POVERTY
Over half of the world population lives in poverty; a situation particularly affecting women and rural areas. Eradicating poverty and hunger is the first of the Eight Millennium Development Goals adopted by the UN in 2000 for achievement by 2015.
Poverty implies a worsening of living conditions, meaning less food, education, health care or access to drinking water. The distribution of resources is enormously unfair: 10% of the planet enjoys 70% of its wealth.
Between 1990 and 2004, extreme world poverty dropped by 21%, according to the World Development Indicators 2007 published by the World Bank. This study attributes the drop in poverty, on the one hand, to the “respectable” average growth of the per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which has risen by an average of 3.9% since 2000 and, on the other hand, to the massive reduction of misery in China during that period.
Despite this apparent improvement, almost 1,000 million people (1 out of every 6) survive on less than a dollar a day. Not only that; but almost half of the impoverished world population lives on less than $2 a day.
World military expenditure in 2005 stood at $900,000 million. However, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation can’t find the $24,000 necessary to reduce the number of people suffering from starvation and thus meet the essential Millennium Goal.
Every year 11 million boys and girls die (mostly under the age of 5). More than 6 million of these deaths are the cause of illnesses that can be prevented and easily cured, such as malaria, diarrhoea and pneumonia. In Sub-Saharan Africa, life expectancy has dropped since 1990 from 49 to 47 years of age as a result of the high rate of child deaths and AIDS. In countries like Malawi, one out of every five inhabitants is HIV-infected.
The amount of money paid by impoverished countries to the richer ones by way of “foreign debt” prevents them from being able to invest and obtain resources for putting an end to the poverty. The UN calculates that only a quarter of this “foreign debt” would guarantee access to basic education, health care infrastructures, appropriate nourishment and enough drinking water for all human beings.
In the 70s, the rich countries undertook to allot 0.7% of their national wealth to Official Development Aid; a feasible measure aimed at reducing poverty. Thanks to this economic support, it has been possible to school millions of boys and girls in Tanzania, Kenya or Zambia, and health care has doubled in Uganda. This said, in world terms, ODA currently stands at 0.25%. It has never reached the agreed 0.7% in almost four decades. In 1990 it peaked at 0.3%, only to drop again.
Some figures are simply scandalous: universal primary education costs $10,000 million a year; less than the population of the US spends on ice-cream. The reproductive health service (for women at the moment of giving birth) costs $12,000 million a year; the same amount that we spend on perfume in Europe and the US.
Now at the equator of the date set for their fulfilment of the Millennium Goals (2015) by the 189 countries represented at the UN, the lack of will shown by the most economically and politically powerful countries has little in common with the proclamations of the so-called Millennium Declaration.
If nothing is done about this situation, another 247 million people will be added to those already living in extreme poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa. 45 million girls and boys will die due to avoidable causes. 36 million people will perish from tuberculosis, 74 million from AIDS and thousands of women will die in childbirth. 97 million children (of whom 57 million will be girls) will still have no schooling. In other words, the wealthiest countries fill their coffers at the cost of the poorest ones.
Giza Eskubideen Aldarrikapena
http://www.unhchr.ch/udhr/lang/bsq.htm
Euskadiko GGKEen Koordinakundea
http://www.ongdeuskadi.org/principal_e.asp
Plataforma Pobreza Cero
www.pobrezacero.org
Organización de Naciones Unidas para la Agricultura y la Alimentación
www.fao.org/index_es.htm
Informe: Pobreza infantil en países ricos 2005
www.unicef.es/contenidos/276/REPORT6-E-2005.pdf
Fondo de Naciones Unidas para la Infancia
www.unicef.es