Given at Methodist Central Hall, 22 February 2006
Introduction
This oration comes 3 weeks after Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary
General spoke here to commemorate the events of January and
February 1946. Kofi Annan's message was that we are all in the same
boat - the human race faces global problems and it makes sense, as
it did in 1946, to come together and work out global solutions. I
will seek tonight to follow him through the prism of 1946 in
reviewing how far we have got 60 years on - will the UN ever make
poverty history for the One People of the World?
1946
"Ladies and gentlemen, the Assembly is opened" And with that
statement, the first UN General Assembly went ahead on
10th January 1946, opened by Dr Zuleta of Mexico.
The Methodists had been moved out 2 months before - originally
to the Victoria Palace with Me and My Girl with Lupino Lane playing
Monday to Saturday and now Dr Sangster on Sunday. Then as the
Theatre was too small for the congregation of 3000+ they moved to
the London Coliseum with the Bar serving as the venue for the
Sunday School.
The Trustees had been none too happy despite the compensation on
offer, but Ernest Bevin had sought to woo them saying, "there could
be no better place for the Assembly than the House of God with the
atmosphere of prayer already there".
The UN Preparatory Committee had been using Church House in
Deans Yard and it is there that the first meeting of the Security
Council took place on January 19th, 1946.
But the Methodist Central Hall covenant service that January,
took place in what Dr Sangster described as "the gilded ballroom of
the Carlton Hotel".
Dr Sangster and the Dean did not get on well. There was no
sharing of premises. The various elements of Central Hall spread to
the Wyndham Ashley Mission, the Baptist Church in the Horseferry
Road and Caxton Hall but not across the road. The Abbey does
however feature in the archives. Bevin wrote to Atlee on
16th January under the heading -
Service of intercession at St Paul's Cathedral 20th
January 1946
He says:
"I have been considering the question of a religious ceremony to
mark the opening of the General Assembly of the UN.
In view of the many different religions represented in the
Assembly it would be difficult to suggest the UN makes the
arrangements for a service, as part of their official proceedings.
For this reason I rejected a suggestion which was made to me some
time ago for a formal inaugural service in Westminster Abbey.
I do not think that the same objection would apply to a Service
of Intercession, which might suitably be held at St Paul's
Cathedral, as being a more national centre of worship, than
the Abbey which has a Parliamentary and Governmental
character."
But the phone number for the first Secretary General was
Abbey 7033.
The Charter had been written and adopted the previous
June in San Francisco with its ringing phrases that
"We the peoples of the United Nations determined
to promote social progress and better standards of life in
larger freedom
And for these ends
To employ international machinery for the provision of the
economic and social advancement of all peoples."
And the UN should promote:
- higher standards of living, full employment and conditions of
economic and social progress and development
- solutions of international economics, social, health and
related problems; and international, cultural and educational
cooperation and
- the universal respect for an observance of human rights and
fundamental freedoms for all, without distinction, as to race, sex,
language or religion.
Article 60 gives responsibility to discharge these
functions to ECOSOC - the Economic & Social Committee of the UN
General Assembly.
The Preparatory Committee meeting at Church House in December
1945 and January 1946 put the flesh on the bones of ECOSOC setting
up an Economic and Employment Committee which was to:
- promote worldwide full employment and the coordination of
national full employment policies.
- the prevention of economic instability
- the urgent problems of economic reconstruction, and
- economic development of under-developed areas.
"And the Economic Development Committee would require expert
advice on the long term development of production and consumption
throughout the world and in particular on:
- the methods of increasing production, productivity and levels
of consumption in the less developed regions of the world.
- the affects of industrialisation and technological change on
world economic system and the adjustments required."
It proposed the split of countries into 4 categories:
- Raw material producing countries
- Manufacturing countries
- Consumer countries
- Countries which have suffered from abuse of drugs and from
illicit traffic.
An interesting world view which resonates today.
Alongside these mechanisms came strong rhetoric -
The King spoke at a Banquet for all the delegates at Greenwich,
9th January 1946:
"You possess the machinery appropriate to the great problems
which now confront you - to take practical measures to instigate
and finally overcome the hunger and destruction which the war has
brought to so many people, to increase and make secure the economic
and social welfare of all peoples".
"Not all these things can be accomplished at once, but it is for
you to set humanity upon the right path to accomplish them. Never
did men have a greater or nobler duty".
This was only slightly marred by a report in the Sunday Despatch
Newspaper that delegates had stolen pieces of the gold dinner
service - a story dismissed by the FO on the basis this happens all
the time - and Lord Castlereagh lost his gold watch at the Treaty
of Vienna Conference. The Louisville Courier Journal of the US made
a suitably modern comment in saying it "deplored the journalistic
habit, of ferreting out all the conflict, thus tending to present
an international conference as a series of crises and
impasses."
