Introduction
There is universal
consensus that global poverty is a major issue that must be addressed. There
are those who wish to address the issue through private charitable
contributions merely touching the surface of this problem on a world scale.
There others who believe each individual state must address the issue, and only
in cases of major natural disasters and serious epidemic outbreaks should the
international community be involved.
There are those who
see NGOs and churches as the solution, although both have their own
self-serving agendas just as do billionaires in providing aid. Then there is
the United Nations trying to coordinate a global effort under the Millennium
Development Goals (MDG), which has been around for fifteen years and declares
itself a success in a number of domains. Finally, there is the segment of
analysts who argues that poverty is a social justice issue and must be placed
in its proper context as such. This means eliminating the root causes of poverty,
inequality, and social injustice in general. In this very brief essay, I
examine the UN-MDG program and its claims of success against the empirical
evidence of chronic systemic poverty and absence of social justice.
UN-MDG Goals
In 2000, all members
of the United Nations agreed to launch a program to combat global poverty and
address related issues by setting goals I have delineated below. In its
website, the UN makes the following sweeping claim of its goals.
The Millennium Development Goals, (MDGs), are the most successful global
anti-poverty push in history. Governments, international organizations, and
civil society groups around the world have helped to cut in half the world’s
extreme poverty rate. More girls are in school. Fewer children are dying. The
world continues to fight killer diseases, such as malaria, tuberculosis and
AIDS. There are about 500 days to accelerate action on issues such as hunger,
access to education, improved sanitation, maternal health and gender equality.
On 20-22 September
2010, the UN celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Millennium Development
Goals (MDG) program. This was with the intention of taking stock of the
progress made thus far and to urge governments and the private sector to help
meet the ambitious goals by the target date of 2015. When time came to
implement the UN MDG goals, the wealthiest countries opted not for economic
development that would alleviate the root causes of the problems as the member
states agreed, but rather debt relief that would pay off the creditors mostly
in the G-7, provide military aid because it entails G-7 defense contractors
secure the contracts for weapons sales, and natural disaster relief that
targets large commercial operations where foreign capital is involved. Despite
this reality, the UN takes credit as its statement above indicates for progress
in achieving stated goals.
The eight goals that
140 leaders from around the world came together to discuss in New York,
include:
1) End poverty and hunger.
According to some studies, the
number of people living on less than $1.25 a day has been reduced from 1.9
billion in 1990 to 836 million in 2015. The World
Bank estimate that the number of people living under $1.25 per day is 1.2
billion, while British-based Overseas Development Institute (ODI) places
the estimate at 1.5 billion and more than 2.5 billion live on $2 per day. In
short, one-third of the world’s population lives below the poverty line. If the
poverty line is set at $5 per day, then more than 4 billion people live under
such conditions. The absolute value of the dollar amount is not as significant
here because $5 dollars per day in sub-Sahara Africa has a much higher PPP
value than it does in New York City. The issue is that the US anti-poverty
program goals remain elusive, even by the most optimistic count. In the absence
of addressing the structural impediments to social justice, the rich-poor gap
will not be closed as the UN MDG goals promise.
2) Universal primary education.
Global out-of-school
children stood at 100 million in 2000 while it is at 58 million in 2015. This
is a remarkable achievement, although this is hardly the result of the UN MDG
program. In fact, local and national government programs are largely
responsible for this achievement, despite lingering endemic poverty. It is
evident that there is a direct correlation between poverty and education,
considering that the funds the international community devotes for universal
primary education in the developing nations are hardly sufficient to address
the problem.
3) Gender equality and empowering women.
90% of countries have
more women in their representative bodies (parliament, assemblies) in 2015 than
in 1995. In 1995, there were 11.3% women parliamentarians while in 2015 the
percentage rose to 22. However, this is hardly because of the UN-MDG program
and more a function of national politics, with northwest European countries
having the best representation because of their cultural-political commitment
to gender issues, while Europe, excluding Nordic countries, the Americas and
sub-Sahara Africa have female representations in the mid-20s.
4) Reduce child mortality.
Global number of
deaths under the age of five was at 12.7 million in 1990, while it stands at 6
million in 2015. According
to the World Health Organization: “6.3 million children under the age of five
died in 2013; More than half of these early child deaths are due to conditions
that could be prevented or treated with access to simple, affordable
interventions. Leading causes of death in under-five children are preterm birth
complications, pneumonia, birth asphyxia, diarrhoea and malaria. About 45% of
all child deaths are linked to malnutrition. Children in sub-Saharan Africa are
more than 15 times more likely to die before the age of five than children in
developed regions.” http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs178/en/
The UN-MDG program has
asked member states to commit to strategies that would reduce child mortality,
almost half of which takes place in the first month after birth. The level of
success rests with the individual government and with the level of external aid
in the worst cases.
