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Al-Ahram Weekly 14 - 20 September 2000 Issue No. 499 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 14 - 20 September 2000 Issue No. 499
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region Interview International Economy Opinion Culture Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Fighting poverty
By Mohamed Sid-Ahmed
In making the theme of its Millennium Summit the eradication of poverty, the United Nations has highlighted one of the main paradoxes our world is living at a time of unprecedented technological progress, namely, the growing disparity between rich and poor. Indeed, the choice of theme is a tacit admission that the human race has lost control of its own destiny and that the new world order has not only failed to alleviate the suffering of wide sections of the global community, but has in many ways exacerbated structural flaws in the worldwide distribution of wealth.
That anyone should be doomed to abject poverty and deprivation in an age of plenty is an unacceptable aberration. The nature of poverty itself is no longer what it used to be. In the past, poverty was a reflection of shortcomings in the means of production available to man and their inability to fulfil his basic needs. Today, thanks to the giant leaps in science and technology, man has access to resources and wealth as never before in history. Thus the objective conditions for the eradication of poverty from the face of the earth are there: what is lacking is the will to distribute wealth equitably. Poverty is no longer due to a defect in our relationship with Nature, to an inability to harness its resources to our benefit, but to a defect in man's relations with his fellow man and his inability to establish a world order under his control.
This means that inadequacies in social organisation are responsible for the existence of still widespread poverty. The failure of the present world order to overcome the source of poverty should be seen from a historical perspective. When the "sovereign state" became the main building block in the structure of world order, it was normal for individual states to become increasingly detached from one another. This allowed wealth to be accumulated in the hands of a few while poverty remained the lot of the majority of societies. But now that globalisation has become the frame of reference, there is no justification for an ever smaller minority to become richer while the poor become poorer.
It is not surprising that in such a context the stars of the Millennium Summit turned out to be not the traditional world leaders, not the permanent members of the security council, not Clinton, Blair, Chirac, or even Putin or Jiang Zemin, but leaders of states often described by the US as "rogue" states that should be isolated, like Cuba and Iran. Challenging America, Khatami declared in his intervention that "nations can no longer be excluded or maginalised under political, cultural or economic pretexts." Bouteflika added that "the laws of the market dominate the field of traditional diplomacy," and warned of the "price humanity would pay if most of it continues to be marginalised in a global society governed exclusively by the profit motive." As to Fidel Castro, he introduced his five minute address by declaring that "chaos prevails in our world, where blind laws are presented as if they were divine norms that should bring us peace, order and well-being... Three dozen rich nations which monopolise economic, political and technological power have gathered us here to serve us the same old recipes whose only effect has been to make us poorer, more exploited and more dependent."
On the threshold of the third millennium, grinding poverty should no longer have to be an inescapable fact of life. There must be alternatives to a globalised world order based on poverty, exploitation and dependency. But to build a new world order which would bring an end to the enrichment of a few at the expense of the many and provide abundance for all would require a fundamental shift in perception towards a world-view that considers man, not capital, to be the core element. This entails transcending the profit motive, even market mechanisms in general, as the main driving force of world order.
If globalisation is unavoidable, surely we can avoid allowing its negative aspects to get the upper hand. Is it inevitable for globalisation to be a repeat performance of the age of imperialism, when a handful of great powers enriched themselves at the expense of colonised peoples who were subjected to poverty, hardship and deprivation, or can we promote the positive aspects displayed by a process that purports to operate for the benefit of humanity as a whole?
The twentieth century witnessed the emergence of socialist regimes as alternatives to capitalism, which attributed to themselves the capacity of overcoming poverty and achieving abundance for all. But these regimes have collapsed, and new efforts are needed to build an alternative system that is neither capitalism nor socialism as we have experienced them so far and which would overcome the division of humankind into a minority becoming richer by the day and a majority becoming even more poor. To my mind, this is the only radical solution to the problem of poverty. However, the New York meeting chose to approach the problem in a different way.
the Millennium summit set itself a number of specific targets: at the top of the agenda, to reduce poverty by half before 2015. This is a quantitative criterion that does not clarify how the target will be met in practice. There was also talk of building partnerships between developed and underdeveloped societies as a way of improving the latter's chances of development. A case in point is the Euro-African dialogue which, though it can be considered a qualitative criterion, is only partial and does not touch on the core of the issue.
There was much talk at the summit about education, and intensifying its expansion worldwide, taking advantage of the information revolution. There was also much talk about raising health standards and halting and reversing the spread of certain diseases like AIDS and malaria. The summit has recommended that a special effort be devoted to improving the lot of children, the custodians of the future.
Present technology can bring about an age of plenty, but can also backfire. Scientific discoveries need not always produce positive results, but can also have negative effects that cannot be foreseen. For example, no one knows for sure what the long-term effects of genetically modified food might be.
In the context of globalisation, the barriers which once kept rich societies comfortably separated and aloof from poor societies have fallen, and the two are now inextricably bound together in what has rightfully come to be called a global village. But how can the quality of life of the inhabitants of one village be so different? And how can rich societies avoid importing the instability and chronic insecurity associated with endemic poverty? The summit's unanimously adopted Millennium Declaration vows "to uphold the principles of human dignity, equality and equity at the global level." In other words, welfare can no longer be limited to a privileged few, but will have to be generalised throughout the world.
However, balanced and equitable development will not come about as long as the profit motive continues to dominate. New forms of social organisation going beyond traditional state organisation are required. it is significant in this respect that NGOs were not allowed to take part in The millennium summit, depriving its deliberations of a democratic ingredient which could have guaranteed that decisions taken at the summit of the world community are not totally divorced from aspirations at the grass-root level. What the new world order needs, in fact, is a central command council made up not only of politicians, but also of scientists, artists, writers and public figures with original ideas in a variety of fields.
Then there is also the need to curb the arms race. Modern technology is incapable of distinguishing between discoveries that are beneficial for the human race and those that are detrimental, a blind spot that is all the more dangerous while reasons to rebel against world order are still potent. Clinton announced a few days ago that the decision on whether the United States will push ahead with the National Defence Anti-Ballistic Missile system would be left to his successor. In washing his administration's hands off the whole affair, Clinton is tacitly admitting that such adventurous and exorbitantly expensive projects need further scrutiny.
The lackluster performance of the leaders of the most powerful states at the summit was particularly evident when it came to issues which, though not on the official agenda of the summit, were nevertheless of deep concern to the world community. Thus Clinton's efforts to set up a meeting between Arafat and Barak failed, proving that once again, discrepancies between how realities are perceived at the top of the world community and how they appear at the grass-root levels are often insurmountable. The New York summit, the largest ever, was more a festival for world rulers than an effective instrument to bring comprehensive solutions to the problems of poverty, disease, ignorance and persistent violence in the world.
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