There were crises and impasses -
The Russians very early on sought to block the appointment of M
Spaak as Chair but it went through. British diplomacy appears to
have worked well to ensure the appointment of the judges to the
International Court of Justice - and votes on the membership of the
6 committees went smoothly. Trygve Lie was appointed as the first
Secretary General.
Only 51 countries were represented and had major problems
getting here. The National Archives at Kew has 3 large files solely
devoted to the travel arrangements for delegates - across war-torn
Europe, by boats and planes across the world, taking up to 3 months
on their journeys.
You could say that the poor had no delegates - but of course
nearly everyone then was poor coming out of a horrendous
world war that had made virtually every country poor. But there was
concern that the old order - of governments, not true
representatives of the people, dominating the new United Nations -
while welcoming the involvement of USA and the Soviet Union who had
both boycotted the League of Nations. American newspapers, as Jack
Straw has said, called the General Assembly broadcast across the
world as the "town meeting of the air to marshal the moral and
spiritual forces of mankind on the side of peace".
But people wanted change. One Effie Hummeston of 5 Molland Road,
Leeds pressed for a universal world language to be used for General
Assembly dialogue.
Mr F K Einsch of The Orchards, Verwood, Dorset, said, " it was
desirable to create a status of world citizenship forthwith and
this status to be granted to any human being regardless of race,
nationality or creed". Such a grant to be based on a qualification
of education in World Citizenship, and Literacy in one of the
official languages of UNO.
"A world citizen owes loyalty to the country in which he is
living but not allegiance."
"If that could be achieved, all menaces, dangerous ideologies
and above all, all barred frontiers and regimented groupings into
chauvinist regions and nations, will liquidate and eliminate
themselves," he said.
Bevin didn't know what to say in reply. He first of all wrote,
"Noted with interest". He however scratched this out on his draft
reply, writing, "I don't like saying this as it arouses false hopes
and encourages more". So Mr Einsch got, "I acknowledge the receipt
of the letter".
Mrs Edward (sic) Bixler of the Women's International League for
Peace and Freedom lobbied for a "world constitutional convention
(as) our only hope where all the peoples of the earth have a
voice. "This Big 3' stuff playing power politics - as they have
done after every war - holds not a ray of hope to the People."
"I hope (we) go on past their pretentious UNO, and call a world
constitutional convention. We have war, because we get ready for
it. We can have peace much easier and with one millionth the
expense; if we get ready for peace. We have got to do it or
else."
Foreign Secretary Bevin separately said, "Personally, I am ready
to sit down with anybody of any party, of any nation, to try to
devise a franchise and constitution for a world assembly to keep
the peace - an assembly elected by peoples not governments."
He spoke in the House of Commons in favour of a world parliament
that would watch over the governments and potentially override
them. Sadly he subsequently withdrew this view.
Back at the Assembly, the delegates in their spare time were
offered the choice of West End stall seats at Arsenic and Old Lace,
and the Hasty Heart - top Box office plays of the time.
The women delegates (and only the women delegates!) were
offered, at the suggestion of Herbert Morrison, a choice of
visits:
- visit to bombed London - 5 constituencies of Wandsworth
- visit to County Hall - to see the Abercrombie plans for
rebuilding London
- day visit/weekend visit to Bristol to allow to see typical
example of great city and the effect of bombing.
It is not noted what the male delegates were offered
instead!
The founding documents of the UN envisaged that the World Bank
and the IMF would be agencies of the UN and report through the
Economic & Social Committee. But no moves on this took place in
London - and it never happened.
Interestingly, the American delegation at the Assembly were
ëanxious that the Trade Conference be called under the
auspices of the UNO. That never happened either - and the WTO was
not set up until 50 years later in Marrakech in 1995 but it
was then under the democratic principle of one country one
vote - a principle that was so much desired by the delegates of
1946. Again not agreed was the wish that the position of refugees
and internally displaced persons moving across the world should be
a responsibility of the United Nations. The Soviet Union delegation
argued vociferously against this happening.
But the reconstruction of those countries recently devastated by
war - and the peoples involved living in grinding poverty was a
priority of ECOSOC, not simply the US munificence of the Marshall
Plan but the UNRRA mechanisms for the distribution of aid.
Incidentally, the American Aid to the UK equalled the UK spend on
Defence for 1946 - not as great as is sometimes suggested.
The Third World was largely unrepresented with the exception of
South Africa whose delegate spoke of the need to understand that
economic solutions to the poverty of Africa were not easy to
resolve. The UK Dominion and Colonial Offices sought to represent
what was still the British Empire.
The Chinese delegate, Mr Wellington Koo asked that human rights
be placed first as an issue on the ECOSOC work plan. "If the world
is to enjoy lasting peace, the dignity of man must be respected as
the first principle of the new order". I am sure that is still the
view of the Chinese delegate in 2006.
