Contents

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• Contents
• 1. Is Mic a meaningful concept?.................
  ........................ 3
  
• 2. Borderline countries.........................
  .............................. 4-5
  
• 3. The importance of Uruguay....................
  ........................ 6
  
  
• 4. Graphs
• Poverty ..........................................
  ................... 7
• Uruguay in the HDI world ranking..................
  .. 8
• Uruguay in the HDI ranking (compared)...........
  9
• ODA...............................................
  ................... 10
• 6. Challenges ....................................
  ................................... 11

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Is MIC a meaningful concept?

• Per capita income is not sufficiently relevant
  for development cooperation.
• The concept of MIC should be substituted for that
  of borderline countries
• Countries with both high human development
  indicators (high educational levels, low infant
  mortality, etc) and severe vulnerabilities in key
  areas
• Low investment and growth rates (the country
  struggles between crisis and growth, which makes
  it vulnerable to external shocks, from the
  economic perspective).
• Institutional weaknesses regarding design and
  implementation of public policies.
• It is easier to understand countriesfrom the
  viewpoint of helping their developmentby
  examining their structural vulnerabilities and
  their effort to overcome them.
• Universal principles of the United Nations and
  its Charter lead us not to exclude any State, not
  even to consider that there is a full stop in
  terms of development. One does not graduate
  from underdevelopment.

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• Borderline countries
• The majority of Middle Income countries are,
  in fact, borderline countries and, therefore,
  cooperation efforts should not be discontinued
  but rather reoriented towards support in those
  areas that represent some risk.
• In the current political and economic context
  the search for national stability and
  predictability represents values shared by
  International Financial Institutions and the
  United Nations System.
• The proposal to focus on borderline issues is
  compatible with the cost-benefit rationale and
  is much more useful in order to determine the
  needs relative to development assistance.
• When structural vulnerability is duly identified
  as borderline, the cost of intervention is, in
  general, considerably lower than the cost of
  overcoming a crisis.

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Borderline countries

• Account for 41 of the world developing
  population whose income is under two dollars a
  day.
• Concentrate 80 of poor population worldwide.
• 85 of the poor in Latin America and the
  Caribbean live in borderline countries.
• 66 of abject poverty in Latin America and the
  Caribbean is found in borderline countries.
• Present the highest levels of inequality.

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The importance of Uruguay

• Serious difficulties to
• - reach sustained and sustainable growth
• - reduce the incidence of poverty
• - reduce inequalities in income distribution
• - strengthen the quality of its institutions
  and policies
• Vulnerable to external shocks.
• Poses two challenges for UN to rethink
  cooperation strategies with this kind of
  countries
• Official development assistance is negligeable
  compared to the amount of public spending.
• MICs Represent a great number of developing
  countries not homogeneous as a group with severe
  inequalities and vulnerabilities.

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Uruguay Poverty ()
Major financial crisis
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Uruguay in the HDI world ranking (1975-2004)
1975
1985
1990
1995
2000
2004
1980
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Uruguay in the HDI world ranking (1975-2004)

1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
2002
2004
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Countries shown here are a selection of those
for which data was available in the whole period.
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ODA as of Public Spending and GDP

Less countries comprised in this category as
data was not available.
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Challenges UN has to face

• How to reprioritise the role of international
  cooperation.
• Identify vulnerabilities and benefits to be
  obtained from cooperation.
• Need to reflect on whether UN will help poor
  countries or the poor.
• If borderline countries are not supported, the
  poor will not be given support.
• Need to resort to other indicators, rather than
  income, to decide whether a country is elligible
  for cooperation or not.
• The relevance of the international system goes
  beyond the importance of financial cooperation
  (specially in the case of Uruguay).
• Need to generate a new paradigm for cooperation
  with borderline countries, the international
  community, and stakeholders should evaluate the
  impactboth local and internationalof each
  intervention when it is able to prevent a
  situation from becoming borderline.
• Instead of classifying countries, the
  interventions of the United Nations System should
  be classified, according to each countrys
  critical needs indicators, on the grounds of the
  conceptual wealth contributed by, inter alia,
  MDG-related activities.
• Contribution to development comes closer to
  becoming a strategic-steps model to consolidate
  development processes by overcoming those
  vulnerabilities that are more likely to become
  critical. This is also consistent with the
  concerns over all aspects of security.

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