Dear Editor,
United States President Barack Obama, in his final address to the United Nations General Assembly, called on countries of the industrialized North not to abdicate their responsibilities to the poorer countries and urged them to forge meaningful partnerships with developing countries. He also extolled the virtues of democracy and urged nations to respect the wishes of all peoples regardless of race, religion, ethnicity, gender or political affiliation.
This call, though not new, is as relevant today as it was at any period in human history. While on the one hand there has been some progress in lifting millions of people above the poverty threshold, especially in the more populous countries of China, India and Indonesia, as well as several on the African continent, the fact remains that there are far too many people in the world who are forced to live on less than one US dollar a day. The gap in living standards continues to widen with a much greater concentration of wealth in fewer hands. According to an Oxfam report 1% of people in the world own more wealth than the other 99% combined. One should not forget to mention the billions which are deposited in hidden bank accounts all across the globe as the Panama papers have revealed.
The truth is that there are more than enough resources in the world to feed every man, woman and child to their fill, but despite this abundance of resources millions of people go hungry every day. This is indeed the challenge for policy-makers at the global level, namely how to ensure that the wealth created by human labour is distributed in such a manner that everyone benefits from our collective labour.
We are faced with a paradoxical situation where there is poverty in the midst of plenty. Capitalism is strong on the creation of wealth but hopelessly deficient when it comes to distribution of that wealth in a fair and equitable manner. It is this unequal and skewed distribution of wealth that is at the heart of much of the poverty and want that the world is confronted with on a daily basis. I have always maintained that people generally are not poor because they are lazy, but because of the very nature of capitalist accumulation and distribution which rewards capital disproportionately at the expense of labour which is the source of all profits. It is as President Obama described it, “soulless capitalism”.
The problems facing humanity are structural in nature. It is the result of the basic contradictions between the capitalistic mode of accumulation and the socialized nature of production. In other words, it is the private nature of appropriation of surplus value which is in contradiction to the socialized nature of production that is at the root of the problem. The level of exploitation of labour is further exacerbated by advances in production technology which in effect mean that the productivity of labour is increasing but at a disproportionately lower rate than rewards to labour.
I thought of proving a context to widespread poverty in the world which is further compounded by unnecessary spending on wars and conflicts which in turn only create huge profits for the military-industrial complex. The military spending among the leading industrial powers is completely at odds with the development needs of poorer countries. A small reduction in global military spending for instance could release enough development resources to send every child to school and end poverty substantially. The development decade of the 1980s in which developed countries were supposed to have set aside 0.1 per cent of their GDP to aid the development of the poorer countries has come and gone with most, if any country honouring the commitments made.
The point I am seeking to establish is that there is a nexus between development and peace in which the resources which otherwise are utilized to finance wars and conflicts, or what is referred to as weapons of mass destruction could be used instead to promote human development. I believe that money spent on the military is largely unproductive and does not in any way foster a climate of development. Military spending is not a generator or creator of wealth, but is instead a consumer of wealth which in my view leads to higher levels of poverty.
The true cost of wars and conflicts, apart from the deaths and destruction caused, is not so much the actual money spent on them, but as economists would argue, the sacrificed alternative; that is to say the millions, nay, billions of dollars that could have been otherwise spent on improving the quality of life of the people. Can anyone imagine what a great difference it would have made if all those billions were spent on human development, in particular on education, health, water and housing? The world would certainly have been a much better place and the millions of people, in particular our women and children, would have certainly been better off.
This in essence is what the idea of a New Global Human Order is all about. It was the brainchild of the late Dr Cheddi Jagan and was adopted by the UN General Assembly some time ago. It is once again on the agenda of the United Nations for discussion and possible implementation. The support of the Guyana Government through its diplomatic machinery is crucial to lobby UN policymakers to make this dream of a more humane and just society a step closer to realization.
Peace is indispensable for development. And so is democracy. In fact, there is a dialectical relationship between peace, democracy and development. One is impossible without the other. The United Nations needs to do much more to bring an end to the conflicts in the Middle East which have now resulted in one of the most severe humanitarian crises in recent history. One can only hope that new and more enlightened thinking will prevail at the level of global policy-makers in order to bring an end to poverty and for the creation of a new world order based on equity, peace and democracy.
Yours faithfully,
Hydar Ally