5) Maternal health.
Global maternal
mortality has dropped to about half in 2015 in comparison with 1990. Just as in
the case of infant mortality that can be prevented assuming there is
availability of immunization and other medication, maternal health is an area
where inexpensive health care can make a difference. The UN-MDG goals show
progress in this domain, but they do not show that the mortality rates are 14
times higher than in the advanced capitalist countries.
6) Combating HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases.
HIV cases have also
dropped from 3.5 million to 2.1 million. There has been a dramatic reduction of
35% in HIV from 2000 to 2014, largely because so many public, private and
international resources have poured into this area in comparison with others.
7) Environmental sustainability.
There are empirical cases
of improvement in this domain that includes everything from re-forestation to
clean water and sanitation. Carbon-dioxide emission dropped by half between 1990
and 2012; 2.6 billion people gained access to clean water and 2.1 billion to
sanitation. Many of the improvements resulted because China has been making
considerable progress, but also India that enjoyed enormous GDP growth in the first
decade of the 21st century. Despite such progress, there are close
to one billion people living in slums in 2015, compared with 689 million in
1990. This is indicative of failure rather than progress, considering that slum
conditions hardly contribute to “environmental sustainability”.
8) Global partnership for development.
This is a goal that
has been successful from a business perspective though not necessarily always
from the perspective of communities. Needless to say, the UN-MDG officials and
the co-sponsors have a vested interest in accentuating the successes of the
program rather than its shortcomings.The interested reader will be able to go to the webpages of the UN-MDG to see what they have to say about their program.
Assessing UN-MDG Goals
In all eight goals
some progress has been made between 2000 and 2015, despite the global recession
of 2008-2011. Guide, guardian and promoter of finance capital and neoliberal
policies, the IMF proclaimed that the key in achieving MDG program targets is
economic growth – always under the neo-liberal economic model whenever possible
with minimal state intervention. In short, more capital concentration will
somehow trickle down to the destitute masses. Former President Bill Clinton has
been soliciting financial assistance from high-profile individuals in
Hollywood, businesses and governments, always touring and making speeches for
extraordinarily high fees on how to combat global poverty.
While any anti-poverty
effort is better than watching more than 2 billion people go hungry and without
medicine when there is more than enough food, water, and medicine to take care
of their basic needs, the solution that the UN-MDG program and its advocates
offer is in essence intended to perpetuate capitalism that creates and
perpetuates poverty and social injustice on a world scale. It was as plausible
in 2000 as it was in 2015 to provide basic needs for two-thirds of the world’s
population, but it was simply not profitable. The pretext of the Malthusian
theory, lack of logistical solutions in areas where the problems exist,
corruption of local and national politicians in developing nations, and a host
of other issues are real but the reality remains that the political economy
causes and maintains structural inequality and poverty.
Billionaires and
multi-millionaires prefer to give a part of the wealth to charity, wealth they
have appropriated and accumulated by investing in corporations doing business
in less developed and developing countries where labor values are low and account
for uneven income distribution and endemic poverty. The UN-MDG program works
within the existing political economy and herein rests the contradiction
between its publicly stated goals of eliminating poverty and the reality of how
the system operates to create greater inequality. Based on capital
concentration and accumulation of capital, as well as social and geographic
inequality, the market economy is not undergoing transformation from its neoliberal
phase under globalization to an “enlightened capitalist phase”, as the UN-MDG
advocates argue. This is merely an exercise in convincing world public opinion
that capitalism can solve problems it creates from poverty and gender
inequality to human rights.
The ultimate irony in
this UN project is that the countries that MDG is designed to help possess most
of the world’s natural resources. Nevertheless, the same are exploited directly
or indirectly by the 20 richest nations mostly for the benefit of multinational
corporations. Former UN secretary-general Koffi Annan, who led the initial MDG
effort, accused the rich nations of failing to meet their obligations. Annan
has indeed tried to work within the existing political economy to improve the
masses, and one way is providing cheap energy to Africa as an integral part of
development. Hardly an advocate of systemic change of capitalism, Annan has
some support among some nations that heed his advice.
