Are we losing the fight against poverty?

Wook

(taken from the BBC homepage)

The rich world is running out of time to honour its pledge to lift hundreds of millions of people out of extreme poverty by 2015.
Despite a concerted effort over the past three years, one billion people still live in extreme poverty and some countries have recently begun to get poorer still, according to the UN Development Programme (UNDP).

In its Human Development Report 2003, the UNDP says poverty is not inevitable, but only if poor countries introduce reforms and rich nations respond with improved trade and aid.

Do you think we are doing enough to combat poverty? Should richer nations write off the debt owed to them by the world's poorest countries? Should foreign aid donations be increased? Are poor countries doing enough to help themselves?

Washout

Dont think the 1st world nations can help the third world overnight.

IN order for 3rd world countries to come out of poverty they first have to create viable working economies. and surely thats what intl bodies such as the UN would try to be achieving.

We all know of the exploitation by the capitalist world of third world countries for their products such as coffe buy it on the cheap and sell it for huge profits.
This i beleive is the first thing that needs to be sorted out before poor countries can even begin to think of coming out of poverty.

Giving aid of course helps but is only a short term solution to a long term problem.

bloggs

I will probably get slammed for this, but shouldn't it start with the nations themselves, some of the poorest African nations are spending millions on weapons for pointless wars, why India and Pakistan have the nuke, wouldn't it be better to spend the money on feeding the poor? I don't have a link to the info, but i remember reading that Uganda or Sudan, were spending 1million dollars a day another pointless war about 10 years ago, while it's people starved.

This is hardly the fault of the West, perhaps the west can put pressure on this governments to reform?

In regard to the 'drop the debt' campaign, i don't see how this can help, as when the countries loose their debt, it will just mean they have more money to buy arms.

Take Liberia for example, the rebels had money to buy weapons, but wouldn't buy food for the people they claim to be rebelling for?

Zombrex

Originally posted by bloggs
In regard to the 'drop the debt' campaign, i don't see how this can help, as when the countries loose their debt, it will just mean they have more money to buy arms.

Well that is a bit of an unfair generalisation. Not every country in Africa or the Third World is in the middle of a civil war. If they were they probably wouldn't be paying back the debt anyways.

I do agree though that these countries really have to sort themselves out, there isn't a whole lot the west can do apart from give peace keeping support and financal aid (I support drop the debt). I think American policy of imposing democracy in troublesom countries is shortsighted and creates many additional problems.

buttons malone

IN order for 3rd world countries to come out of poverty they first have to create viable working economies.

We all know of the exploitation by the capitalist world of third world countries for their products such as coffe buy it on the cheap and sell it for huge profits.

Yes both of those problems contribute to the poverty but the REAL PROBLEM is the quality of African political leadership.
There are many ruthless and tyrannical dictators who have embezzled millions of pounds which has resulted in poverty, huge debt, the AIDS epidemic and illiteracy.
These dictators have also murdered thousands of innocent Africans. The likes of Robert Mugabe and Charles Taylor spring to mind.
We can give all the aid in the world and abolish all the debt but what MUST be done first and foremost is to remove these evil dictators from power.

Kell

So long as we live in societies dominated by money greed and figuring out how to stand on your brother rather than help him, the situation wont improve.

A toilet attendent in the Odeon imparted a very simple personal moral of his to me which I am glad to say I have adopted. If you see someone worse off than yourself, give them what you can. If everyone adopted said attitude, we might just improve things on a small scale.

I could go on for ages, but I wont.

K-

bonkey

Originally posted by bloggs
I will probably get slammed for this, but shouldn't it start with the nations themselves, some of the poorest African nations are spending millions on weapons for pointless wars,

And who sells them the weapons?

jc

Capt'n Midnight

Worlds richest 500 people (a plane load) hold more wealth than the poorest 2,000,000,000

The worlds fiftieth biggest coprotation is richer than the 50th poorest country. (ok some small countries in there but..)

Both Bill Gates and I are richer than 40% of americans.

---

One has to remember the reality of the american dream is to be subsidised by many others. (eg CO2 emissions trade agreements - intellectual property , foreign sweatshops etc.)


PS
RE:
Our nearest galaxy is 30million lightyears away, that's about 170294400000000000000 km
Wow!

Actually it will be a lot closer - we will collide with Andronemda in a few billion years !

Wook

you can hardly blame 'ethnic cleansing' to us?
All my life i have been asked to donate money to Africa, i have never seen ANY improvement. Drop the debt is just an excuse to make more debts.
Would it not be ok to just leave those countries and have them sort things out themselves ? Like we did in medieval times ?

On a sidenote: why do those rich Black Africans musicians never do a benefit concert like band-aid ?

bloggs

Originally posted by bonkey
And who sells them the weapons?

jc

Does it really make any difference? People will buy weapons of who ever sells them. If it isn't America, it's Russia, China, Sweden etc.

Capt'n Midnight

During the Iran-Iraq war (the deadliest one since Vietnam) there were about 34 countries selling arms to both sides. - Other countries only sold to one or the other.

This is one reason why the chineese embassy got hit in the balkans...