The General Assembly finished its work on the 14th
February 1946. There was a proposal that the permanent site of the
United Nations be in Hyde Park, but the need to tie the USA into
the UN won the day and alternative bids from Philadelphia and New
York were seen as the likely winners.
British diplomacy (as seen through the selectivity of the FO
archives in Kew) ensured success and the foundation of a body
committed to the One People concept for the World with all the
mechanisms and processes in place. In Bevin's words, "The Great war
against poverty, misery and disease which have cursed humanity for
so long" had begun.
And Attlee said, "To make this organ (the UN) a living reality
we must enlist the support not only of governments, but of the
masses of the people in the world. They must understand that we are
building a defence for the common people."
"In the purposes of the UN, we have linked with the achievement
of freedom from fear, the delivery of mankind from the peril of
want. To the individual citizen, the spectre of economic insecurity
is more constant, more imminent than the shadow of war. Without
justice and security, there is no future for peace, for it is among
the socially disinherited, and those who have nothing to lose, that
the gangster and aggressor recruit their supporters."
The Central Hall was de-requisitioned on the 9th
March and Dr Sangster presided over the ëService of
Celebration' on the return from the London Coliseum on
31st March. In the meantime, the Great Organ had been
cleaned and overhauled. And Londoners returned to 10 further years
of ration books and poverty.
1946 - 2006
The UN for most of the next (and last) 60 years did not treat
the elimination of world poverty as a priority.
The 1950s passed with mixed results as the geopolitical battle
on the ground between the 2 super powers of USA and Soviet Union
led to support not of capitalism or communism whatever the slogans,
but the support of leaders of poor countries who would place
themselves in either or both camps.
The current George Clooney film, "Goodnight and Good Luck" set
in 1953 follows Ed Murrow's fight against McCarthyism and has
disturbing echoes about the War against Terror and Guantanemo Bay
today. We must not go back to an "us and them" split of the world
where the poorest, inevitably, always lose out. "The fault dear
Brutus is not in the stars. It is in ourselves".
The Trusteeship Council of the UN - (and the whole
decolonisation push) - was masterminded by the UN - and by 1960
most poor countries were on their way out of colonialism - and
often with high levels of infrastructure, education and health
systems.
The UN called the 1960s the "Development Decade" when countries
like Ghana, then more prosperous than South Korea, could
industrialise and Africa could become a single common market. I
chaired Cambridge University UNA, then 7,000 strong, and organised
the first UK- wide Model General Assembly in 1964, when the fervour
of Make Poverty History was on display ahead of its time. I then
worked in East & West Africa, when there were great
expectations of all the people coming out of poverty.
The Brandt commission of 1972 and the UN Target of 0.7% of
developed countries GDP going on ODA irrevocably changed the
landscape for the poor and led to 30+ years of failed promises from
developed countries. But inertia & closed minds in many poor
countries, led to elites that simply accepted the Aid, and saw poor
people and poverty as an increasingly normal part of their country
- impossible to change.
The Berlin wall came down in 1989 and the UN found the logjam in
the Security Council and in the Assembly removed. Aid for political
support went and the needs of the poor could be at last recognised
as paramount.
There followed a remarkable series of UN conferences starting
with the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. I was delegate to the Copenhagen
Summit on Social Development in 1995 which concentrated on the
causes of world poverty. (The following year 1996 was the UN World
Food Summit dealing with food security for the poor.) It was a very
cold February and March - I remember being frozen marching through
Copenhagen in the celebration of International Women's Day with my
blazing torch setting fire to my coat, having already smothered me
in candle grease!
That Social Summit was the first meeting between private sector
employers, unions, governments and civil society with the concept
of a stakeholder society setting out the rules of what the Chair of
the Copenhagen Summit and subsequently Secretary General of ILO,
Juan Somavia, called and approved "a market economy not a market
society". The Social Summit concluded that employment is the
principal means to overcome poverty and exclusion. "In the ILO we
have expressed this goal as decent work "Thus jobs, good jobs are
the way out of poverty", he said.
The 2005 World Commission on the Social Dimension of
Globalisation sponsored by the ILO picks this up emphasising that
globalisation could be a positive force for the creation of decent
work.
Research shows it is the private sector companies coming
into poor countries delivering Foreign Direct Investment that set
higher standards of working environment and pay, compared to local
companies.
