Global Financial Crisis on the Millennium Development Goals

Running head: THE IMPACT OF THE GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS ON MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS
The Impact of the Global Financial Crisis on Millennium Development Goals
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The Impact of the Global Financial Crisis on Millennium Development Goals
The millennium development goals declaration of 2000 was a hallmark in international cooperation prompting the collaborative efforts in development in order to improve the livelihood of people of the world by the year 2015. The goals symbolize the minimum basic civil rights that people in the world should enjoy like the need to reduce poverty and hunger, basic quality education, good employment ,provision of good health services, safe motherhood, gender equality and environmental sustainability. Since the declaration by the United Nations in the year 2000 in order to achieve these universal objectives, a lot of progress has been made and people around the world are looking forward for the attainment of this vision of the United Nations. Even the poorest of countries across have made significant progress revealing the zeal in the fight against poverty and the improvement of livelihoods around the world. However, the gains made by in the attainment of the millennium development goals are being derailed by the continuing global financial crisis that began in the year 2008.
According to the European Union Economic and Social Committee, the global financial crisis has affected the volume of exports in international trade. The volumes of exports from developing nations to the developed countries have reduced significantly over the years since the crisis began. For example, the volume of garments from Bangladesh to the United States and Europe has reduced significantly by 7% in September 2008. The exports from Philippines to the United States dropped by 15% in 2008. Reduction in volumes of trade has affected the economies especially of developing countries that as made them unable to fund programs aimed at attainment of millennium development goals.
A reduction in the level of foreign investment has also been experienced in several countries as investors have shied away from investing in markets deemed risky. For example the Ethiopian electric power corporation ahs been affected by funding because of decline in foreign investment due to the financial crunch. The decline in funding has caused significant problem inn developing countries because the poverty is of a bigger scale in these countries than in developing countries. There amount donated to fight hunger and disease in the developing countries has decreased as a result of the financial crisis and this has impacted on the development of the countries interfering with their efforts of attainment of the millennium development goals.
According to ASEAN, the global credit crunch has affected the level of remittances of funds from immigrants in foreign countries. This has severely affected for developing countries the immigrant population from developing countries contribute a substantial amount to the economies of the developing countries. The decrease in foreign remittances has affected the economies and livelihoods of people in developing countries since they are among the hardest hit by the financial crisis. In terms of foreign aid to developing nations, there is a drop in the amount of foreign funding from developed countries to developing and poor nations. The funding directly funds programs aimed at achieving the millennium development goals .These initiatives are likely to suffer and therefore slow the process of attainment of the millennium development goals by developing countries.
Decline in the exchange rate among the currencies of the nation will also caused the collapse of companies and the loss of jobs and unemployment around the world. This has occurred because companies in the world, which have a significant amount of debts dominated by foreign currencies, are likely to collapse and downsize. The crisis also caused a rise in the interest rates due to withdrawal of foreign direct investments. The decline in level of foreign direct investment has ultimately resulted in t a slump of the development of economies around the world affecting negatively on the attainment of the millennium development goals.
According to the Development Finance International, the global financial crisis has also affected the attainment of gender equality and women empowerment for the development for women around the world. The crisis has its own unique challenges to women due to the way it increases poverty and derails their development. Women are the ones who suffer most from joblessness and job losses, reduction in credit available and decrease in remittances from other countries since they have more familial responsibilities in many nations across the world. Increase in poverty makes it difficult to empower women for better representation. The global financial crisis has made women poorer and therefore increased child mortality rates due to poverty. The crisis has also caused a drop in the level of school enrollment of their children and exacerbating the food crisis especially in developing countries. Since women focus on the social budget rather the other issues, increased poverty causes severe effects on children.
Frenchobserves that the global financial crisis has also affected the attainment of the millennium development goal of greener economies and reduction of the effects of climate change. .objectives the issue of climate change is directly tagged to the prospects of the economy. The crisis has caused challenges in the funding for greener alterative sources of energy and slowed down the adoption of the technologies that are environmental friendly. The major challenge in investing in greener energy is that the green energy alterative is costly and requires huge financial investments. Investment in alternate greener energy is hard to finance under the hard economic times caused by the global financial crisis for many countries. The crisis has also caused divisions in the efforts to develop unified global effort in addressing the challenge of climate change
The Economic Commission for Africaasserts that the credit crunch has also slowed the world’s efforts of eradicating extreme hunger and poverty. Before the financial crisis in the 2008, the number of people who were leaving in extreme poverty was 1.4 billion. In 2005 and the poverty level was about 27 percent of the global population. The effects of the global financial crisis like the reduction of aid and foreign direct investment has hampered the reduction of the number of people living below the poverty line. There is a good momentum in attainment of the millennium development goals by 2015. However, the financial crisis has made the reduction of global poverty to 920 million by 2015 to be slower than expected. The global financial crisis caused around 50 million people to be in absolute poverty in 2009 and around 64 million are expected to remain in poverty by the end of this year. The World Bank estimates that if the effect of the global financial crunch persists the expected poverty rates by the year 2015 will be significantly higher than expected. If the financial crunch persists then the attainment of the goal of the eradicating extreme poverty is not possible before 2020.