Note: Iraq were still friends despite the attack on the USS Stark.

Have a look at how much Israel gets from the US in military aid - enough to wipe out poverty in the middle east (at least if you could share it out).

Ethopia was exporting food during the famine - this is probably still true in similar regions. Then there is the whole GMO food aid thing...

bloggs

Originally posted by Capt'n Midnight
During the Iran-Iraq war (the deadliest one since Vietnam) there were about 34 countries selling arms to both sides. - Other countries only sold to one or the other.

This is one reason why the chineese embassy got hit in the balkans...

Note: Iraq were still friends despite the attack on the USS Stark.

Have a look at how much Israel gets from the US in military aid - enough to wipe out poverty in the middle east (at least if you could share it out).

Ethopia was exporting food during the famine - this is probably still true in similar regions. Then there is the whole GMO food aid thing...

Israel get's 3.5billion in 'aid' each year. Bush pumped this up to 5 billion (i think) sorry i don't have a link. The problems of the middleast could be solved very quickly if this 'aid' was cut, and Sharon was brought into line.

shotamoose

Originally posted by Wook
Do you think we are doing enough to combat poverty?

No. Although we in Ireland are doing more than most.

Should richer nations write off the debt owed to them by the world's poorest countries?

Yes, at least most of it. (see below)

Should foreign aid donations be increased?

Yes. Aid has declined over the past decade, too much of it still goes to relatively well-off countries, and too much of it is 'aid' in the sense of "here's some money to buy our products". Rich countries pledged long ago to give 0.7% of their GNP to poor countries as development aid, but the present average is 0.24% (Ireland is at 0.41%). Yet we ask them to give us far higher proportions of their income in illegitimate debts.

Are poor countries doing enough to help themselves?

Perhaps not, but wouldn't you think it was strange if someone who had just mugged you asked you that?

Originally posted by Wook In regard to the 'drop the debt' campaign, i don't see how this can help, as when the countries loose their debt, it will just mean they have more money to buy arms

Guess what, you're way off. In the ten countries who have received debt relief under the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) programme and for whom data is available, health spending has risen by 70% and is now 1/3 higher than spending on debt repayments, whereas previously expenditure on debt repayments was twice as high as expenditure on health. Many, many lives have been saved as a direct result of debt relief. What's more, in the countries that received debt relief, researchers found no increase in military spending.Here's a link to the research

originally quoted by buttons malone both of those problems contribute to the poverty but the REAL PROBLEM is the quality of African political leadership. There are many ruthless and tyrannical dictators who have embezzled millions of pounds which has resulted in poverty, huge debt, the AIDS epidemic and illiteracy. These dictators have also murdered thousands of innocent Africans. The likes of Robert Mugabe and Charles Taylor spring to mind.

Well. Mugabe and Taylor did many bad things, but I think blaming them for AIDS and illiteracy is a bit much. They probably didn't help in either case, but you're not going to see AIDS, illiteracy, or indeed poverty or debt disappear from Africa once both are gone. If only. You're right that Africa has suffered from dictators, but many of the countries which suffered so in the past are now democracies. Yet we are in effect punishing them for democratising by demanding they pay us back the debts those dictators racked up, debts the dictators ususally didn't bother repaying themselves.

Please name the dictators that are currently lording it over the rest of Africa, since that is the REAL PROBLEM facing the continent. Otherwise, how can you justify tarring Africa's entire political leadership with the brush of Mugabe and Taylor? But don't worry, you're just the latest in a long line of respectable people who have found comfort in the notion that the poverty of the poor is entirely their own fault.

Here's some of my thoughts on the situation.

The problem (or at least one of the very major ones) is that people in Europe or America didn't just wake up one morning and create functioning, succesful democracies with extensive legal and commercial systems, agreed cultures of civic responsibility, comprehensive tax and welfare systems, independent institutions to foster checks and balances, and all the other things that make up a modern state but which we take for granted. They evolved over centuries, and they cannot simply be wished into existence.

The business of government is much harder for poor, mostly rural countries with bad transport and communication and god knows how many linguistic and ethnic boundaries than it is for developed countries. So if we want these countries to have the insitutions and infrastructure that are necessary for fully funcitoning modern states, they're going to have to spend a lot of money (In many ways they should really be spending more per capita than we do on health (especially with AIDS rampant in so many places) and education) .But where are they supposed to get this money? Most African countries depend for foreign currency on aid, tourism and commodity exports. Commodity prices, though, have been in decline versus costs of manufactured imports for a very long time and are likely to continue in that direction.

At the same time, many African countries spend very high proportions of their income on servicing historic debts. After WWII, the Allies decided that Germany could not be expected to pay yearly debt servicing of more than 3.5% of its exports (rates of 13-15% after WWI were credited with helping give rise to Hitler). Now Germany, along with the US, UK and other big cheeses at the IMF and World Bank, say that a poor country spending 20-25% of its exports on debt servicing is sustainable, and that's after it jumps through all the necessary hoops to 'qualify' for debt relief. Similarly, rich country donors decided to cap Indonesia's debt service level at only 6% of exports after it's government was overthrown by a military coup and Suharto had begun his massacres of hundreds of thousands of people.

