Monday, June 27, 2005
Live 8: In Support of the Third World
The “Live 8” concert will be in Barrie in just a few short days and many of us have succeeded in getting tickets to what looks like to be an amazing turn out of talented acts. We have heart about the musicians, but have we taken enough time to think about their message? Live 8 is intended to bring forward the message that we, the worlds rich industrialized nations, must do something to alleviate the grinding poverty that is plaguing our planet. The message is that a more just, harmonious and sustainable world is not only possible, it is necessary.
For the past two years I had the opportunity as a Masters student at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania to witness the poverty we hear so little about in the news. In Tanzania I conducted research in Shinyanga region, which is home to one of the worlds largest gold mines. Coincidently it is owned by Barricks Gold of Canada. It was in Shinyanga that I truly realized that there exist two parallel worlds juxtaposed on this same planet. This division exists not between people of different life forms or even species but between members of the same human race. What divides us first and foremost is power which in turn has created a division between those with opportunity and those without opportunity…employment, income, education, healthcare, access to credit, to travel, to live in peace and to speak freely. People in international development have come up with some big ways to explain this…the rich and the poor, the North and the South, the core and the periphery…but what it comes down to is that some people have it good and most of the other people have it pretty bad. And I am not talking about “you have it pretty bad and you go on welfare”, I’m talking about “you have it bad and one little thing like a crop failure or a treatable illness means you die.
It is our responsibility to act as we are the ones who hold the world’s power…economically and politically. Canada is a G8 member, one of the richest industrialized nations on earth. Africa represents a mere 2 percent of the global economy that sees 3 trillion dollars pass over borders every day. What we spend on our pets or on cosmetics in a year is enough to bring about incredible change in the world.
So what are the problems? And what are the solutions?
Trade. Rich countries have set up a complex system of trade that is unfair. We subsidize our agriculture and our industries making it impossible for poor countries to compete. No trade means no income coming into the country. When companies do set up factories overseas they do so in export processing zones (EPZ). These are basically tax free, union free areas handed over to the full control of multinational corporations. The work conditions are bad and a country gains little for having them. Furthermore, products produced in the Third World are primarily in their raw state, such as minerals and agricultural products. Little has changed since colonial times and it takes a lot of banana’s to buy a car. The global community needs to redesign the way it trades. It needs to make trade fair and it needs to nurture the economies of Third World countries rather than exploiting them for short term gains.
Debt. Unfair trade has created a debt problem that will only continue to devastate Third World counties. Rather than trying to fix the problem the International Monetary Fund (IMF) imposes structural adjustment programs to suck the money from education, healthcare and infrastructure and redirect it towards debt repayment. This only further weakens poor countries creating more economic, social and environmental hardships. Just as trade has to be made fairer the debt needs to be dropped so that poor countries can channel that money back to education, healthcare and infrastructure.
Aid. Currently Aid to Third World countries is misguided. Development agencies have made great strides to improve their aid flows, but one major change needs to occur…we must stop using aid as way to promote the trade of our goods and services and actually use it towards assisting growth within the Third World. Currently Canada donates about 0.3% of its budget towards Third World development. However, a great deal of that aid goes towards buying overpriced and/or non-priority items or services that our government just happens to be trying to flog at that particular moment in time. The Third world has to be stopped being used as a dumping ground.
Development. Some say that development “lies on the ruins of the intellectual landscape.” Living in East Africa made that real for me. For the most part the development community in Tanzania consisted of people from richer countries driving around in land cruisers and living in gated communities. Development workers only venture out of their protected neighborhoods for short research trips and spend the rest of their time planning and attending conferences to discuss matters of poverty over tea. Don’t get me wrong. Their research is brilliant highlighting all the problems poor people face and even offer solutions to those problems, but that is where it ends. Nothing is ever truly implemented because that would mean real change. This is evident in the fact that as the United Nations Tribunal for the Rwandan Genocide is wrapping up in Arusha, Tanzania, the U.N. is setting up a new tribunal for the genocide in Darfur. The problem is that no one has even attempted to halt the genocide in Darfur. Shouldn’t it be stopped first before the tribunal? This must be put to an end. The development community must be reinvented from its state of being merely self-perpetuating to something that truly brings positive change in the world.
Corruption. African countries are plagued with corruption at the highest levels and we let it happen. Sure we publicly denounce it, but in secrecy we support it because those leaders are the ones willing to accept our terms of trade and our harsh structural adjustment policies. We must support leaders that are true to their electorate and not to the donors and corporate interests.
HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria. The three big killers of poor people in the third world must be brought under control. I have yet to meet a family in East Africa that has not been personally impacted the death of a relative as a result of the big three. It is destructive to a societies social fabric in so many ways. It impacts peoples incomes, their relationships and their psyche. I have already said that poverty is essentially a lack of opportunity…well disease feeds on those with the least amount of choices and that is why these three big killers are wreaking such having in the Third World.
In order to bring about positive change in the Third World we must do a few things. First of all, we must look deep within ourselves to discover why it is important for us in the rich world to help people on the African continent so many thousand of miles away. The reality is that we are not much different than they are. Sure they are different in colour and culture, but they still have the same needs for family, employment and purpose that we do. They still live on the same planet and share the same ecosystem that we do. Their wealth…socially, culturally, environmentally, politically and economically…also means our wealth.
Secondly, we must recognize and nurture the potential of those living in poverty rather than feeling sorry for them. There are millions of brilliant and vibrant people in the Third World that have the potential capacity to bring about positive change. We must give them the opportunity to do that. We must ensure education, health care, a level playing field and access to credit so that the poor have stable ground to begin from.
Finally, we must find ways to work together. We must find ways to form partnerships. Over the past 10 years I have participated and worked with Canada World Youth international youth exchanges. During my time spent with CWY I have witnessed first hand the positive impact of bringing people together in work and in life. CWY provides an example of how we can reformulate the way we do development. What if we linked people? What if we linked entire communities? I have seen the seeds of this way of pursuing development with fair trade coffee, which links the drinker of the coffee with the grower of the coffee. The potential is enormous. Imagine not just youth going on exchange, but craftspeople, farmers, technicians, administrators, politicians or any average citizen. It would force us to truly engage the issues at first hand rather than accepting something that someone wants on the agenda. It would promote the exchange of ideas. It would bring about greater understanding between cultures. It would strengthen the sense of a common humanity. Overall, it would mean real development!
I have lived, worked and studied in African countries for nearly three years and I have yet to hear one person speak negatively about Canada as a country and Canadians as a people. We have the reputation of being hard working, welcoming and for promoting peace. Even in Lugunga Village in Shinyanga, Tanzania where I was the first white person to visit since the lady from Australia 13 years ago, and where people cannot even find their own country on a map, let alone Canada, they somehow know that Canadians are amazing people and that Canada is a good place to live. This is the Canadian identity around the globe and we must strengthen this identity by meeting our responsibilities to the world…especially those in the poorest parts of it.
For the past two years I had the opportunity as a Masters student at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania to witness the poverty we hear so little about in the news. In Tanzania I conducted research in Shinyanga region, which is home to one of the worlds largest gold mines. Coincidently it is owned by Barricks Gold of Canada. It was in Shinyanga that I truly realized that there exist two parallel worlds juxtaposed on this same planet. This division exists not between people of different life forms or even species but between members of the same human race. What divides us first and foremost is power which in turn has created a division between those with opportunity and those without opportunity…employment, income, education, healthcare, access to credit, to travel, to live in peace and to speak freely. People in international development have come up with some big ways to explain this…the rich and the poor, the North and the South, the core and the periphery…but what it comes down to is that some people have it good and most of the other people have it pretty bad. And I am not talking about “you have it pretty bad and you go on welfare”, I’m talking about “you have it bad and one little thing like a crop failure or a treatable illness means you die.
It is our responsibility to act as we are the ones who hold the world’s power…economically and politically. Canada is a G8 member, one of the richest industrialized nations on earth. Africa represents a mere 2 percent of the global economy that sees 3 trillion dollars pass over borders every day. What we spend on our pets or on cosmetics in a year is enough to bring about incredible change in the world.
So what are the problems? And what are the solutions?
Trade. Rich countries have set up a complex system of trade that is unfair. We subsidize our agriculture and our industries making it impossible for poor countries to compete. No trade means no income coming into the country. When companies do set up factories overseas they do so in export processing zones (EPZ). These are basically tax free, union free areas handed over to the full control of multinational corporations. The work conditions are bad and a country gains little for having them. Furthermore, products produced in the Third World are primarily in their raw state, such as minerals and agricultural products. Little has changed since colonial times and it takes a lot of banana’s to buy a car. The global community needs to redesign the way it trades. It needs to make trade fair and it needs to nurture the economies of Third World countries rather than exploiting them for short term gains.
