pact.
THE INDIFFERENCE of rich countries to global poverty and their inability to propose even half-hearted measures was clear for all to see even before the UN Summit for Social Development.
Aimed at placing on the international agenda three main issues: Poverty, Unemployment and Social exclusion, the Copenhagen conference was ignored by leaders and by the media.
Now over Unlike the Rio conference on the En- to the UN vironment and the Cairo conference on Poverty gap Population, the issues rich and poor. Ratio of here were of little inincome shares - richest terest to them.
According to a UN population. fact-sheet, one in five people lives in absolute poverty. While most of them are in 30:1 South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, 15 per cent of the population in the United Poorest Richest States and Western 1960 Europe are in this category:
550 million people go to bed hungry each night; 1.5 billion have no access to clean drinking water; One billion adults are illiterate and 550 million children do not go to school. Women are especially affected, comprising 66 per cent of illiterates and 70 per cent of the world's poor.
While the statistics are persuasive in themselves, they did little to move the representatives of the ruling rich who deigned to attend the centre-piece event in the UN's fiftieth anniversary year.
The main commitment that was to have come out of the Summit was the 20:20 com20 per cent of state spending in the Third World and 20 per cent of 'aid' from the Third World. the richest economies should be spent on basic needs like health care, sanitation, education and nutrition.
In the event even this bargain between the plunderers of the world's resources and the rulers of the poor countries who collude with them unemployment by didn't have enough support to become an enforceable obligation. It becomes a recomThe widening gap between South Asia 20%: poorest 20% of world East Asia Middle East & North ATrIca Sub-Saharan Africa Latin America & the Caribbean Poorest Richest Eastern Europe 1991 Source: UN mendation instead, which as The Economist (March 11th 1995) acerbicly commented, "is only binding until the next flight out".
Concerns Meanwhile non-governmental organisations had three concerns of their own: Debt-reduction, Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs), Reform of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.
Total foreign debt now stands at US$1.4 trillion, and interest payments to banks up and administered by the and international financial in- IMF and with slight modificastitutions are greater than tions, the so-called 'Internaflows of loans and grants to tional Bank Reconstruction and Development, or the World Bank.
Fees for health As important and as useful a focus these NGO demands Over 100 countries have had Structural Adjustment are, their moderation and Programmes as their eco- short-sightedness is disapnomic strategy, obliging them pointing. to repay. loans before social Instead of simply reducing welfare spending, creating the debt of the fifteen poorest reducing countries, the public sector, introducing cancellation of all debts of the user fees for health and edu- Third World and Eastern cation services and so on. Europe. Instead of SAPs rePoverty in developing countries Percentage of population below poverty line.
1985 1990 2000 Total foreign debt now stands at US$1.4 trillion, and interest payments to banks and international financial institutions are greater than flows of loans and grants to the Third World. These austerity pIo- designed with a social clause, grammes tied to neo-liberal we demand national budgets reforms, hurt the poor and fa- which are determined by and vour the rich. They are drawn responsive to the exploited for we demand total Life expectancy Life expectancy at birth by development level.
1950/55 1990/95฿ More Less Least developed developed developed regions regions ¡CulUnIs majority. Instead of reform of the IMF and WB which are controlled by the advanced capitalist countries, we demand their abolition. The sad fact is that many of the NGOs, and the governments they justly criticise, are tackling the symptoms of inequalities of wealth between and within countries, and not their root cause - capitalism. While UN Secretary General Boutros-Boutros Ghali and US Vice President Al Gore proclaimed their faith in the "boundless potential of Castro: struggling against effects of US blockade the market", boundless in its ability to cause greater and greater misery to more and more people, Fidel Castro was left to speak the truth.
Lambasting the final Summit Declaration, he said, ''There is no mention of unequal trade, of capital flight or that the developing world is financing the developed world".
Failure
The Cuban leader pointed out that countries following the capitalist path had failed to resolve problems of mass unemployment and environmental crisis. Cuba is the envy of Latin America in all social indicators, in spite of the loss of its main trading partners in Eastern Europe and the effects of the barbaric US embargo.
"In a world where the rich are becoming richer and the poor are growing poorer ...there can be no social development. Where there is no human feeling there can be no human rights."
Copenhagen was a sham. A few crumbs from the master's table was all we were promised - and even that didn't materialise. We want the bakery!