Massive suffering of people in a world of plenty is a damning indictment of a political class that, for all its rhetoric, simply does not care enough to take the action needed to abolish global poverty says the author.
The mountains go into labour – and a ridiculous mouse is born. So spoke Horace back in first century BC Rome, but his words could equally well apply to the international community’s efforts to tackle global poverty at the start of the 21st century. Or, to bastardise another famous dictum, never was so little owed by so many to so few.
The world’s leaders gathered at the United Nations in New York last week to review progress towards the Millennium Development Goals set by the international community in 2000. The summit marked the mid-way point towards the 2015 target date for achieving the goals on global poverty, and heads of state queued up to restate the urgency of the cause. Gordon Brown, who has made much of his commitment over the years, castigated the world for its “indifference”. Many of those castigated did the same.
The UN has tried to talk up the aid commitments made at the summit, even as officials cautioned that the sums might have to be scaled back in light of the global financial crisis. The USA was widely condemned for its paltry commitment of just $12 million a year to support African farmers with seeds and planting material. Larger amounts were pledged by other countries, but there was no hiding the sense of anti-climax. Even the major announcement of $3 billion to fight malaria over the coming years is the same as the US spends each week on the occupation of Iraq.
Such gestures are but drops in the ocean of global poverty. Earlier suggestions that the number of people living in extreme poverty had dipped below one billion have been discarded. New figures released by the World Bank reveal that 1.4 billion people are now living at this level of desperate need, or a quarter of the entire population of the developing world. The line is calculated according to what it means to be poor in the very poorest nations on earth, such as Mali, Chad, Rwanda, Ethiopia or Nepal. And the figures do not take into account the latest surge in poverty caused by rising food and fuel prices around the world, which have added at least another 100 million to the total.
Even on the most optimistic projections, the world will still have over a billion people living in extreme want in 2015. The only saving grace is that China has managed, largely without outside help, to lift its huge population enough so that the global target of halving poverty levels may still be met by 2015. Take China out of the equation and the world is set to fall well short on all the main goals.
UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon has singled out rich countries for failing to raise aid levels as promised, and he is right to point out the shortfall between their rhetoric and their record. Gordon Brown stands in the dock with others on this charge. Readers with long memories will recall Labour’s pledge, while in opposition, that it would reach the UN aid target of 0.7 per cent of gross national income by the end of its first term of office. After 11 years of a Labour government the figure now stands at just 0.36 per cent, lower than it was when Labour was last in power in the 1970s.
Yet it is quite wrong to believe that aid will solve the problems of global poverty. For this, far greater structural changes are needed at the international level. Trade rules must be rewritten to allow countries the freedom to develop their economies in their own long-term interests, not according to the predatory demands of European and US companies. This means putting an end to the stalled Doha round of world trade talks, which threaten to throw millions more into poverty. It also means halting the new bilateral negotiations that Peter Mandelson has launched with developing countries in his role as EU trade commissioner, which have the potential to be even more damaging.
The world also needs a radical reorientation of finance flows in favour of development. Complete cancellation of third world debt remains a priority which is long overdue, given that developing countries still repay five pounds to the rich world for every pound they receive in aid. Action to curb corporate tax dodging is equally crucial. Developing countries are currently denied up to £250 billion each year in taxes owed them by multinational corporations, and UN calculations show that such revenue would enable even the poorest countries to meet the Millennium Development Goals.
Some of these problems require global solutions. Yet much can be done at the national level, and Britain is well placed to take a lead. Many of the tax havens used by multinational corporations to rob poor countries of their dues are British territories such as the Cayman Islands and Bermuda, or crown dependencies such as Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man. The UK government could take immediate action against them over their role in facilitating corporate tax dodging, but has signally failed to do so. Similarly, a minimal stamp duty on sterling currency transactions could raise billions for the world’s poorest countries, yet Gordon Brown has consistently rejected it.
The UN secretary-general has called for another summit in two years’ time to reassess progress towards the Millennium Development Goals. It is indeed worth reminding people of the scandal of global poverty, but gathering world leaders together to announce ‘business as usual’ is missing the point. Our political leaders must finally recognise that justice for the world’s poor requires decisive action to change the global economic landscape. Sadly, for all the rhetoric, they are just likely to offer us more of the same.