Few people remember the saying “Poverty is not a crime but a swinish trick.” These days, people in every corner of the planet are aware that poverty is a phenomenon unworthy of a human being. In 2000 Ukraine signed the United Nations Millennium Declaration at the UN Millennium Summit in New York and has therefore undertaken the obligation to reach the Millennium Goals in the sphere of development, topped by the eradication of poverty, by 2015.
Six national goals have been determined for Ukraine. Besides the struggle against poverty, they include the right to a high-quality education during people’s lifetimes, constant environmental development, improvement of mothers’ health and the reduction of the child mortality rate, prevention of HIV-AIDS and tuberculosis, reducing the scope of the spread of these diseases, and ensuring gender equality. The time frame of 2007-08 is exactly halfway to the deadline allotted for fulfilling these obligations.
What has been done so far? Last week the UN Mission in Ukraine invited experts to make intermediate summaries of progress towards the goals defined at the Millennium Summit. Resident Coordinator of the United Nations System in Ukraine Francis O’Donnell said that the unfair distribution of the achievements of economic progress and the growing disparity between the incomes of the poor and the rich, which exist in Ukraine and other countries, may threaten the unity and stability of society. In his view, it is very important that the end products of rapid economic growth be distributed more uniformly. The UN Mission relies not only on cooperation with the government but also increased public awareness of the Millennium Goals and the fact that Ukraine is striving to attain them. The UN hopes to obtain broad support from Ukrainian citizens and is launching an all-sided explanatory campaign with this aim. O’Donnell thinks that the campaign will help to explain and realize the long-term strategies of national development via better public understanding of the initial tasks of the Millennium Goals.
“The fact that Ukraine has signed the UN Millennium Declaration is not only recognition of the urgency of existing problems of human development and their importance of the nation’s further flourishing,” O’Donnell underlined, “but also proof that the state is undertaking responsibility for the status and prospects of the development of human potential. It is time to keep the promises!” He noted that only citizens, parliaments, and mass media are able to bring their governments to account and demand better results in the implementation of reforms, flourishment, and stable growth.
We have to think deeply about this because no particular results have been achieved yet. An interesting and objective view of the situation was provided by Liudmyla Cherenko, the head of the Department for the Study of Living Standards at the Institute of Demography and Social Studies of Ukraine’s National Academy of Sciences. According to Cherenko, it is not possible to provide an exact assessment of the ways that the problem of poverty is being resolved in Ukraine. If you consider that an underprivileged person is one who earns less than 4.3 dollars a day, then we have reached colossal results. In 2001, 11 percent of the country’s population corresponded to this criterion. Today only one percent does. According to this index, Ukraine has already surpassed the limit expected by 2015.
There are other achievements. Thus, only 21 percent of the population has an income lower than the subsistence wage. This is three times lower than in 2000 and 2001. But according to this so-called relative poverty, in these past seven years Ukraine has remained at this level. Like before, this criterion applies to 27-28 percent of our citizens. This is proof, says Cherenko, of both the notable stratification of the population according to income levels and the absence of a purposeful government policy that would further the process of eradicating the poverty level.
“Unfortunately, there is no such policy,” says Cherenko. “The rise of the living standard and reduction of poverty occur in a natural way, without governmental interference.” This expert defines the disparity between living standards in cities and villages as the most “painful” problem in Ukraine. “Rural Ukrainian poverty should be defined as a separate goal,” because according to the national criterion, the level of urban poverty is 21 percent and in the countryside — 38 percent. The problem of poverty in families with children has barely been resolved. “This is a terrible catastrophe for Ukraine,” the researcher believes. “Now parents who work are unable to support even one child. The risks of poverty increase after a second child is born — not the third one, as we are accustomed to thinking.”