However, the
North-South divide has not and will not be solved by MDG as Annan and others
hope because MDG’s ambitious goal to eradicate poverty runs counter to the
political economy of capital concentration on a world scale. Moreover, there is
a new race between China, northwest Europe, US, and even some rich Arab
countries to carve out Africa’s natural resources. Because China’s role is especially
catalytic across the continent, the race to control the wealthier countries
becomes more important for the Western countries with a historical role of imperialism
in this continent.
Africa is the last
frontier for the lowest asset values, which of course includes labor coasts, in
the world. This means that the continent will attract massive foreign
investment from multinational corporations in the 21st century. Are
Shell Oil, Wal-Mart, General Electric, and other multinational corporations
with considerable interest in the future of Africa interested in amassing profits
by maintaining low labor costs or are they interested in actualizing UN-MDG
goals? If none of these corporations have a history of promoting social justice
even in their own countries, why would they do it for Africa?
Considering that the
recession of 2008-2011 created greater poverty not only in the advanced
capitalist countries but throughout the world, and considering that most countries
even within the G-7 downgraded the social welfare state and strengthened
corporate welfare, what is the best hope for MDG targets to be realized and for
the poor countries not to have the problems that the UN has identified as
chronic? Moreover, China’s economic slowdown in 2015 and currency devaluation
that dragged along with it a global devaluation with depressed commodity prices
falling across the board, what would this entail for UN-MDG in the next five to
ten years in developing nations hardest hit by the commodity depression.
Roughly 80% of the world’s
wealth is concentrated in the G-20 and within those countries the majority of
wealth is in the hands of a small minority. Does such income distribution mean
there is hope for UN-MDG program to be realized not in the next five years but
in the next 100 years? Other obstacles to progress that go to the heart of
contradictions of the market economy itself include the fact that the rich
nations have inward-oriented economies catering first to the domestic market
and selling the surplus to foreign markets, especially to semi- and less
developed countries where labor values are low and profits high. By contrast,
the economies of the semi-developed and less developed countries where poverty
is widespread are outward-oriented, based on few exports from which most of the
revenue emanates. Government, business, media, and academics’ rhetoric
notwithstanding, there is no sustainable development other than a PR exercise to
promote everything from “green loans” to “smart bottled water”. Sustainable
development is a concept that has been co-opted by multinationals as a backdoor
channel to appease the middle class consumers and continue with neoliberal
policies on a world scale with the “dependency pattern” of underdeveloped
countries falling farther behind the G-20.
Because the export
sector in underdeveloped countries is invariably owned directly through local
contractors by multinationals, national capitalism and the state as a support
mechanism are very weak in comparison with the rich nations. This makes it
easier for the multinationals to manipulate through bribery and legal methods
using the World Bank, IMF, and the services of their government in the
underdeveloped countries that need capital. The result is less stringent
legislation (environmental, labor relations, health codes, etc.) affecting
foreign companies, lower taxes than they pay in their own countries, and of
course easy terms for repatriating profits. This situation entails perpetual
movement of capital from the semi-developed and less developed countries to the
core or rich nations. How the UN-MDG program can possibly be realized under
such a global capitalist structure is a mystery in which very few believe while
those supporting the program are using this as another vehicle to prove that
capitalism is working well and addressing the worst cases of inequality.
Trade dependence is
directly linked to deteriorating terms of trade at the expense of the less
developed countries with low labor values and low consumption. Former Indian
government official Shashi Tharoor, who took part in the initial MDG conference
in 2000, commented:
“Many countries are prevented from trading their way out of poverty by
the high tariff barriers, domestic subsidies, and other protections enjoyed by
their rich-country competitors. The European Union’s agricultural subsidies,
for example, are high enough to permit every cow in Europe to fly business
class around the world. What African farmer, despite his lower initial costs,
can compete?”
Another very
significant area of structural weakness is what German Chancellor Angela Merkel
identified when she blamed governance in the debtor nations as part of the
problem. Indeed it is true that the state structure in a semi-developed and
less developed nation is weak. This is especially the case with the fiscal
system needed to support national capitalism, in comparison with the rich
nations that enjoy a strong fiscal structure.
