries to account for addressing inequalities amongst their own," says the report's author, Professor Naila Kabeer.
3.41pm: Sarah Boseley is attending the annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative (live webcast), which brings together the great and the good to work on development issues. She marvels at the Clintons' pulling power.
I've just crawled in a taxi across the police-cordoned streets of Manhattan from the UN to the New York Sheraton and Towers. Everywhere I go, I seem to be followed by wailing sirens, black limos and men in padded black jackets looking twice their size with guns slung across their chests. At the Sheraton, there is a crowd of very well-dressed people of obvious status and wealth who are looking very unimpressed at being shepherded into a tight and pushy bunch while some head of state enters.
This is where the Clinton Global Initiative is holding its annual meeting - Bill Clinton's philanthropic organisation that pulls in entrepreneurs, celebrities and thinkers to make specific pledges on helping the world. Obviously if you hold your annual meeting in parallel with the UN summit, you find a lot of world leaders are suddenly available. And as somebody said, while the CGI is interested in helping Haiti's earthquake victims - close to US hearts - as well as Africa and Asia, everything it does impacts on the MDGs.
Clinton's pulling power should not be underestimated. Melinda Gates is talking this morning and Barack and Michelle Obama will close the show on Thursday. Also attending is every billionaire you've ever or never heard of. Richard Branson is here, of course, and Bill as well as Melinda Gates, but so is Chad Hurley who founded YouTube, Muhtar Kent, CEO of Coca-Cola, Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google - and Cherie Blair.
The press facilities are amazing in contrast to those at the UN.
3.33pm: Robert Mugabe, the long-serving president of Zimbabwe, takes the opportunity to berate countries (no names but he means the US and Britain) that have inflicted "punitive sanctions" on his country. Such sanctions have prevented his government from improving the lives of Zimbabweans, he asserts.
3.23pm: In her speech, the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, emphasises the importance of good governance. "Development aid cannot continue indefinitely," says Merkel, adding that it is good governance which taps on a country's economic potential. What she says matters as Germany is the world's third biggest aid donor.
First, let's put equal opportunity in education where it deserves to be at the heart of the MDG agenda. Setting a target to halve school attendance gaps between rich and poor and the best and worst performing parts of a country would be a step in the right direction. Second, aid donors need to act on their part of the bargain, either by increasing aid or by putting in place some innovative financing solutions, such as an MDG tax on financial transactions.
3.06pm: The US state department is trying to spark discussion on its DipNote blog with the question: "What concrete steps can we take to help overcome obstacles to meeting the MDGs?"
Flavius in Virginia writes: "The first thing you can do is extend your deadline a thousand years, because we've been trying to do these things for at least five millennia and we still aren't even close. Millennium development goals! Who comes up with this stuff anyway?"
2.58pm: In this video, a South African nurse, Glenda Bateman, recounts the harrowing death of a 19-year-old girl from a crude abortion. The video comes from Make Women Matter, a campaign from Marie Stopes International, that highlights the need to improve the lives of women and to put an end to preventable deaths arising from pregnancy and childbirth.
...Achieving the MDGs is only the first step. For even if we succeed and meet all eight goals by 2015, almost a billion people will continue to live below the poverty line, hundreds of millions will remain hungry and millions will continue to die from preventable diseases or unnecessary complications. We will certainly need to take the MDGs to the next level after the initial deadline. While there is some scepticism about the utility of naming specific goals as basis for development strategies and institutional arrangements, I remain an advocate. After all, who can argue with an objective as simple and powerful as access to food and clean drinking water, jobs, health care and education for everyone?
2.27pm: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, is at the podium. The camera does a quick pan of the room to lots of bemused faces. Not surprising, as Ahmadinejad's speech is practically incomprehensible. No tirades against the US, but he blames "the countless suffering of humanity" on liberal capitalism. Ahmadinejad then calls for "just and fair governance based on a divine mindset". He says that in the third millennium, all "good deeds should prevail" and "justice upheld". The interpreters emphasise at the end of his short speech that they have been reading from a text written in English.
1.51pm: Andrew Mitchell, Britain's international aid secretary, assures Sian To, a blogger for Save the Children, that the UK will not "balance the books on the backs of the poor".Andrew Mitchell talks to Save the Children blogger on British aid
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1.33pm: Maternal mortality is one of the big themes of the summit and Amnesty International has a "maternal death clock" on Times Square, showing a running total of maternal deaths since the beginning of the summit. At 12:00pm GMT, the total reads: 880 deaths. According to Amnesty a woman dies giving birth every 90 seconds. (That's 358,000 mothers in one year.)Amnesty International picture of 'maternal death clock'
1.25pm:
One of the perennial themes or tensions in development aid is the issue of conditionality. Donors say it is vital to make sure the money is used properly, while recipients chafe at what they see as unfair or unreasonable conditions. Robert Zoellick, the World Bank president, and Meles Zenawi, the Ethiopian president - a darling of western governments but increasingly criticised by human rights groups - exchange views. Thanks to the Broker website for this.
