The Financial Tsunami Drowning Poverty Agenda

By: Katherine Marshall

October 6, 2008

The most shocking comment for me in last week's Vice Presidential debate was Joe Biden's rather casual suggestion that foreign assistance would be the first budget item to cut in the face of the current financial meltdown. Sadly, there has been no storm of protest, scarcely a whimper from secular or religious leaders. It was another sign that global poverty is plummeting to the bottom of the developed world's agenda once again.

Last month's UN meetings in New York, and a swirl of activities around them, presented the ideal opportunity to review progress on addressing the world's worst poverty, goals laid out during the Millennium Summit in 2000. The stage was set for a full bore review of the Millennium Development goals (MDGs), which Archbishop John Onaiyekan from Abuja, Nigeria terms the Minimum Development Goals (because they are so modest: cut poverty in half by 2015, for example). The deadline to meet the eight goals is 2015, so 2008 is mid-point.

It's clear from mountains of reports that there is progress, but it is halting and insufficient. It takes little hard analysis to bolster the cri de coeur of world political leaders, World Bank presidents, nongovernmental organizations, and community organizers and leaders that the brunt of the current crisis, especially spiraling food and energy prices, is already hitting the poorest people the hardest and eroding progress already made.

There were plenty of New York meetings where MDGs figured on the agenda and some offered real promise, for example the Sept. 25 rallying event about the revitalized global malaria campaign and the Clinton Global Initiative where the entry ticket is financial commitment to addressing central global issues. But the harsh truth is that intense preoccupation with the financial crisis drowned out much of the planned reflections. It would be a real Pinocchio stretch to suggest that the sacred covenant that world leaders agreed upon in September 2000 -- never to forget their promises to work together to bring the world's worst poverty to an end -- was revitalized.

On Sept. 24, I participated in a half-day meeting organized by Religions for Peace, a global interfaith organization, which planned to bring religious leaders together with heads of state to reinvigorate the MDG campaign. Religious leaders traveled from halfway across the world and got seven minutes to make their case. Instead of world leaders they met two government officials, Sierra Leone's minister of trade and industry, and Andrew Steer, director in the UK development ministry, DFID. Both are wonderful people who made moving statements. Steer noted that when he looks at his five-year-old son he can never forget the 10 million should-be-five-year-olds who are NOT alive because they died, mainly of preventable diseases. But these two leaders came to the meeting because they already are converted. The meeting produced a moving declaration stressing the moral imperative of honoring the year 2000 pledges, an important reminder but it's not making headlines.

We are looking for leadership that speaks to our better natures, to the core ethical principles that are the best of what world religions have to offer - compassion and community, building a fair society. So it's sad that foreign assistance is so easily discarded when times are tough at home.

Maybe we should just start with facts because there is so much misinformation about foreign assistance: if Americans are asked how much the U.S. government SPENDS, they are likely (according to many polls) to give estimates around 20%. If asked how much the U.S. SHOULD spend, the answers are often around 10%. The reality? Against a global target for richer countries of 0.7% of GNP, the figure for the U.S. is around 0.16%; yes, the decimals are in the right place.

I don't believe that either Barrack Obama or Joe Biden would jettison foreign assistance, but the fact that the suggestion was made is deeply sad. Surely the goal of helping people living in misery, without hope, should withstand even the powerful financial tsunami we face today.

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