Why is the state
structure weak in less developed nations, and do rich nations and international
organizations like IMF and World Bank have any role in contributing to its chronic
weakness? Less developed nations collect very low taxes from the multinational
corporations and are in constant need of loans for monetary (currency
stabilization) as well as development projects. Using the IMF as a vehicle of fiscal
austerity that creates poverty and concentrates wealth – the opposite of what
UN-MDG goals aim – the wealthy nations are able to prevail in imposing
monetary, fiscal, trade, investment,
social and labor policies on the debtor nations. Under such conditions it is
simply impossible to make progress toward eliminating poverty and social
injustice as the UN-MDG program professes to address.
To secure monetary and development loans, debtor nations must meet criteria designed to maintain a very strong market economy, namely, domestic and foreign capital enjoying the support and protection of the state because ‘national interest’ and economic development is equated with private capital, while the enemy is the public sector and workers. Financial dependence is invariably linked to trade, manufacturing, transportation, and service sectors dependence, which does not permit for the less developed nations to emerge from perpetual poverty that a substantial segment of their population is suffering. In the absence of addressing such structural causes of income inequality, the UN-MDG program cannot possibly succeed.
This does not mean
that Merkel’s comment about political corruption is not to be taken seriously.
Political corruption is a reality in developing nations. For example, India
falsified maternal death reports to meet MDG targets. Local politicians and
military officials have used foreign aid to enrich themselves in many
developing nations not just recently but in the last seventy years. Indeed official
corruption in semi-developed and less developed countries is part of the
problem, but officials are on the receiving end, while domestic and foreign businesspeople
are at “offering” end making bribery possible in return for favors. However,
even if corruption were to disappear by magic in a single day, the chronic
problems that UN-MDG has identified will remain for as long as the political
economy is based on the principle of capital concentration and accumulation
flowing from the bottom of the social pyramid and outward from the less
developed nations to the rich nations, and from labor to business.
The larger question to
ponder in the UN-MDG program is why the political and business establishment is
behind this effort. Why is it that the same elites largely responsible for the
calamities of chronic poverty are insisting they wish to eradicate it under the
UN-MDG program? One answer is that MDG is morally correct and that governments,
corporations, the IMF, World Bank, NGO’s and others that support MDG are
motivated by humanitarianism, compassion for the poor, for abused women, for
tens of thousands of children dying each day of hunger, for those suffering
human rights abuses, etc. This is exactly the image that the UN-MDG supporters
wish to project, but does it have anything to do with reality?
In some respects, there
are interesting parallels between the British ending slavery and UN-MDG. Did
the British end slavery out of consideration for the Africans; did they do it
owing to pressure from ministers of the church; or was there motives rooted in
the political economy and society undergoing rapid changes owing to industrialization?
British policy to retain the population in their colonies as the economy was
changing from commercial to industrial capitalism thus the slave trade (ACT OF
1807) followed by the Abolition Act of 1833 was based on the realistic need for
labor in the colonies to supply the mother country with raw materials for
global trade. Industrial capitalism was based on free labor as it was on free
trade, therefore the institution of slavery was anachronistic, for it was the
product of commercial capitalism that was overtaken by industrial and finance
capitalism.
Fifteen years after
the UN promulgated the MDG program, we have the evolution of globalization that
needs a work force in the semi-developed and less developed countries where
labor values are low. Otherwise the growth and expansion of capitalism cannot
continue. Given its cyclical nature, capitalism constantly seeks new markets to
exploit for greater profit and lowest labor costs. The UN is offering the forum
and the means for governments of the rich nations serving large corporate
interests to create a more viable work force in the semi-developed and less
developed nations, and to continue the thorough geographic and economic
integration of every inch on the planet in order to realize the goal of capital
concentration.
While the only thing
that matters in peoples’ lives is their improvement no matter how it comes
about and no matter the intentions of those wishing to eradicate poverty,
illiteracy, disease and gender inequality, the only proof remains in the
results and not the lofty rhetoric. When the Ebola virus epidemic erupted in December
2013 in Guinea, spreading to Sierra Leone, Liberia, Senegal, Mali, and Nigeria,
the only action that the UN, G-7 and the West took collectively was only after
there were isolated cases in Spain, UK, and US. Even then, the manner by which
the West collectively handled the outbreak was to protect its own borders
rather than address the roots causes of the virus in Africa.
There is consensus
among scientists that endemic poverty, the same that the UN MDG program was
supposed to lessen if not eradicate, as it claimed in 2000, is a major reason
we had an Ebola virus epidemic out of control that had many in the Western
World seriously worried. Further evidence of the contradictions between
rhetoric and empirical results can be found in what took place after the Ebola
epidemic – one of the worst in Africa’s modern history according to the World
Health Organization. The UN Development Group concluded in March 2015 that
because of the Ebola outbreak the affected sub-Saharan regions suffered
decreased trade, flight cancellations, closing of borders, and a drop in
foreign investment, all conditions that sunk the already poor areas even deeper
in poverty.