Debt. Unfair trade has created a debt problem that will only continue to devastate Third World counties. Rather than trying to fix the problem the International Monetary Fund (IMF) imposes structural adjustment programs to suck the money from education, healthcare and infrastructure and redirect it towards debt repayment. This only further weakens poor countries creating more economic, social and environmental hardships. Just as trade has to be made fairer the debt needs to be dropped so that poor countries can channel that money back to education, healthcare and infrastructure.
Aid. Currently Aid to Third World countries is misguided. Development agencies have made great strides to improve their aid flows, but one major change needs to occur…we must stop using aid as way to promote the trade of our goods and services and actually use it towards assisting growth within the Third World. Currently Canada donates about 0.3% of its budget towards Third World development. However, a great deal of that aid goes towards buying overpriced and/or non-priority items or services that our government just happens to be trying to flog at that particular moment in time. The Third world has to be stopped being used as a dumping ground.
Development. Some say that development “lies on the ruins of the intellectual landscape.” Living in East Africa made that real for me. For the most part the development community in Tanzania consisted of people from richer countries driving around in land cruisers and living in gated communities. Development workers only venture out of their protected neighborhoods for short research trips and spend the rest of their time planning and attending conferences to discuss matters of poverty over tea. Don’t get me wrong. Their research is brilliant highlighting all the problems poor people face and even offer solutions to those problems, but that is where it ends. Nothing is ever truly implemented because that would mean real change. This is evident in the fact that as the United Nations Tribunal for the Rwandan Genocide is wrapping up in Arusha, Tanzania, the U.N. is setting up a new tribunal for the genocide in Darfur. The problem is that no one has even attempted to halt the genocide in Darfur. Shouldn’t it be stopped first before the tribunal? This must be put to an end. The development community must be reinvented from its state of being merely self-perpetuating to something that truly brings positive change in the world.
Corruption. African countries are plagued with corruption at the highest levels and we let it happen. Sure we publicly denounce it, but in secrecy we support it because those leaders are the ones willing to accept our terms of trade and our harsh structural adjustment policies. We must support leaders that are true to their electorate and not to the donors and corporate interests.
HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria. The three big killers of poor people in the third world must be brought under control. I have yet to meet a family in East Africa that has not been personally impacted the death of a relative as a result of the big three. It is destructive to a societies social fabric in so many ways. It impacts peoples incomes, their relationships and their psyche. I have already said that poverty is essentially a lack of opportunity…well disease feeds on those with the least amount of choices and that is why these three big killers are wreaking such having in the Third World.
In order to bring about positive change in the Third World we must do a few things. First of all, we must look deep within ourselves to discover why it is important for us in the rich world to help people on the African continent so many thousand of miles away. The reality is that we are not much different than they are. Sure they are different in colour and culture, but they still have the same needs for family, employment and purpose that we do. They still live on the same planet and share the same ecosystem that we do. Their wealth…socially, culturally, environmentally, politically and economically…also means our wealth.
Secondly, we must recognize and nurture the potential of those living in poverty rather than feeling sorry for them. There are millions of brilliant and vibrant people in the Third World that have the potential capacity to bring about positive change. We must give them the opportunity to do that. We must ensure education, health care, a level playing field and access to credit so that the poor have stable ground to begin from.
Finally, we must find ways to work together. We must find ways to form partnerships. Over the past 10 years I have participated and worked with Canada World Youth international youth exchanges. During my time spent with CWY I have witnessed first hand the positive impact of bringing people together in work and in life. CWY provides an example of how we can reformulate the way we do development. What if we linked people? What if we linked entire communities? I have seen the seeds of this way of pursuing development with fair trade coffee, which links the drinker of the coffee with the grower of the coffee. The potential is enormous. Imagine not just youth going on exchange, but craftspeople, farmers, technicians, administrators, politicians or any average citizen. It would force us to truly engage the issues at first hand rather than accepting something that someone wants on the agenda. It would promote the exchange of ideas. It would bring about greater understanding between cultures. It would strengthen the sense of a common humanity. Overall, it would mean real development!
I have lived, worked and studied in African countries for nearly three years and I have yet to hear one person speak negatively about Canada as a country and Canadians as a people. We have the reputation of being hard working, welcoming and for promoting peace. Even in Lugunga Village in Shinyanga, Tanzania where I was the first white person to visit since the lady from Australia 13 years ago, and where people cannot even find their own country on a map, let alone Canada, they somehow know that Canadians are amazing people and that Canada is a good place to live. This is the Canadian identity around the globe and we must strengthen this identity by meeting our responsibilities to the world…especially those in the poorest parts of it.