The UN Global Compact set up in 2000 (with UNHCR, ILO, UNDP,
UNIDO and UNCTAD) now involves trade unions, civil society and
thousands of private sector companies committed to sustainable
employment and corporate social responsibility for the poor of the
world, endorsing the 10 principles of human rights, labour,
environment and anti-corruption. The UN meetings since then have
fully involved the private sector with country programmes of
partnership. The UN Fund for International Partnership (UNFIP) and
the UN Foundation is now in its 9th year of
collaboration to deliver both jobs and extra resources for the
poor. You may wonder why I have given you a minute of speak your
weight publicity for the UN and the Private Sector. It is just that
you never normally hear about the UN involvement in delivering good
private sector jobs for the poor of the world.
According to the UK Department for International Development,
the number of people in the world living on less than $1 a day has
dropped over the last 20 years from 1.5bn to 1.1bn - an incredible
achievement given that the world population grew by 1.6bn during
that time. Thus 2 billion people have moved out of extreme poverty!
China alone lifted 400m people out of extreme poverty. And the rate
of advance is rapidly increasing with +10% increase in GDP in
China, 7% in India - and +5% in Africa year on year on year since
2000.
It is FDI and private sector development which has largely done
this - as we know from our own experience in the UK over the last
60 years. A 1% increase in wealth means in 70 years wealth will
double - a 3% increase means it takes 22 years to double the
wealth. Given such growth, our wealth in the UK in 2006 will double
by 2029 and quadruple by 2052. When the baby boomers hit age 70, we
in the UK are x8 wealthier than the day we were born. And lady baby
boomers who live to age 93 will exit a world 16x much richer.
So, in 2006, is all well?
There is another story. This oration is about the One People of
the World and people are being left behind. The rising tide
does not lift all boats.
This oration is not about HIV/AIDS which continues to make
people poor and the UN Global Fund is addressing those needs. It is
also not about failed states and insecurity, although this has led
to extreme poverty in so many countries - and the UN Peace building
Commission, the International Criminal Court, the new UN Human
Rights Commission (due to be agreed this week) and the new UNGA
agreed ëduty to protect', all show the UN up well in
2006 and boats are being lifted. But this Oration is about the
grinding extreme poverty of less than $1 a day.
The $1 per day indicator of poverty comes from the UN Millennium
Development Goals. The poverty goal was to halve the number of
people living on less than $1 per day by 2015 compared to 1990.
That is going to be achieved worldwide with ease - but not in all
countries and not all sections of the community.
In much of the world the informal economy gives employment
outside the formal economy, way above $1 per day. The BBC Africa
Any Questions of June 2005 with an Africa Panel of Speakers poured
scorn on the view that African people were in absolute poverty -
the only problem is that the real economy was not able to be
measured by Western economists.
But what is factual, is the lack of infrastructure and services
to deal with the Beveridge definition of poverty - the 5 giants of
want, idleness, ignorance, disease and squalor.
The state should have provided these facilities for all,
but has not in many countries. The UN Development Programme has
worked through governments, in many failing states, but the
governments' ability to raise taxes, administer aid from richer
countries and pay the teachers and doctors enough to retain them to
help the poor, has failed again and again. The Church educated
Britain until the late 19th century, and it is only
since 1946 that in the UK, Education for all has been seen as a
priority, and government provided, through tax.
Ellen Wilkinson, the Minister of Education, and part of the UK
delegation in 1946, negotiated the money to carry out the 1944
Education Act to ensure all of the UK could go to school free. I,
for one, as a farm worker's son, will always be grateful to
Ellen.
As Sam Seaborn, the Policy Head in the West Wing TV series said,
"Education is the silver bullet. Education is everything: we don't
need little changes, we need gigantic changes. Schools should be
palaces. The competition for the best teachers should be fierce.
They should be making 6 figure salaries. Schools should be
incredibly expensive for government and absolutely free of charge
to its citizens. That's my position. I just haven't figured out how
to do it yet..."
And the Make Poverty History campaign figured out the answer! -
the need to kick-start the health, education and infrastructure
costs by doubling aid, and debts from the Cold War period being
written off.
However, my concern is that the over emphasis by the UN on the
Aid component, crucial though it is, without the equal emphasis, on
the way out of poverty, being through the growth of private sector
jobs, is not telling the poor, the whole story, of how their lives
could change for the better.
A friend has just come back from rural Ethiopia 2 days hard
drive from Addis Ababa. She discussed the Make Poverty History 2005
Campaign with Mr Rago the Head teacher of the local secondary
school.
She was upset when he said MPH would make no difference. The
extra resources would never come because the politicians who
received the extra aid would not distribute it down to his
school.
The UN and World Bank Country Programmes, agreed with
Governments and Civil Society in each country, must take account of
the changes - and ensure total transparency as to where the new aid
and loans go.
The role of aid in damaging the poor is very controversial. I
well remember having a blazing row with Professor (later Lord)
Bauer at the London School of Economics in 1966, about the need for
aid - he against, me for. He believed that there would be an aid
curse (similar to the oil curse) where unaccountable elites would
take the aid and not deliver the services. And is that what
happened? Is that why the poor in aided countries did not move out
of poverty? Have NGOs colluded in what has happened or not
happened?