To support their case
that the UN-MDG program is a success, its supporters point to the world statistical
averages. Upon closer examination, we find that Asia has experienced
improvements across the board from 2000 to 1015. The results in Asia are the
product of national capitalism and not the UN-MDG program. In other words, the
rapid GDP growth of China and India in the first decade of the 21st
century resulted in derivative growth in many parts of the world that depend on
commodity exports. Cyclical demand for minerals and agricultural products with
derivate benefits for a segment of the masses has absolutely nothing to do with
the UN-MDG program and its supporters cannot possibly claim that improvements
in poverty reduction are directly linked to the UN program. Naturally, UN-MDG
officials hailed China for its role in helping achieve the MDG goals, but this
is a clear case where credit goes to China and not the UN.
The most significant
goal, which pertains to social justice and equality that neoliberal policies
under globalization have been spreading across the globe, has been completely
absent from the UN agenda. Are there more or fewer human rights problems around
the world in 2015 in comparison with 2000, including human rights abuses in the
US and other advanced capitalist countries that exempt themselves and point the
finger only at the poor countries and openly declared “enemies of the West”?
The US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and US-NATO intervention and covert
operations in Africa, Middle East, Ukraine and Central Asia have actually
caused a rise in human rights violations. These conflicts have caused a rise in
the massive problems of refugee population and guerrilla warfare that the US
labels “terrorist” when it is linked with Muslims.
Sustainable Development and Human Rights
Although US-NATO
policies have actually contributed to human rights abuses from 2000 to 2015, a
period that the UN-MDG program aimed to lessen such abuses, there is still the claim
of success in this area. Even more insulting to those people around the world
who are honestly working to eradicate human rights abuses, the UN-MDG program
have linked this issue to sustainable development. “Sustainable development” is
a concept both in PR terms and in every other respect that the corporate world
has totally co-opted and uses it selectively to further its agenda of
maximizing profits without offending the more sensitive among the middle class
investors and environmentalists throughout the globe. During the Rio de Janeiro
UN meeting on human rights in April 2012, the UN High Commission on Human
Rights proposed linking sustainable development to human rights. In practice,
this meant that multinational corporations could not invest in the absence of
taking into account the physical and human environment.
Is sustainable development
taking place in developing nations owing to the efforts of multinational
corporations? Are multinationals involved in agricultural chemicals and hybrid
seeds interested in sustainable development that would eradicate poverty in
Asia and Africa? About the only people who believe there is anything
sustainable or development taking place in poor countries are the corporate salespeople,
their lobbyists, well-paid consultants and academics, the corporate-owned media,
politicians, and UN officials who want people to project the image that the
future is no as bleak for the bottom two-thirds of the population in 2000 as it
is in 2015.
If a multinational
wanted to build an agrichemical plant in Indonesia, it would have to do so with
the least damage to the environment, with rules about workers’ safety, due
consideration for the local community. In short, the UN proposal asks the
corporate world not to behave as though they were in the 18th
century. Again, this satisfies the demands of the middle class investors who
are sensitive about the environment, but there is nothing about social justice
to address gross income inequality.
By focusing on the
bourgeois PR issue of sustainable development and greater “gender equality”
access, which means more opportunities for middle class women, UN-MDG officials
are satisfied they have done enough for social justice in the world. Needless
to say, because the UN MDG program enjoys corporate support, there is no
criticism of the massive wealth concentration and the need for policies of
income redistribution - the reality that
1% of the world’s richest people own about as much wealth as the bottom 50% of
the world people.
One could argue that
it is better to have the UN coordinate an international effort aiming to reduce
poverty, illiteracy and disease than no to have such a program even if the
program is not achieving its stated goals and even if corporations and
strongest governments in the world are using the MDG program for their goals.
It could be argued that in the absence of such a program we may not have the
same results, such as they are and for the reasons that they are. On the other
hand, one must also see through UN MDG as an effort to camouflage the growing
inequality capitalism is creating and the growing lack of social justice. One
could also argue that the UN MDG program is a Trojan Horse of imperialism on
the part of the richest countries laying the groundwork the largest
corporations to penetrate the less developed regions where most natural
resources are available for exploitation and where labor costs are the lowest
on the planet.
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