Make Poverty History

A good friend of mine has this saying: If you haven’t been kicked in the shins for a while, you forget how much it hurts.

And she’s right. As time passes, our recollection of events deteriorates; often leaving us with but a few rosy images and the occasion itself fades from actuality into obscurity. Distance is like that too. I can’t conceive of what it’s like in Australia for instance, where everyone is standing upside down, or in places like Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, or Mozambique, where the odds that both of your parents fail to attend your fifth birthday party are 1 in 5, and the likelihood of your brother not seeing his first is worse still — 1 in 4. Which brings me to my point.

This country has responded to the Tsunami appeal with vigor, but only because it seems very real to us. We’ve all had holidays, or known people who’ve had holidays in the affected areas. But the size of this tragedy, which killed approximately 160 thousand people, is paltry when held against the 160 thousand people who die every four days due to malnutrition — that’s just over 14.5 million people a year. Angola, Benn, Chad, The Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, the other 15 countries on the UN’s least developed list, and the 40 countries on the developing list — all suffer from abject poverty, inconceivable to a western mind. Of the 14.5 million who die, 11 million are children with no chance from the start. That’s twice the total population of Great Britain dying every year (source: UN World Health Organisation).

Robbed, Ripped-off and Ruined

In the last few years, the term ‘3^rd world’ has been declared inappropriate because it implies a degree of separation, a ‘them and us’ mentality in which ‘they’ occupy a totally alien world where poverty is an acceptable norm. Instead we now refer to ‘The Developing World’ , which contains an integral implication that these countries, with the help of the Western world, are managing to develop. B*****ks. In the short term, these countries have insufficient money to start up any form of development. Instead they are struggling to pay off massive international debts and the minimal and mis-managed aid contributions of the west in no way alleviate the situation — for every £1 we donate in aid we collect £3 in debt payments. The ‘Developed’ world is continuing to dictate unfair trade rules to developing countries, if not through the front door of the WTO (World Trade Organisation) then through the back door of EPAs (Economic Partnership Agreements). In short, the western hemisphere is denying the ‘Developing World’ any hope of truly developing — now, or in the future.

Drop the Debt

Debt cancellation is the ghost of the 20^th century, the unfinished business hanging over into the future. Despite people campaigning worldwide for the Jubilee 2000 Drop the Debt Campaign, and despite myriad governmental promises, four years on the poorest countries in the world are still spending more on repaying debts than they are on health or education. And the richest countries in the world are still demanding unreasonable, unfair and unjust repayments, with devastating effects for the world’s poor. For example, Bolivia spends more on debt servicing than on health, even though its infant mortality rate is 10 times that of the UK.

Nine years ago poor countries were made a promise. The Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative was supposed to free the poorest countries from their crippling debt burdens, and ensure that no poor country was burdened with an unpayable debt. This promise has not been kept: less than 10% of the total debt owed by the 25 countries on the Least Developed Countries List has been cancelled, with Africa’s debt repayments totaling over $10 billion every year. What little debt relief there has been, however, has made a huge difference:

• In Benin, 54% of the money saved through debt relief has been spent on health including rural primary health care and HIV programmes.
• In Tanzania, debt relief enabled the government to abolish primary school fees, leading to a 66% increase in attendance.
• In Uganda, debt relief led to 2.2 million people gaining access to clean water.

Isn’t it time for the promises to be kept?

More, Better targeted aid

To date, much aid to developing countries has come with strings attached. For example: “we will help you if you open your trade markets, or spend the aid buying specific exports, or privatize your public services and land resources or deregulate your industries”. These conditions are often in contravention of the UN human rights act. This is not acceptable.

Aid contributions to Tanzania came with the proviso that the government privatized parts of their water system. A UK based multinational corporation now owns part of water system of Tanzania, a deal that has increased water prices and made the poor populations more vulnerable to cholera and other water borne diseases. The British taxpayer funded a pro-privatisation advertising campaign promoting this scheme, at a cost of £430,000. This is not acceptable.

In 1970, the United Kingdom committed itself to aid contributions totaling 0.7% of our Gross National Income. Yet again the figures display a dismal failure to keep our word — 35 years on this target has not been met. At the present rate of growth of aid contributions, the 0.7% target should finally be met in the year 2013. This is not acceptable.

The potential benefits of increasing our aid contributions are in no way negligible:

• If the UK met the 0.7% target by 2008, an extra 1.5 million people could be lifted out of poverty that year.
• 8 million lives could be saved every year if minimal healthcare was available in developing countries.

