‘As we approach the year 2015, a measure of how committed a country’s government and administration are to its people will be demonstrated not just by being ‘on track’, but by how well that country is positioned to exceed the MDG targets.'


According to a recently released report profiling the Asia Pacific region, Pacific islands countries’ collective progress on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is at best patchy.

The countries have shown fair to good progress on some of the goals but lag behind in others.

Some countries, the report says, are falling behind targets and will not likely to achieve vital goals by 2015—the stipulated year for achieving all the goals.

The worst performances among the Pacific islands countries are in the health, sanitation, poverty and gender disparity indicators. 

Papua New Guinea, the islands region’s most populous nation, tops the list of poor achievers. The country, according to the report, is falling behind in the public health sector-particularly HIV/AIDS prevention and control, infant and child mortality, basic primary education, gender inequality, water supply and sanitation.
It is not expected to achieve its goals by 2015 in these sectors-especially in reducing child mortality rates by two thirds.

Another area that unites the Pacific islands countries is the poor progress in both urban and rural sanitation.
Fiji, Samoa, the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), Palau and PNG are falling behind in providing sanitary facilities to their citizens and are unlikely to achieve targets by 2015.

Good sanitation is an important determinant of good health standards and as long as this area remains neglected, people of these countries will be at high risk to communicable diseases, particularly, the waterborne variety.

Also, according to the report, Samoa, Tonga, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu and FSM are behind also in providing treated drinking water to their urban populations—an obvious indicator of services not keeping pace with urbanisation.

If progress on health indicators is poor, what is positively worrying is the rate at which these countries are falling behind in HIV/AIDS prevention and control.

As things stand, almost none of the Pacific islands will achieve the target by 2015 and will undoubtedly have a big problem on their hands.

The report points out that though HIV is most prevalent in PNG among islands countries, it is still not a priority for government. The same can be said about many others.

Religious beliefs, a combination of socio-cultural mores and poor awareness, lack of education and plain denial are factors that stand in the way of efforts to fight the disease in almost all of the Pacific islands—not just PNG.

For aid-dependent economies of the islands countries—especially where aid projects are designed and implemented by donors—achievement of all the MDGs is never going to be easy.

Pacific islands governments need to design and drive their own development agendas and projects from the grassroots levels up, involving the ultimate beneficiaries, the people, at all times.

Often the cost of implementing projects is so high—thanks to consultants’ fees and costs, that the benefits rarely reach the beneficiary segment uniformly to create any significant impact.

Some islands countries have been trying to focus on their achievements of the MDGs, which in a few sectors have indeed been impressive. Fiji says it is on track with six of the eight MDGs. But being on track to achieve these goals should not lead to complacency.

They ought to take a leaf out of better performing countries from other parts of the world. Some countries from South East Asia have reset their own goals to a higher level.

For instance, at least one of them has decided to completely eradicate poverty in place of the goal that needs them to halve it. Another has raised the bar from dollar-a-day to two dollars-a-day as an achievement standard.

As we approach the year 2015, a measure of how committed a country’s government and administration are to its people will be demonstrated not just by being ‘on track’, but by how well that country is positioned to exceed the MDG targets.

Going by the latest report, Pacific islands countries have a long way to go in some of the most important sectors.
Failure to achieve traction in those very vital sectors in the next couple of years will dilute legitimate achievements in others.