A NEW PUSH
Boston Globe Opinion Page
A new push to meet UN’s antipoverty goals.
By Gunnar Stalsett
WITH THE HUGE amounts of money appropriated by Congress and additional billions pledged by international donors to address the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is now evident that if an issue has priority, money can be located. Without question, Iraq and Afghanistan must be rebuilt, but other pressing human needs cannot be forgotten.
As World Bank President James Wolfensohn recently emphasized, the world devoted about $800 billion to military expenditures in 2002, compared with $56 billion in development assistance. To put it another way, UNICEF’s annual budget is being spent on military purposes every 15 hours, even as 1.3 billion people, half of them children, live on less than $1 per day, in almost unimaginable conditions of deprivation.
No reasonable person questions the need to defend against the real threats that exist today. But military experts who have served in Republican as well as Democratic administrations insist that tens of billions of dollars in the $400 billion defense budget that just passed the US Congress are devoted to Cold War-era weapons that could be eliminated without damaging American security. On a smaller scale, the same can be found in the spending of a number of other members of the NATO alliance and of other nations, rich and poor.
While such massive amounts are being devoted to weapons of doubtful worth, the world is losing the war against poverty, disease, and ignorance. All members of the United Nations have endorsed Millennium Development Goals aimed at reducing by 50 percent by 2015 the number of people without access to proper food, water, medical attention, and education. It is shocking to note that it was estimated recently that at present rates of spending, it will take not 12 years but a century to meet these goals.
The stark contrast between the world spending on military purposes and the unmet needs of billions of destitute human beings surely constitutes one of the great moral issues of our time. Authentic human security can only be achieved through determined measures to eradicate poverty and improve conditions on a global level.
In a perilous world where confrontation between elements of the world’s major religions represents a challenge that cannot be ignored, how can we best emphasize our common humanity? A great expansion of resources to address the plight of the poorest on our planet is a proposition on which mainstream religious and secular leaders can agree. Determined action on these questions will find deep roots in every oral and scriptural tradition of the world’s great religious communities.
If the Millennium Development Goals are to be achieved, new approaches must be developed, especially with the tighter budget constraints that now exist in many nations. Such approaches must no longer be regarded as impossible. Creative thinking can make a difference.
Why not put together a brain trust over the next year, consisting of top financial and economic thinkers like Bill Gates and the Nobel-Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen, coupled with people from the developing world, including statesmen like Nelson Mandela, who know the reality of poverty? Together with a cross-section of religious leaders, this group would discuss various promising ideas, such as an international tax on currency transactions proposed by the Nobel Prize-winning economist James Tobin to raise the necessary funds to help meet the Millennium Development Goals. Another is an international bond issue advocated by the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, to raise an additional $50 billion annually for development assistance.
To increase the chances of success, there should be a closer dialogue between major institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund and private organizations ranging from the establishment-oriented World Economic Forum to the activist World Social Forum.
Alternatives should be carefully considered and, where warranted, energetically pursued. First and foremost, the political backbone must be found to create the financial means to address world poverty as a matter of urgency. Reduced military spending can play a vital part in this equation. It is time for people of good will, in all of the world’s religious communities and philosophical traditions, to combine forces to face this great moral challenge of the new century.
Gunnar Stalsett is Lutheran bishop of Oslo and the former deputy leader of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee.
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