To galvanise support for the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon established the advocacy group in June 2010.
A group of eminent personalities who have shown outstanding leadership in promoting the implementation of these goals, in fields such as education, food, security, health, environment and empowerment of women, were selected for the task.
The idea is to develop political will and mobilise global action to achieve these goals. The target date for total realisation of these goals is 2015. The Fall of the Berlin celebration is one among many programmes that the MDG Group has lent its support to. The basic premise being that when they are united, people can achieve the impossible.
Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr Muhammad Yunus is one among these achieving personalities who is a member of this elite action team. Dr. Yunus, who created Grameen Bank to ensure economic and social development among the poor, especially women, spoke to Gulf News in an interview.
GULF NEWS: What inspired you to become part of the MDG advocacy group?
Dr. Muhammad Yunus: I was invited by the Secretary-General of the UN to become part of the MDG Advocacy Group. I consider the UN Millennium Development Goals as an excellent charter for where we, as a global community, want to see ourselves as human society in the coming years.
Our work in Bangladesh and elsewhere in developing microcredit and social business to help transform the lives of the poor, especially women, has global applicability regardless of culture or context. My work with the Advocacy Group is to see how these experiences can help shape policy and institutions that can effectively address global poverty and other pressing social issues.
GN: Do you realistically believe that the fall of the Berlin Wall 25 years ago will inspire nations globally to cement age old wounds, political and ideological differences given the unhealthy environment of violence which seems to be consuming nations?
Yunus: The Fall of the Berlin Wall was a very powerful symbol of making possible something that was once considered impossible. Even days before the tearing down of the wall, no one thought it could happen. But it did and without a gun being fired. The celebration is about imagining what other walls need to come down in the world, whether it’s the wall of poverty or of unemployment, and then setting to work to tear those walls down too.
GN: Germany is united and yet, 25 years later, people and businesses from East Germany are limping to catch up with Western standards. Why is this so and what needs to be done despite generous support by the Federal government?
Yunus: There were deep differences in the way East and West Germany were run in terms of freedoms that people enjoyed and the choices they could make. It will take time for the East to progress but I have no doubt it will happen especially if we have a framework for equitable development, especially of the kind that I have been espousing through social business.
GN: You have already marked 500 days of the Millennial Development Goals till your 2015 target of addressing poverty. Where does this body stand now in terms of achieving their target?
Yunus: Before the MDGs were crafted, there was no common framework for promoting global development. It was the most important set of decisions ever taken on basis of global consensus with quantifiable goals.
Several global MDG targets have been met. The world is in the process of reducing extreme poverty by half. Bangladesh is a good example in this regard, particularly in poverty reduction. The goal was to reduce poverty to 29 per cent by the year 2015. Two years ahead of time, in 2013, it has been possible to bring this down to 26.2 per cent. Bangladesh has already achieved gender parity in primary and secondary enrolment.
Globally, access to an improved drinking water source became a reality for 2.3 billion people. Disparities in primary school enrolment between boys and girls are being eliminated in all developing regions. Over a quarter of the world’s population has gained access to improved sanitation since 1990.
Of course there is still a lot to be done. But I argue that if we can bring global poverty to half, there is no reason why we cannot take it to zero. Same for all the other goals.
GN: What have been the crucial lessons that you have learnt since you started your landmark movement of providing the poor, especially women, with credit facilities?
Yunus: All human beings are very creative — full of potential, full of energy ... So, microcredit allows them to express it. I came to believe that credit is a human right. I have learnt that people can create their self-employment with the credit; all we need to do is to provide an institutional mechanism to support them. If we can provide them credit to generate income for themselves, they can ensure food security, water security and more importantly education and health care.
GN: Has your concept of microfinance left you satisfied with its progres?
Yunus: As of 2014, the total borrowers of the Grameen Bank number 8.5 million, and 97% of those are women. The experience has been replicated around the world.
But still credit is not yet available to all as conventional banking system dominates today’s financial world. The global number of potential micro-borrowers is estimated to be more than 1 billion, with a total loan demand of $250 billion (Dh918 billion). We need provide them with access to credit.
But we have to go even beyond that. We also need a business model that does not strive to maximise profits but rather to serve humanity’s most pressing needs. Social business offers a workable framework for tackling social issues by combining business. Now I believe we have to substitute current faulty economic system with an actor who seeks self-interest in collective well-being of all and this is social business.
A social business is a non dividend company that solves human problems. It brings the power of business to solve the world’s intractable problems with no intention of making personal profit out of it. We have created a series of such businesses in Bangladesh and around the world.
GN: What is your solution to the economic woes that currently plague Europe?
Yunus: Currently in many European countries, some citizens have been living entire lives while being dependent on state for support; not only this, generation after generation their unwillingness to come out of this dependence persists. The reason behind this is that, state is very active to bring citizens under welfare program while not taking active role to bring out them from dependency cycle. Like unemployment, this is also a human made crisis.
If a fraction of capital out of total sum of money state spends for an individual who is entirely dependent on state, is given as capital for investment, individual would not just come out of dependence permanently, moreover an individual would create employment opportunities for others, keep respective next generation from state dependence and pay income tax to state controlled fund as tax payer.
In Bangladesh, we have started providing equity as social business to help young entrepreneurs creating new business, where other institutions shun them. We believe a social business fund to provide equity to young unemployed in this way to become entrepreneurs can be replicated in other countries including those in Europe where there is very high unemployment. Our program has been running for a couple of years, but has shown very good results so far.
GN: The Nobel Peace Prize has once again returned to the Subcontinent where it is being shared between an Indian and a Pakistani activist … the Nobel Committee’s principal desire was also to ensure that India and Pakistan settle their age-old differences — do you think that this is realistically possible?
Yunus: I believe peace is possible. When we think about the EU, the enmity there was even more deeply rooted and historical than the rivalries between India and Pakistan. There is a good symbolism in sharing the Nobel Peace Prize jointly between an Indian and a Pakistani. Hopefully, this will bring affirmative change. The only way is through greater people to people connectivity and informal and unofficial contacts and activities between private citizens can bridge difference in culture, religion, beliefs and traditions.
