Egypt's march towards achieving the UN Millennium Development Goals still has a way to go. Dina Ezzat examines the hardships ahead At the age of "around 45," Nafissa, an inhabitant of one of the poorest zones in Cairo, is having a hard time coping with poverty. "I have always been poor... But now we are very poor, very very poor," she said on a hot summer's day. Speaking from her stable spot on the broken pavement where she has been selling watercress for years, Nafissa said she used to make about LE20 a day when she worked as house help. Due to sudden health problems, she had to quit the profession and was forced to cope with a new situation in which she says she makes only a pound and a half a day. "I need at least LE10 a day... to eat and cover my basic expenses, but I would be happy to be able to make even LE5 a day... I live alone and I have very basic needs." Nafissa is not at all a rare example of poverty-hit Egyptians. According to government statistics, acute poverty is a serious problem that the state is attempting to solve as part of an overall development endeavour that includes meeting the UN Millennium Development Goals by the targeted date of 2015. "You can go to any spot where construction workers gather in pursuit of any job, even a one-day job, and you will be shocked," said Mohamed, a 37-year-old vendor. From his cigarette and soda kiosk in another poor spot in the capital, Mohamed pointed to a group of young, powerfully built men. "They've been here since six in the morning and it's now noon. For six hours they have been waiting in the hope that a contractor will come and offer any of them any job even if it's only LE2 a day, but nothing has happened." Like many people who spoke to Al-Ahram Weekly over the past few days, Mohamed attributes this state of acute poverty to a complexity of reasons. The two most often mentioned concern, as indicated by Mohamed and others, continuous regional instability and the insensitivity of the government to the basic needs of the poor. For Mohamed there is very little reason for hope. As far as he is concerned neither regional developments nor government economic policies are likely to induce any improvement in living standards. "Look at these young men who keep coming to this workers recruitment spot every day in the hope of making LE2 a day, and compare them to the big people who drive big cars and eat very expensive food," Mohamed said with much frustration. Unlike Nafissa, Mohamed says that he makes about LE20 a day. "But I provide for myself, my wife, two children and I help my mother. So you need to divide these LE20 by five." Getting people like Nafissa and Mohamed to make a little more money to be able to adequately cover their basic needs and getting young and frustrated men enough stable jobs for more than LE2 a day was a key commitment by the government of Egypt when it signed up to the implementation of the UN Millennium Development Goals. Eradicating extreme poverty and hunger is number one on the list of eight Millennium Development Goals. Six years ago, under the umbrella of the UN, leaders from every country of the world agreed on a vision for the future based on having a world with lesser poverty, hunger and disease and greater survival prospects for mothers and infants. Adopted during the Millennium Summit of the UN in New York in September 2000, the Millennium Development Goals also includes the world's commitment to help children to be better educated, to grant men and women equal opportunities, to combat the most deadly and infectious diseases and to create a healthier environment. But above all, the world agreed in that summit that for all these objectives to be attained it needed to establish a global partnership for development. With the 2015 deadline halfway over, some countries, including Egypt, are trying to take stock of their efforts so far. At the official level, Egypt believes it is doing not bad. During a seminar held last month in Cairo by IPALM, an Italian government institute charged with promoting cooperation with Third World countries, the UN System Staff College and the Cairo bureau of the UN Development Programme, a host of Egyptian officials argued that slow but real progress was being made on achieving the targets. Egypt, they said, had managed to reduce the level of widespread poverty but might not be able to eradicate poverty by 2015. Indeed, according to Giovanni Maria de Vita, an economic counselor at the Italian Embassy, Egypt needs to worry about the "widening gap between the rich and poor." Meanwhile, representatives of the Egyptian government to the seminar said Egypt had made considerable progress on breaching the gender gap and widening the level of school enrollment among girls and boys, but that by 2015, the country was unlikely to be declared illiteracy free. Figures offered by speakers during the seminar suggested the populations below the poverty line had decreased from 24.3 million in 1990 to around 20 million in 2004. Primary enrollment, they suggested, increased from 85.5 per cent of the population in 1992 to 94 per cent in 2004. However, according to Assistant Foreign Minister Hager El-Islambouli, Egypt could make much better progress on all fronts if the international community was as committed as it should be to the concept of global partnership. "The achievements of the first seven Millennium Development Goals depended on the concept of establishing a global partnership, in particular the mobilisation of financial resources," commented Mounir Zahran, a member of the Egyptian Council on Foreign Affairs. The Barcelona Process, a framework for North and South Mediterranean cooperation, could have offered a good tool for cooperation that aims to enhance and accelerate the fulfillment of the Millennium Development Goals but it failed, Ambassador Nihad Abdel-Latif said. According to the World Bank, Egypt will need to achieve a sustained real GDP growth rate of at least seven per cent annually for unemployment levels to be more manageable. The nation will need to foster domestic savings and investment for better efficiency and competence. It also needs to improve its export performance. A great part of this objective, participants said, requires regional stability. "With the continued Israeli occupation of Arab territories the chances of regional development in general will continue to be seriously challenged," El-Islambouli stressed. This said, most participants in the seminar argued that when all is said and done 2015 seems like a plausible target date for Egypt to make considerable development on achieving a good part of these objectives. "2015. We still have to wait until 2015. Well, we just want things to be better for our children," argued Mohamed. And he asked, "But do you think that the government will live up to its promises this time?"