One of the most severe effects of the global financial crisis is the reduction of the global employment rates across the world. The paralysis’s of the financial systems and crippling of many economies around the world has meant that many people found themselves out of employment. The joblessness has necessitated people to venture in vulnerable form employment resulting in increases inn global poverty. The economic downturn resulted in the increase in the employment and population ratio meaning that there is a decrease in the gross national product and decreased output by workers. According to the World Bank, there is a drop in the output of workers since the global financial crisis began in most countries across the world except those in North Africa and Latin America.
The decrease of output by each worker generally has resulted in poor conditions in work and the worsening of the economic crisis. Poor working conditions are associated with the lack of social security and other benefits. Before the crisis began around a third of the workers in developing nations could at least provide for their families even without decent jobs but the situation has changed and the global rates of vulnerable employment has risen to 1.6 billion people. The numbers of people working for less than a dollar a day has increased as well as a result of the global financial crisis the severest impact of the effects of increase in the working poor is in Africa south east Asia and Latin America . In these regions, the number of working poor has increased significantly than other regions. This has occurred due to the fact that before the crisis many workers in these regions were just above the poverty line and the global financial, crisis has made them to fall back to extreme poverty.
In terms of achieving the goal of reducing the number of children who are underweight in developing nations, the global financial crisis has also had its impacts. Between 1990 and 2008, the number of children who were underweight and below five years in age reduced from 31 to around 26 percent. There has been progress made in reducing the prevalence of the underweight across all the nations in the world except in western Asia. The progress has been modest but not enough to meet the needs of the millennium development goals. Reducing the number of underweight children requires concerted efforts that effectively combat malnutrition like the lack of food water and good sanitation. The financial crisis has affected the family factors like increasing poverty levels that may contribute to better feeding and care of children than malnutrition and therefore the attainment of this goal of reducing the number of underweight children has been hampered by the crisis.
According to Burnet, the attainment of millennium development goals of universal free primary education by 2015 is also been affected by the global financial crisis. Major strides have been made in primary education averaging 90 percent in developed countries but hopes are futile for the attainment of universal primary education in 2015. The global financial crisis has not had major impacts on education as it has increased the poverty levels around the world. The global financial crisis has aloe exacerbated the gender gap in employment. After the 2008 financial crisis, many people who found themselves out of job resulted in temporary vulnerable unemployment. The gender gap in all these temporary employments is alarming, as women are not well represented in these jobs. The situation is worse in developing countries where formal employment for women is lowest.
The global financial crisis ahs also affected the school attendance and enrollment in poor countries. Children are more vulnerable to be forced out of school by their parents as a coping measure by families to deal with reduced family income in countries with low income; children are pulled out of school in order to contribute labor in order to improve the family income. These coping strategies are mainly in poor and developing countries as those in developed countries are under more cushion from social and legal nets that guarantee them the access to universal primary education. This may derail the achievement of the millennium development goal of attaining universal free primary education by 2015.In terms of reducing child mortality, significant progress has been made over the years though not fast enough to attain the millennium development goals. The global financial crisis has made it hard to attain this millennium development goal of reducing child mortality because it has resulted in increase in poverty that is a factor in increased child mortality
Marginalized people in the community are the hardest hit by the global financial crisis. The majority who are moistly semiskilled are among the first in lay offs because they work in vulnerable sectors. The ones who are poor and mostly secluded from society the crisis has aggravated child mortality Rates hunger and disease and school drop out by children against the aims of the millennium development goals. Decline in the level of household income leads to school dropouts due to lack of school fees and books.
The effects of the global financial system on health are apparent due to increased levels of poverty reduced family incomes and unemployment and reduced remittance of foreign money are all determinates of the nature of health care and its access. There is a still a wide gap in the achievement of health goals of the millennium development goals the health sector requires increased funding and investments in order to improve the status quos and avoid diseases that can be prevented. The current expenditure in healthcare still falls short of the required minimum; the global financial crisis has led to cuts in fiscal aid to health care, and therefore the attainment of health millennium goals are afar from being achieved. The global financial crisis has made its toll to developing nations because of its effect on the economy. The expansive fiscal environment that was enjoyed by many developing countries had enabled them over the years to invest in public social services and other infrastructural programs that enabled them to make considerable progress in attaining the millennium development goals. The gains made over the years has began to contact because of decrees in the gross national product which may be used for the servicing of debts rather than in initiatives aimed at attaining of the millennium development goals.
The crisis has hampered the millennium development goals of fighting tuberculosis, aids and malaria. The global fund pool that was created in 2002 to fight these diseases has been critical in delivery of health care and treatment for malaria Aids and ARV treatments. 35% of the budget of the global fund is aimed at strengthening the delivery systems of health care like the training of medics. The global fund requires around 20 billion dollars every three years and the funding for the 2011 to 2013 is likely to be affected by the global financial crisis as countries curt their funding to cater for budget deficits. The funding for the global fund may fall short of the expected 20 billion dollars as countries cut spending on their budgets. The reduced funding to the global fund might affect the time it takes to reduce the number of incidences of these diseases to beyond 2015.
The crisis has affected the attainment of gender equality and women empowerment. The crisis has some gender specific implications on women. In countries that have a high level of infant mortality rates and low enrollment of women in school, then the decrease in growth rates has made women more susceptible to the negative impacts of the financial crisis. In developing countries with high infant mortality rates, the fall in household income and continued fall in household incomes because of the financial crisis will ultimately result in an increase in the rates of infant mortality rates. The increased levels of infant mortality rates places another burden on women due to the increased burden of costs of treatment and additional births if the women opt to have other children. Women and...