Some $600 billion of aid (at 2006 prices) has already gone to
developing countries to very little gain to the poor.
It is interesting that the country with the most poor - India -
has now insisted that if a developed country wishes to give aid to
India, it must not go to local NGOs but go through central
government budgets in a transparent fashion.
DFID over the last 8 years has moved from funding local NGOs to
direct budgetary support to ministries. The Ghanaian education
Ministry is directly supported rather than Ghanaian NGOs. And Ghana
is accelerating rapidly.
The Faith based organisations have been the main provider for
the poor in non communist countries.
In so many poor areas the only provision of education and health
services came via the local church or mosque or temple. Little or
nothing was provided in this field by central or local government
who often do not levy any tax directly on the poor or the rich -
and therefore the poor do not expect any provision of services for
them.
The church and mosque tithe their poor and rich congregations
for their care work and also make small user charges: this model
has kept key services to the poor going during the last 60
years.
The challenge will be, how to move from church provided, to
government tax provided, services to the poor.
It is interesting the ex-communist countries - of Eastern
Europe, SE Asia and China (still nominally communist) - have
accelerated fastest in taking the poor out of poverty - where
central and local government both financed by local taxes,
administered by largely non corrupt civil servants and, now with
accountable politicians, have been most successful. The role of the
UN and UNDP (and the EU) working without baggage to ensure the
transfer of power and influence has been an unwritten story.
Africa seems to be held back by lack of state machinery to
deliver services.
But if this Oration is emphasising Trade over Aid and Debt
Relief in the pantheon of Make Poverty History goals, what is the
UN doing about Trade for the Poor.
UNCTAD, now headed by Mr Superchai, late of the WTO, is working
with poor countries on the issues of competition, investment,
public procurement and trade facilitation. All of these changes
impact positively on the poor - but could undermine the position of
elites in poor countries. They were rejected by the G77 at the WTO
Singapore mini ministerial as imposing additional costs and
removing "policy space" from developing countries. The EU at Cancun
attempted to force these issues back on the agenda but failed.
The WTO is not part of the UN as I have said before. It should
be. It is more democratic than the UN with no Security Council
inner group. It is run on a 1 country, 1 vote basis and has a
disputes panel - any country can bring a case against another. It
has elements of the world government hankered after in 1946.
It is labouring to achieve the so-called Doha Development Round.
The poorest countries already have duty free and quota free access
for all their production into EU. The phase out of agricultural
export subsidies will be achieved by 2013. There was agreement (not
noticed by the media) for the phase out of all subsidies on other
Natural Resources such as Fish and Forestry at the end of this Doha
Round.
Aid for Trade - to cover the income currently coming from import
barriers into poor countries has gone through. Intellectual
Property Rights costs on necessary drugs have been waived. I do not
believe that the deal so far would have legally stuck with the
existing UN formula of decision-making. This comment is sad but
reflects the real politick, I believe, of the current UN
mechanisms.
The cleft stick that the World Food Programme is in, dependent
on food exports from USA taken in US ships to the hungry poor,
demonstrates the difficulty of an under funded UN Agency. How much
better for WFP to be able to buy locally to the famine - say from
Ethiopian farmers to feed the hungry of Ethiopia, or farmers in
West Kenya, where they have had a good harvest, to the hungry of
Northern Kenya today. That way, local farmers benefit not heavily
subsidised farmers in USA. I am pleased to say, EU moved from food
aid to cash aid to the WFP some time ago.
So in 2006 the picture is mixed. The UN has watched over,
cajoled, organised the people of the world to a better life in the
last 60 years. But inequality between countries and within all
countries remains. The UN uses the most powerful disinfectant - the
sunlight of transparency to point out the background of why Poverty
is still not history.
Paul Wolfowitz in the 2006 World Bank Report on Equity and
Development writes:
"Even the basic opportunities for life itself are disparately
distributed: whereas less than half of 1% of children born in
Sweden die before their first birthday, nearly 15% of all children
in Mozambique fail to reach that milestone. Within El Salvador, the
infant mortality rate is 2% for children of educated mothers, but
10% for those whose mothers have no schooling."
When my mother died, she left me the death policy insurance
certificate for me she had taken out when I was born, to pay for my
funeral expenses should I die, before reaching my first birthday.
In 1943 in the UK, that was a very high chance. Thank God, now it
is low.
In the last 60 years, the UN has made poverty less, but not
history.
In the last 2 weeks at the UN in New York, finishing last
weekend, the Commission for Social Development has been reviewing
the first UN Decade for the Eradication of Poverty (1997-2006) and
whose theme has been, "Eradicating Poverty is an ethical, social,
political and economic imperative of humankind".