1.13pm: Sarah Boseley, who yesterday gave a flavour of the frustrations in covering the MDG summit, warms to her theme. UN press centre please take note.
I've always had an idealistic faith in the UN, but the last two days attempting to cover the summit in New York have begun to make me wonder whether these are the wrong people to be handling attempts to bring about world peace. I complained earlier about the warehouse of a media centre, which we journalists were not allowed to leave without an escort. I did not, however, realise at the time that this included going to press conferences.
It went from the surreal to the extraordinary. The people running the media liaison desk (for their sins) had given out a list of "stake-outs" (see earlier in the blog this is where we get to exchange a few words over a rope with a passing politician) and press conferences. So I went to ask where the main one of the day would be held.
This disconcerted those on the desk. The main UN building is being renovated and is almost completely empty. The media centre is to one side of it, but the press conference room was on the far side. No journalist was allowed to make the 10-minute (at a fast pace) trip on their own.
There were perhaps a thousand journalists in the warehouse. If we had all wanted to go to the press conference, there might have been a bit of a problem. As it was, most appeared not to be interested or perhaps had not realised it was happening. The man from El Mundo and I, who had queried this at the same time, were escorted by a kind woman who could see the absurdity of it herself, and gave us her phone number in case we were detained by the guards in our attempt to return. But sadly, her efforts on our behalf were in vain. By the time we reached the room, it was all over.
12.43pm: The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, will unveil a $50m initiative (ฃ32.2m) to replace primitive cooking stoves, powered by crop waste, wood, coal and dung. Smoke from these stoves kills 1.9 million people, mostly women and children, from lung and heart diseases. Clinton says the problem of indoor pollution from primitive stoves is a "cross-cutting issue" that affects health, the environment and women's status in much of the world. "That's what makes it such a good subject for a co-ordinated approach of governments, aid organisations and the private sector," she told the New York Times.
For a recap of what happened yesterday, Sarah Boseley reports on a pleaby the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, to world leaders not to "balance budgets on the backs of the poor".
In the Financial Times, development guru Jeffrey Sachs argues that rich countries should ditch bilateral aid in favour of "multi-donor pooled funding that has clear timelines, objectives and accountability".
If you wish to be part of the summit on twitter, you can follow us on GdnDevelopment, Sarah Boseley in New York, or look out for tweets with this tag #gdndevelopment.
Hague: UK Government will protect human rights 15.09.2010.
Foreign Secretary William Hague is set to declare his commitment to the protection of human rights around the world, insisting it is not in Britain's interests to pursue "a foreign policy without a conscience". Skip related content
Mr Hague will use the third in a series of linked speeches on foreign policy to announce that he is setting up a new group - including aid agencies and independent experts - to advise ministers on human rights issues.
He will also say that the Foreign Office is reissuing guidance to its staff on the need to report any incidents of torture or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment that they encounter in the course of their work.
"There will be no downgrading of human rights under this Government and no resiling from our commitments to aid and development. Indeed I intend to improve and strengthen our human rights work," he is expected to say.
"It is not in our character as a nation to have a foreign policy without a conscience, and neither is it in our interests."
His comments carry echoes of former foreign secretary Robin Cook's declaration at the start of the last Labour government that it would pursue a foreign policy with an "ethical dimension".
However, Mr Hague will also stress that "idealism in foreign policy always needs to be tempered by realism".
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A local market in Port Harcourt, shows rthe scale of Nigeria's sanitation problems. Photograph: Gillian Shaw/Rex Features
The Brasilian Nut Tree "Castanheira" is protected in Brasil, but plenty had been logged. Photograph: Daniel Beltra/Greenpeace
Our new Global development site will track progress on the United Nations' millennium development goals. Photograph: Martin Godwin/The Guardian
A Romanian farmer shows genetically modified soybeans in the village of Varasti. Photograph: Reuters
July's wildfires in Russia have led to a draconian wheat ban, pushing up prices. Photograph: Maxim Shipenkov/EPA
UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon speaks during the MDG summit in New York. Photograph: Justin Lane/EPA
