Chris Stephen: Securing the promise of world leaders

IMAGINE if our politicians were forced, on taking office, to hand in a written document listing firm, measurable commitments on which they could be judged come the next election, rather than rely on vague manifesto promises?

It won't happen, of course, but something similar is going on in the wider world, as results come in of promises made by the governments to eradicate hunger and poverty made ten years ago this week.

The headlines have focused on the number of states missing their targets, and certainly tales of woe are not hard to find. World hunger, which affected 20 per cent of the population in 1990 and dropped to 16 per cent in 2005, is back up to 19 per cent now.

The goals are best seen as a sort of Global Report Card, the very language used in an authoritative progress report by Britain's anti-poverty think-tank, the Overseas Development Institute. The ODI report card allows the governments of the world to be judged: Those deserving gold stars, those who could do better, and those who should be kicked out of class.

Given the turmoil and economic chaos around the world, this report card provides a surprising number of gold stars. China and India, for instance, have converted at least some of their booming prosperity into help for the deserving poor. And there are some surprises; Ethiopia, who's famine was the trigger for Live Aid all those years ago, and which is undergoing political turmoil, has slashed poverty from 61 per cent to 29 per cent. Then there is Ghana: Its claim to be Africa's poster-boy after political and legal reforms is bolstered by figures showing it has slashed poverty by three-quarters

This does not mean idealism has broken out among the diplomats. At the Padre Giglio Steakhouse, UN delegates take time off from earnest debates about tackling world hunger to tuck into expense-account black truffles.

But a least, as UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said yesterday, the goals provide what amounts to a "promise of world leaders".