UNICEF Speech: Inequalities is not a choice – it’s a moral and practical necessity

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Speech: Inequalities is not a choice – it’s a moral and practical necessity
Anthony Lake, UNICEF Executive Director
Global Consultation on Addressing Inequalities in the Post-2015 Development Agenda
COPENHAGEN,
19 February 2013

Excerpt
…So we can ― we must ― put a renewed focus on equity in all countries, because pursuing equity is not only right in principle ― it’s right in practice.

First, because it is cost-effective to do so in our programmes. In the race to achieve the MDGs, many countries and many development agencies have naturally focused on those children, families and communities that are the easiest to reach ― the ‘low-hanging fruit.’ Helping the neglected, excluded and under-served is, by definition, ‘harder’ ― and may be more expensive, at least in the short term.

But a UNICEF analysis has found that working in the most disadvantaged communities, focusing on the hardest-to-reach children, yields the most cost-effective results. The additional results usually outweigh the additional efforts and costs. An extensive modelling exercise showed that in the poorest countries with the highest burden of under-five mortality, a pro-equity approach could save up to 60 per cent more children per dollar than through our current approach. In other words, when we invest in equity ― and equitably in people ― we get better, more cost-effective results for our investment.

Scaling-up immunizations is a good example. Two studies by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health show that if we scaled up the use of existing vaccines in 72 of the poorest countries, we could save 6.4 million lives, and avert US$6.2 billion in treatment costs and US$145 billion in productivity losses over the next decade. This, necessarily, would include a focus on getting vaccines to those who are not now covered ― almost 20 per cent of the world’s population. The ‘fifth child’…the forgotten children. Indeed, polio is now making its last stand in some of the hardest to reach places in the world, where many of these children live.

Which leads me to the second reason why equity is right in practice ― because it spurs long-term, sustainable growth. Highly unequal societies grow more slowly and erratically than more equal ones…

http://www.unicef.org/media/media_67945.html