Trade Justice

Ten years ago, rice farmers in Honduras — rice farmers whose farms were wiped out ten years ago when their home market was liberalised. The 5 steps to their impoverishment were:

1. Honduras needed a loan from the World Bank.
2. The World Bank said, “We’ll lend you the money provided you sign up to the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) policies of open borders and promise not to subsidise your farmers.”
3. American rice farmers received more subsidies than their crop was worth.
4. This allowed them to export their rice through the now conveniently open borders of Honduras and sell it at a price half of that the Honduras farmers could offer.
5. The Honduras rice farmers could no longer sell their rice at a profit, so joined the impoverished poor that needed a loan from… (go to step 1).

The top 3 reasons why Honduras couldn’t do anything about it were:

1. Honduras could have walked out of the WTO, but not without having heavy sanctions imposed upon them.
2. Honduras could have protested about the unfair subsidising of American farmers to the WTO, but with little hope of justice, as the WTO is controlled by a group known as the ‘Quad’ (consisting of America, Japan, the EU and Canada).
3. Honduras could also have appealed to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, but membership of these organisations is similar to that of shareholders in a company; the more money you have, the more power you have, and the Quad has the most money.

Honduras is only one example of many. The WTO, at the behest of its more powerful members, is pursuing an aggressive campaign to open up the developing nations’ trade borders, to remove import duties and to stop the subsidising of developing world exports. Theoretically the developing nations could stand against this campaign, as the WTO is a democratic organisation in which each member country has one vote — however, the WTO doesn’t work by voting. Instead, it works by consensus arrangement, a consensus which (perhaps unsurprisingly) is controlled by the Quad. The situation is exacerbated further because each member state is responsible for paying its own costs for its negotiators to be present at the WTO talks in Geneva, costs which are prohibitively high for ‘Developing’ countries. The rich, ‘Developed’ governments maintain permanent negotiators in Geneva and fly in experts as required whilst the ‘Developing’ governments are lucky if they can send one representative. As one exasperated African negotiator told CAFOD:

On an average day there are 10 or 12 meetings, on different issues, all starting at the same time. It’s not workable. They know you are weak and you walk out frustrated. I’ve been attending meetings for four years, and it’s hard to write two lines about how my country has benefited.

The way international trade currently functions indisputably favours the richest countries in the world. By building barricades at our end through the subsidising of local produce, and the imposition of tariffs on imports whilst simultaneously refusing other countries rights to do the same, we are practising a hypocrisy that has to end. This western protectionism (according to the UN) is robbing the developing world of an estimated export income of $2 billion a day — more than enough to repay their debts. Trade policy in the poorest countries should be decided by those countries, so they can truly develop, and not be dictated to them by the richer members of the IMF and the World Bank.

Why is this year so important?

This is the year Britain chairs the G8 summit. This is the year Britain starts its presidency of the European Union. This is the year we have the loudest voice in all the trade conferences that count. The Make Poverty History campaign is demanding we shout for fair trade, for real and effective aid contributions, and for the cancellation of all unpayable debt. This is the year the Make Poverty History campaign — a coalition of over 60 charities including Christian Aid, CAFOD and Tearfund — exists to challenge our politicians to recognise their responsibility to rid the ‘Developing’ world of poverty.

The Marshall Plan

This year Gordon Brown and Tony Blair have presented ‘The Marshall Plan’. This is their first attempt to solve many of the problems facing the developing nations. It calls on the G8 to cancel all unpayable debts and to increase their aid contributions (although not to the promised level of 0.7%). And it calls for the reduction (to half their current levels) of all export subsidies. Unfortunately this is conditional upon the developing nations opening up their markets to western exports and dropping all export subsidies. With this proviso attached, little to no long-term economic progress will be possible and the short-term costs will be staggering. The UN predicts the opening of the markets to subsidised western exports will result in the massive loss of employment and livelihoods (400,000 jobs in Mozambique alone) of people who can’t afford to lose their employment. In a year of change, let’s make sure the changes are the right ones.

What can we do?

The Make Poverty History Campaign is calling for the complete cancellation of the unpayable debt of developing nations. It is calling for more and better targeted aid. And it is calling for the trade-rules to be re-written in a fairer form — a form that gives these countries a fighting chance. The make poverty history campaign doesn’t want your money. It wants your voice. This nation and its leaders will remain apathetic until we all stand up to say individually:

• This isn’t right.
• This isn’t inevitable, nor is it acceptable.
• This isn’t the legacy I want in my name.
• I will not be apathetic to this suffering anymore.

If you want to know more, an informed argument can be found on the website www.makepovertyhistory.org. If you care, then tell your friends, tell your family, write a letter to your politicians (Hugh Bayley, or John Grogan, House of Commons, London, SW1A 0AA), wear the arm-bands available from most international charities in town (including Oxfam), and join the upcoming protests on the 21^st of February, or the week of action beginning on the 16^th of April.

David Jones and Paul Harford