The Missing Agenda at Monterrey

Moisés Naím / Financial Times

Current levels of world poverty are unacceptable. More money for development is needed. The approaches and institutions that guide foreign aid should be overhauled. It is hard to disagree with these conclusions. Certainly, the heads of state who met in Monterrey the other week did not. As a result, they will make more money available to fight world poverty and vigorously explore ideas for spending it more effectively.

But any discussion of how best to fight poverty must encompass three powerful realities that never made it on to the Monterrey agenda.

First, it must be acknowledged that political support for foreign aid is very weak in the US and other rich countries. Why does rock singer Bono figure so prominently in the debate on world poverty, HIV/ Aids and debt relief? Because, as he said after George W. Bush invited him to the Oval Office: "I am a pest, I am a stone in the shoe of a lot of people living here in this town, a squeaky wheel." Bono's celebrity enables him to make politically visible what would otherwise be almost invisible to American leaders.

The Bush-Bono summit just before Mr Bush's announcement of more money for development exemplifies the photo-opportunity approach to development aid taken by most US presidents and politicians. But even after Mr Bush's new pledges, the share of the US budget devoted to helping poor nations is still lower than in almost any year between the end of the second world war and the mid-1990s, according to the Center for Global Development in Washington DC.

Building public and political support in rich countries for more money and better policies to alleviate poverty will be as important for the world's poor as the decisions in Monterrey. Until that happens, the poor will be dependent on Bono and other celebrities to make US politicians pay attention.

The second uncomfortable truth is that improvements in the effectiveness of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the World Trade Organisation, and other multilateral agencies depend critically on who is at the helm of these institutions. The process used to select and appoint them is utterly broken.

The image and effectiveness of multilateral development, financial, and trade institutions are critical not just for aiding the poor but also for generating public support for such assistance. The heads of state in Monterrey acknowledged this reality but they did not say a word about the leaders of these organisations or how they are chosen.

These organisations, which preach democracy, meritocracy, accountability and transparency to the governments to which they lend or that they influence, do not practise any of these virtues in selecting their top leaders. The White House appoints the president of the World Bank and only a few European governments decide on the managing director of the IMF. You cannot get more imperial than that.

But the system is also dysfunctional and poorly managed. Witness the imbroglios over recent selections of a new managing director of the IMF and a director- general for the WTO. The US and the European Union are unlikely to give up the privilege of appointing the heads of these institutions. But it behoves them to do a better job of picking candidates who have the backgrounds and skills that will make them better and more legitimate leaders of these indispensable organisations.

This may be easily dismissed as a small detail by those involved in conversations about massive global poverty. But it is a small detail with immense consequences for almost all the issues discussed in Monterrey. Watch the willingness of the rich countries to modernise the process of identifying, vetting and appointing the leaders of these organisations and you will get a good sense of how serious - or hypocritical - they are about the commitments they made in Monterrey.

Third, the west must recognise that fighting poverty often means fighting guns. John Bolton, the US undersecretary of state for arms control and international security affairs, did not attend the Monterrey summit. He was present, however, at a United Nations conference on small-arms trafficking last July. There he announced US opposition to many of the ideas under consideration, such as a ban on private ownership of military weapons, including assault rifles and grenade launchers. "The US will not join consensus on a final document that contains measures contrary to our constitutional right to keep and bear arms," Mr Bolton said. He added that the US could not agree to limit the supply of small arms to governments or to restrict their supply to individuals because it "believes the responsible use of firearms is a legitimate aspect of national life".

National life is not very good for countries ravaged by armed conflict. In most of these countries "responsible use of firearms" means killing as many enemies as possible. According to the UN, small arms fuelled 46 of the 49 largest world conflicts of the past decade. The UN also estimates that about half those weapons were procured from illegal sources.

Attitudes towards the production and trade of weapons, especially in the US, will thus shape the future of many of the world's poor. Yet the text approved in Monterrey says nothing about this issue. And if getting the US to contribute more money for development was hard, getting it to support better regulation of the international trade of firearms will be much harder - because while Bono's advocacy dramatises the generally weak political influence of the world's poor in the US, Mr Bolton represents the views of a very powerful constituency: politically active gun owners.

Summits on world poverty tend to take place in a rarefied atmosphere detached from the realities of impoverishment that the meetings seek to address. Ironically, the statements and commitments made in Monterrey seem instead to have been detached from their own political realities at home - unless, of course, these leaders are already committed to changing those realities. That would be even better news for the world's poor than more money for foreign aid.