U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan reminded the world recently that the battle against terrorism might have displaced front-page news, but it has not solved pressing problems such as poverty and HIV/AIDS. The international community remains formally committed to the goal of reducing the level of poverty from 30 percent to 15 percent by 2015.
Of course, there is a link: Spirit-sapping poverty and income inequality make it difficult to drain the swamp of terrorism.
Policymakers remain fiercely divided over whether the goal of poverty reduction should be pursued through a single-minded focus on economic growth under the assumption that any social consequences will diminish as the prosperity of the country as a whole rises, or whether the domestic and international distributional impact of market-friendly policies, including adjustments for harsh consequences, must be factored into decisions from the start.