For­mer Prime Min­is­ter of New Zealand tells the AFP how her job is pro­gress­ing. Helen Clark works for the UN Devel­op­ment Pro­gram.

As head of the U.N.DevelopmentProgram, Helen Clark is arguably the most pow­er­ful woman in the entire UN system.

The for­mer New Zealand prime min­is­ter took over the reins at the world body’s global devel­op­ment net­work last April, the first woman to do so.

Today, the affa­ble and self-assured New Zealan­der over­sees an annual UNDP bud­get of $6 bil­lion and a global army of thou­sands of highly moti­vated peo­ple tasked with spear­head­ing the U.N. drive to achieve eight poverty-reduction Mil­len­ni­umDe­vel­op­ment­Goals by 2015.

“I was look­ing for a new chal­lenge com­men­su­rate with what I had been doing,” she said in an inter­view Tues­day in her spa­cious New York office with a breath­tak­ing view over the East river.

“When I heard that this job was being adver­tised, I sounded out var­i­ous peo­ple and they said: ‘Have a go, you would be ter­rific,’” Clark, 59, added.

“I was the only per­son who came for­ward with my sort of skills,” she said.

“As prime min­is­ter, I got very involved in the Pacific, the pri­mary focus of New Zealand’s devel­op­ment pro­gram. I have been involved with lead­ers of devel­op­ing coun­tries prob­a­bly to a greater extent than most (other) west­ern leaders.”

Clark explained that her organization’s strat­egy is focused on cri­sis pre­ven­tion and recov­ery; good gov­er­nance; poverty reduc­tion and last but not least cli­mate change adaptation.

“Forty per­cent of all invest­ment in devel­op­ment is vul­ner­a­ble to cli­mate change,” she noted.

And the key to rolling back poverty is “capac­ity build­ing, insti­tu­tion build­ing,” she said, cit­ing the old adage: “You don’t give a man a fish, you give a man a rod.”

Clark doesn’t sub­scribe to the notion that UNDP and the donor com­mu­nity in gen­eral have failed “the bot­tom bil­lion,” the world’s poor­est people.

“I look at devel­op­ment from an Asia-Pacific per­spec­tive and what I see in east Asia is that hun­dreds of mil­lions of peo­ple have been brought out of poverty through a focus on growth and trade.

“The trick for me is to take that focus and com­bine it with the human devel­op­ment side of the equa­tion. The ris­ing tide has to lift every­one, par­tic­u­larly those at the bot­tom of the ladder.”

Clark said that despite the finan­cial cri­sis, devel­op­ment aid com­mit­ments from coun­tries such as the U.K., Spain and Aus­tralia remain strong.

And she wel­comes the fact that U.S. Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s admin­is­tra­tion has pledged to dou­ble offi­cial devel­op­ment assis­tance by 2015.

“When I was in Ethiopia in June I was told that Indian invest­ment had gone from a very few hun­dreds mil­lion dol­lars four, five years ago to 4.5 bil­lion dol­lars today. Invest­ment is part of what’s going to drive growth and devel­op­ment,” she said.

She con­ceded that many coun­tries, par­tic­u­larly in sub-Saharan Africa, are off track to achieve the Mil­len­nium Devel­op­ment Goals by the 2015 deadline.

The goals include erad­i­cat­ing extreme poverty and hunger, achiev­ing uni­ver­sal pri­mary edu­ca­tion, pro­mot­ing gen­der equal­ity, reduc­ing child mor­tal­ity, improv­ing mater­nal health, com­bat­ing dis­eases such as HIV/AIDS, ensur­ing envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­ity and cre­at­ing global part­ner­ships for development.

“I’d like to see every­body achieve some­thing,” the ex-prime min­is­ter said.

She also under­scored the impor­tance of pro­mot­ing women’s empow­er­ment in all areas of life, includ­ing agriculture.

“Sev­enty per­cent of Africa’s farm­ers are women…if we can lift the sta­tus of women eco­nom­i­cally through edu­ca­tion there’s going to be con­se­quences that are pos­i­tive right through the chain.”

Like

Unlike