Only 9 non state actors and non UN institutions gave evidence
and none from the UK. The International Chamber of Commerce and
International Organisation of Employers reaffirmed their support
for the overriding goal of poverty eradication. They estimate that
the proportion of the world population living in extreme poverty
has fallen from over 50% in 1950 to 28% in 1990 to 20% today. They
believe the two key determinants for growth and development are
domestic policies and international integration and cite the
success of China, India, Uganda and Vietnam.
Under Secretary General Jose Antonio Ocampo told the Commission
that there was "unprecedented" growth in developing countries. "But
growth is not enough - the pattern of growth is equally important,
in particular, its capacity to generate decent and productive
employment for the poorest sectors of society and its effects on
income distribution". Thus, despite the success of the last decade,
the Commission has concentrated on those left behind with action
designated for youth, those with disabilities and the old.
And each year on from the Copenhagen declaration of 1995, the UN
each February will be reviewing, cajoling and acting for the poor
of the world.
The key note address this February was by Clare Short in her
first speech since leaving Government and DFID. She said that
delegates had met at a major turning point in human history, "For
the first time ever, we are capable of removing abject poverty from
the human condition. The current intensification of global economic
integration has demonstrated that there is enough knowledge,
technology and capital to bring development to all the peoples of
the world.
The final statement of the Review has agreed, for the next 2
years, the UN will concentrate on full employment - decent jobs for
the One People of the World.
The Next 60 Years
So if that is the position 60 years on from 1946, in 2006, where
will we be 60 years on in 2066?
By then I do believe that the Absolute Poverty will be History
for the One People of the World. Relative poverty - compared to the
richest in the global society and within the nation state, will
remain - as it does in Britain today. But will the UN be central to
achievement of the defeat of global poverty?
To answer that question, I look at my own life - the son of an
agricultural labourer, born in the 1940s in a tied cottage over 200
years old with no electricity, no clean water and no - what we
would now call - sanitation. The welfare state - the reforms of the
1940s saved me - a NHS and universal education system. And
Methodism and the Labour Party ensured a disadvantaged child with
no earners in the family got on.
What ensured all the Tony Colmans could get on, once they lived
healthily and were educated? As I have said, I believe it was the
ability of wealth creation to become acceptable in the UK - and
around the world, thus driving employment for all, and a tax base
which could fund further the education and health services, and
dividends to pay for the pensions of the old.
If 2005 was the year of the civil society around the world
demanding more aid and more debt relief and no trade dumping from
the developed countries, so 2006 is the first year for many a long
time for the re-emergence of a consensus that the combination of
private sector investment with the reassertion of the role of the
enabling state. The 6 speeches made by Hilary Benn, Secretary of
State for International Development, in the last 2 months, opening
up the debate on Eradicating Poverty ahead of the June 2006 white
paper echo this change of emphasis. But the caring state is crucial
to always watch and discipline the private sector, in its drive for
economic growth, to ensure it is fair and equitable to all
people.
So where does the UN fit in for the next 60 years?
The UN Global Compact has been signed by all the major companies
of the world and this needs to be built on. UNIDO - the UN
Industrial Development Organisation - has expanded now to 90 poor
countries and is utilising the skill and knowledge base of India
and China financed by US and European ODA.
But how do we speed it all up? It could take to 2066 to achieve
the MDG in some countries if it is business as usual. The Colman
wish for UN intervention is as follows:
A To have a meeting of UNGA in 2007 at which representatives of
all the private companies of the world both transnational
corporations and national companies state how they could expand
their operations sustainably and quickly - and to have a further
follow-up meeting of governments to agree the actions needed to
ensure this happens, to review the road blocks. The World Bank 2005
report on the number of days it takes to set up a business in each
country would be a starting point.
B To return ECOSOC, the first committee of the General Assembly,
to the role envisaged in 1946 to ensure good full employment for
the people of the world. As part of this drive, ECOSOC should
engender immediate action in 3 areas - statistics, land
ownership and tax levies.
-
Statistics:
In 1946, the founders saw the need for a statistical committee:
however there is still a problem. The MDG are set upon shaky
statistical grounds. The birth of a baby may be celebrated, but is
often not registered - similarly with deaths, and the cause of
death. The idea of a census is unusual. Nigeria is about to have
its first census since 1960 and the guesstimates of its population
vary by 20 million. In some countries, nobody has any idea of how
people survive.
The informal economy provides an income well in excess of $1 per
day. As I have said, the BBC Any Questions programme, held at SOAS
last June, with a panel of Africans vociferously made this point.
