The Difference is Hope

The member nations of the UN are meeting this week in NY with an agenda that includes Iran, Georgia v. Russia, and an American financial crisis with international implications. But what about the UN’s priorities? Those “bottom billion” that the UN pledged to take on with the passage of the Millennium Development Goals, aimed at halving world poverty by 2015, are not at the forefront of this week’s meeting.  

Ban Ki-moon, the UN’s secretary general, is doing his best this week to convince world leaders to circle back to these goals. The program is just over half-way through, and the World Bank recently reported that the number of those living in poverty worldwide has risen from just under 1 billion to 1.4 billion. 

This increase is largely due to an original overestimation of the per capita income in China and India. The number of poor in those two countries now far exceed the numbers in Africa. The difference being that the per capita income in China and India is rising at a rate far higher than those in Africa. Paul Collier points out that this produces the biggest difference between these two worlds: hope. 

“The difference between a poor Asian household and an equally poor African one is hope, not necessarily for the present generation of adults, but for their children. Hope makes a difference in people’s ability to tolerate poverty; parents are willing to sacrifice as long as their children have a future. Our top priority should be to provide credible hope where it has been lacking.” 

He goes on to argue for a readjustment of the Millennium Goals to achieve this. The world has changed drastically since the goals were adopted, and they lack strategy (other than simply throwing aid at needy countries). For example, when the goals were adopted in 2000, there was no mention of employment, increasing employment or unemployment strategies. It was not until 2005 that the language was added. 

Such failures in strategy must be corrected if the Millennium Goals are to be effective in any way. So far, their successes have been limited- there is the same level of poverty today as there was in 1981.  “Let’s not forget, before this recent economic crisis there already was a crisis. Poverty is not being reduced.” (Juan Somavia, director-general of the International Labor Organization)