Excuse me while I belabour the point: We are demanding that the poorest countries in the world pay us money at a rate we considered unacceptable for post-war Germany and for a murderous military dictator.

And why should they owe us? Why should Indonesia or Brazil, for example, have to pay off debts racked up, with the gleeful connivance of rich country bankers, by the military dictatorship they suffered in the seventies? One-fifth of all developing country debt consists of loans given to prop up compliant dictators, yet we're still asking for this back.

If rich countries cared a fig about justice or development in the Third World, they would cancel hundreds of billions of dollars worth of outstanding debt right now. When they do that - when we stop bleeding these people dry - THEN they can start to talk about how developing countries are to blame for their own poverty.

bonkey

Originally posted by bloggs
Does it really make any difference? People will buy weapons of who ever sells them. If it isn't America, it's Russia, China, Sweden etc.

Ah...but my point was that if the world stopped selling them the weapons, then they would no longer be able to spend those millions on said weapons.

jc

Moriarty

Originally posted by shotamoose
Well. Mugabe and Taylor did many bad things, but I think blaming them for AIDS and illiteracy is a bit much. They probably didn't help in either case, but you're not going to see AIDS, illiteracy, or indeed poverty or debt disappear from Africa once both are gone.

Zimbabwae used to be a prosporus self-sustaining country. Mugabe has utterly destroyed the nations economy. Zimbabwe used to be the "bread basket" of the region, now it can hardly feed its own people. There were local family planning clinics in many small villages which effectivly prevented STDs and kept the population from exploding. Now, with funding almost completly cut for these clinics, hiv infection and the birth rate has rocketed as a direct result of the regimes incompetence. The Mugabe regime hardly acknowledges theres a problem.

shotamoose

Originally posted by Moriarty
Zimbabwae used to be a prosporus self-sustaining country. Mugabe has utterly destroyed the nations economy. Zimbabwe used to be the "bread basket" of the region, now it can hardly feed its own people. There were local family planning clinics in many small villages which effectivly prevented STDs and kept the population from exploding. Now, with funding almost completly cut for these clinics, hiv infection and the birth rate has rocketed as a direct result of the regimes incompetence. The Mugabe regime hardly acknowledges theres a problem.

Fine. I'm sure Morgan Tsvangirai or almost anyone else would do a much better job of ensuring food production and health treatment. But AIDS isn't just a problem in dictatorships.

Moriarty

Originally posted by shotamoose
Fine. I'm sure Morgan Tsvangirai or almost anyone else would do a much better job of ensuring food production and health treatment. But AIDS isn't just a problem in dictatorships.

The point is AIDS wouldnt have been a major problem for zimbabwae if the systems that were in place more than 20 years ago had simply been continued.

shotamoose

Originally posted by Moriarty
The point is AIDS wouldnt have been a major problem for zimbabwae if the systems that were in place more than 20 years ago had simply been continued.

That's quite an assumption - AIDS is also a major problem in countries which are making concerted efforts to combat it, such as Uganda. But since I don't know anything about Zimbabwe's previous health system I'll take your word for it.

buttons malone

Mugabe and Taylor did many bad things, but I think blaming them for AIDS and illiteracy is a bit much.

I don't think so. The millions of pounds they stole could have been spent on schools, teachers, books, through which, many africans would have received education and this would have reduced the illiteracy level. They could also have invested in medicine to prolong the life of aids victims and ease their suffering and also provide information on AIDS and the causes which would have reduced the spread of it.

But don't worry, you're just the latest in a long line of respectable people who have found comfort in the notion that the poverty of the poor is entirely their own fault.

I said it's the fault of the political systems.

Please name the dictators that are currently lording it over the rest of Africa, since that is the REAL PROBLEM facing the continent. Otherwise, how can you justify tarring Africa's entire political leadership with the brush of Mugabe and Taylor?

There are only about 13 African democracies in existence now. Some of these would not even meet a proper definition of a democracy. Senegal is an example. Technically, it is a multiparty system but the opposition parties are too small and numerous to challenge the dominant party's lock on power. I agree with you that all debt should be erased but it won't solve all the problems. You are convinced that only external factors are to blame, I disagree. Internal factors such as systematic corruption, economic mismanagement, political tyranny and senseless civil wars are also a prime culprit for the deterioration of Africa.

shotamoose

Originally posted by buttons malone
You are convinced that only external factors are to blame, I disagree. Internal factors such as systematic corruption, economic mismanagement, political tyranny and senseless civil wars are also a prime culprit for the deterioration of Africa.

You mustn't have read my post, in which I listed lots of internal problems African countries face. Corruption, mismanagement, political tyranny and war are also problems, but these are as much the results of poverty as its cause - they're all ingredients in the poverty trap. So, yes, I find it harder to pin the blame on the people in the poverty trap - except when there's obvious deliberate malice or greed at play - than on the people who could take simple, straightforward steps towards significantly easing that poverty. Debt cancellation would not be the answer - there's obviously no simple solution - but it would be a hell of a start.