Africans are not always poor in the extreme hopeless way portrayed
in the Western Press. My experience in the 60s, working for Gailey
& Roberts in East Africa and Kingsway Stores in West Africa,
selling to citizens of those countries, and now with Africa
Practice and African Venture Capital Association, demonstrated
this. And the 2005 UN Year of Microcredit has spurred millions of
small entrepreneurs wanting to better themselves.
-
Land Ownership by citizens:
The second commission I would like ECOSOC to set up would be on
land ownership. Professor De Soto has advocated this is the central
reason for the success of the private sector in developed countries
- and it is interesting that China has moved on this to allow land
ownership by citizens in urban areas. Land title is crucial to
providing collateral for the banking loans to the poor. I remember
well the joy of Kikuyu women in 1965 when they received not only
title to their land but also the bank loan for seeds, fertilizer
and equipment that they needed to till the land. The loan was
predicated on the land title: interestingly, by the time I left in
1966, all the loans had been repaid!
Land title as a positive driver for change was left out of the
analysis in the Commission for Africa report because it was seen as
too contentious. It should be faced up to and land
redistribution be on the basis of full market compensation. But it
should be noted that in some countries well over 50% of the
cultivable land is owned by the state and could already be
distributed either freehold or on 999 year leasehold.
-
Tax levies and Government Accounts Transparency:
The aid provided over the last 60 years to many poorer countries
seemed to have been wasted - often recycled back to London and
invested in property within 10 miles of Westminster. The additional
aid flows are needed to kick-start the provision of health and
education provision for all - at the moment in poorer countries the
poor pay huge proportions of their income to providers of health
and education and appear to be pleased with the services they get -
but rather like my childhood, if there is no money, the child goes
untreated or uneducated.
But we do need to plan the change from a budget dependent on aid
to one raised from local taxes. As I have said, I am always
surprised at how little tax is paid by people in poor countries
other than those in the civil service - who tend to make up the
difference through corruption.
When I first wrote this three weeks ago, I thought the idea
would be greeted with boos. However, the unholy Alliance of the
Financial Times, Christian Aid and the New Economics Foundation has
also supported this view in the last week.
India is bringing in VAT across all its states covering 1.1
billion people. Income Tax and Property Tax also have come in.
India is not reliant on oil and gas royalties, and it appears to me
that the democracy India has enjoyed has led to a successful
economy which has taken some 300m out of poverty in the last 10
years, and this has been at its root, based on tax levies.
I was in Kerala 2 years ago - it alternates between Congress and
Communist control - and was impressed by a health system and
education as good as the UK.
Kerala's tax income is also dependent on remittances from
Keralans living abroad. The diasporas of the poor need to be
encouraged, protected and ultimately rooted back to their home
villages if they so wish.
The role of remittances came to me forcibly on a recent visit to
Somaliland. This section of Somalia originally known as British
Somaliland, has had a fully functioning state basis since 1992 and
is doing well. It receives almost no aid at all from the rest of
the world, yet is doing economically very well on the back of
remittances and a democratically elected accountable
government.
- That brings me to my third big move by the UN - after
the UNGA for the Private Sector to deliver jobs for the world, the
3 new areas of work for ECOSOC - and now thirdly, the UN should
have within it the IOM - International Organisation for
Migration.
This is on the agenda for the September 2006 UNGA. You will
remember that in January 1946, Russia vetoed this being in the
founding institutions of the UN - and since then almost every
recipient country has refused to support it.
There are very clear Human Rights conventions relating to the
rights of the people who move between countries but almost no
receiving countries have signed the conventions. The UNHCR has a
clear mandate when refugees are in a different country from the
country they have fled from. However, it and the UN has to date had
no mandate to deal with IDP (internally displaced persons) who form
the vast majority of migrants in the world. This for instance gives
UNHCR great difficulties in dealing with the crisis in Darfur. The
new "right to protect" agreed at the 2005 UNGA is a move in the
right direction and needs to be tested.
If we truly believe in the concept of One People of the World,
we must accept the right of people to have the same opportunity to
achieve a higher standard of living in the country of their birth
or in the country they choose to move to.
If we believe poverty eradication can happen through fair
trade in products why not in fair movement in peoples across the
world. A start would be to give dual nationality to all those
who wish it - for both their country of origin and the country
where they live.
- My fourth and last move for the UN to Make Poverty
History way before 2066 would be to plan, 15 years after Rio, an
Earth Summit for 2007. I have been recently reading Jared Diamond's
book "Collapse", which attempts to identify why civilisations in
the past 3000 years have collapsed again and again. There are
clearly 2 paths the world could go down - to destruction and
collapse or to achieve the vision of those who met here 60 years
ago. The potential for environmental and ecological destruction of
the Earth as we know it, is accelerating.
Clare Short in her speech to the UN last week agrees - she said,
"Things will probably get worse before they get better but it is
not until we accept that we have to share equitably and build a way
of life that is sustainable that we will be able to secure our
future on this planet."
The China Modernisation Report 2006 from the China Academy of
Sciences predicts the end of poverty in China by 2050 - and the
move to clean energy technology to enable it to happen and combat
global warming. The Dongtan Eco City work to establish a pattern
for future ecologically sound urbanism should bear fruit by 2010
and be the basis for the 500+ new Chinese cities from 2010 onwards.
India will follow.
It is not too late. The vision of Rio carried forward to
Johannesburg at the Rio +10 conference in 2002 set forward under
the UN the 3 elements of world sustainable development -
environmental protection, economic development and the most
important for this oration, social equity - the equality of the One
People of the world.
The concept cannot be top down but must be bottom up from each
small community as laid down as Agenda 21 in Chapter 28 of the UN
Rio Treaty.
At the halfway point to the 2015 Millennium development goals
benchmark, later this year, the UN under its new Secretary General,
potentially female, and from East Asia, must set its course for
making poverty history.
I believe the map and compass for that course will come from a
new institution due to be launched this May in Switzerland. This is
the World Futures Council - to bring together the leaders of
elected and unelected civil society. Porto Allegre and Davos - and
it could provide the moral leadership the world so greatly
needs.
I hope to serve on the Council as I served on the UN Poverty
think-tank, "the International Forum for Social Development"
between 2002 and 2004, which was organised by Jacques Baudot who
spoke last week at the UN on behalf of the Triglav Circle:
"I have the privilege to address this UN Commission on behalf of
the Triglav Circle, an organisation created to promote the core
message of the World Summit for Social Development, which is a
humanist message on the centrality of the human person, object and
subject of all public policies, national and international, social,
economic as well as financial."
He said and I agree with him:
"Since the Rio conference we know that current patterns of
production and consumption are not sustainable. But we do not have
the courage and the imagination to conceive and implement the type
of economy and society where human energy and creativity would be
geared towards harmony with the self, with others and with nature,
rather than being applied to the search for power, expansion and
domination. Simplicity, moderation, wisdom should become the mottos
of our efforts at creating a better world.
In sum, the struggle for the reduction of poverty ought to be
replaced in a struggle for justice, for solidarity, and for the
search of a renaissance of the human spirit.
In this context, we see with great satisfaction that the UN
Secretariat has proposed employment as the main theme for the work
of the Commission in the next two years, 2006-8. Employment, decent
work, respect for labour standards, and, more generally, human work
- in French "le travail humain" -, are subjects at the core of
social development and of this renaissance of the human spirit that
we are calling for."
But I believe we also need to remember the words embroidered by
an Ethiopian lady onto a wall-hanging at the Fistula Hospital in
Addis Ababa:
"I don't want to be wealthy - just valuable".
What should Westminster Abbey do to achieve these ends? The
Abbey uniquely brings together the Monarch, Government, Parliament,
the Church of England and the Methodist Church in Covenant - and
Civil Society as we saw last April in the glorious affirmation of
the Make Poverty History campaign at the Abbey:
These One People Orations need to continue each year to measure
the progress as latter day Savanarolas telling uncomfortable
truths.
By this time, the Abbey will have wondered why they ever invited
me as their Savanarola Orator given my controversial views and
challenges. But then I am a Methodist in the tradition of John
Wesley whose statue by Samuel Manning was rejected by the Abbey in
1848 because he was a "factious character".
Perhaps that needs to always be the benchmark for a One People
Orator
Bibliography
UN/UNDP Reports 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006
UN Economic & Social Development Websites
(44th Session Commission for Social Development:
Review of the First Decade for Poverty Eradication, Feb 8 - 17,
2006)
World Bank: World Development Report 2006, Equity &
Development
OECD Feb 2006 Going for Growth
FCO Documents (National Archives at Kew) Jan/Feb 1946
China Modernisation Survey 2006 (quoted in www.guardian.co.uk/china)
Herbie Girardet & Jacob von Uexkull World Future Council
Jagdish Bhagwati In Defence of Globalisation
Patricia Curry: Ecological Ethics
Jared Diamond Collapse
Thomas Friedman The World is Flat
Jeremy Leggett: Half gone
James Lovelock: The revenge of Gaia
George Monbiot The Age of Consent
C K Prahalad The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid
Linda Starke (ed): State of the World 2006
Peter Boane Effective Intervention: making aid work
(Article in Centrepiece (LSE) Winter 05/06)
Shamit Saggar Dividends of Diversity
(RSA Migration Cm Report 2006)
Foreign Affairs Jan/Feb 2006
Reforming the World Bank, Jessica Einhorn
Recovering Sustainable Development, David G Victor
Newsweek Feb 20, 2006
The Decline and Fall of Europe, Fareed Zakaria
George Clooney Film script "Good night and good luck"