Unesco deadline: End poverty in 2015

PARIS — At the strike of the baton of Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra conductor Eliahu Inbal, the 60 brass and string German ensemble superbly played the four movements of Ludwig van Beethoven’s "Symphony No. 9 in D Minor."

The 60 singers of the UNESCO Choir joined in singing "Ode an die Freude" (The Ode to Joy):

Joy, bright spark of divinity,

Daughter of Elysium,

Fire-inspired we tread thy sanctuary,

Thy magic power reunites,

All that custom has divided,

All men become brothers,

Under the sway of thy gentle wings.

As UNESCO Director General Koichiro Matsuura puts it, 60 musicians with 60 singers are heralding the 60th birthday of UNESCO with the 192 member state delegations at the Plenary Hall of the UNESCO headquarters at Place de Fontenoy in this French capital, where the 33rd General Session is taking place.

The Second Mandate of the Re-elected UNESCO Director General

This year also concludes the first mandate of the Director General’s six-year term. This for him has been a great privilege and honor to serve mankind in a fast-changing world with such "long-standing problems as poverty, natural disasters and ethnic strife (along) with fresh challenges, such as new forms of terrorism ushering a new era of global insecurity, the unprecedented HIV-AIDS epidemic, the bird flu, as well as new ethical dilemmas such as human cloning and the breaking of the sanctity of schools, churches, mosques, and hospitals by terrorists."

Then, Matsuura provided an overview of what has been achieved between 1999 and 2005 when the director of nations closed rank with him in tackling regional problems especially in the eradication of extreme poverty in developing countries with the Education For All (EFA) projects. Focused on the six goals of promoting Early Childhood Education, quality primary to secondary education, technical skills training, adult literacy, gender equity and HIV-AIDS prevention education, it is meant to meet the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015. This period is specified as the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD) 2005-2015. The Director General went to the United Nations last March to officially receive the UNESCO assignment to be the lead agency for DESD.

Elected unopposed for another six years, Matsuura sees "positive and heartening new developments such as improving aid trends and debt cancellation, better coordination of efforts in tackling post-conflict situations, and the HIV-AIDS epidemic, natural disasters, as well as the spread of democratic leadership and accountability." He summarizes it all in one phrase: "UNESCO is now better placed to assist the international community in addressing the challenges facing the world today."

How We Can Make it Happen in Our Lifetime

A lot of crisis in the developing world can be avoided. Fifteen thousand African mothers, fathers, farmers, teachers, nurses, and children die each day from preventable, treatable AIDS, malaria and tuberculoses (TB). If we do not treat it as an emergency — then it is our crisis.

The UNESCO deadline for ending poverty is 2015. But by 2025, one more decade after, UNESCO can change the world forever. The key is not to predict what will happen but to help shape the future.

On Debt Alleviation and Equality

What is happening to Africa, as well as Asia, questions man’s commitment to the concept of equality. If we are honest, there is no way one can conclude that such mass death day after day would even be allowed to happen anywhere — least of all in North America, Europe or Japan.

Jeffrey Sachs, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan’s special adviser describes Africa as "an entire continent bursting into flames, if the well-off countries would accept that Africans or Asian are equal to them, then they must put out the fire."

The destinies of "haves" are linked to the fate of "have-nothing-at-alls." This became clear on September 11, 2001. The perpetrators may have been rich Saudis but they found their sanctuary in the poverty-stricken, collapsed state of Afghanistan. "War against terror is bound with war against poverty," stated former US Secretary of State Colin Powell. Sachs concluded that in these tense and nervous times, isn’t it cheaper and smarter to make friends with your enemies than to defend yourself against them?

The plan Mr. Sachs laid out to accomplish the 2015 Millennium Development Goal of cutting poverty in half — a goal agreed to by all the world’s governments — is in the handbook, "The End of Poverty: How we can make it happen in our lifetime": "How we could be the first generation to outlaw that poverty of seeing a child die of hunger in a world of plenty or disease preventable by a 20-cent inoculation… how we can be the first generation that can unknot the tangle of bad trade, bad debt, and bad luck."

The Daily Struggles for Survival

More than eight million people around the world die each year. Every day, the newspapers fail to enumerate the poor who die in hospital wards for lack of drugs, in villages that lack anti-malarial bed nets, and in houses that lack safe drinking water. They die namelessly, without public comment.

Since September 11, 2001, the United States has launched a war on terror but neglected the deeper causes of global instability. The $450 billion that the US will spend on the military will never bring peace if it spends only 1/30 of that (or $15 billion) to address the plight of the world’s poorest of the poor whose societies have become havens of unrest, violence and even global terrorism.

The "Doctor" of Nations

Sachs was director of Earth Institute of Columbia University before he became special adviser to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. For 20 years, he has worked with heads of states, finance and health ministries so that he has visited more than a hundred countries with about 90 percent of the world population. He says, "I have been fortunate to have contributed to some real success — the end of hyper-inflation, the introduction of new stable national currencies, the cancellation of un-payable debts, the conversion of communist economies to dynamic market-based economies, the start-up of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, malaria, and modern drug treatment for impoverished HIV-infected peoples."

His book recalls what he has witnessed and learned in Bolivia, Poland, Russia, China, India and Kenya. UNESCO commissioners from these countries I have been meeting in the General Conference these days are either educators, scientists, or communication or culture experts who have helped to push their countries forward.

One can say that Jeffrey Sachs has helped express UNESCO Director General Matsuura’s challenge to the world to have a chance to join the age of prosperity built on science and technologies and market. Moreover, some parts of the world are caught in the downward spiral of impoverishment, hunger and disease. It is the common task of mankind to help them up to gain a foothold (even on the bottom rung) of the ladder of development so they can eventually proceed on their own.

The safety of the world depends on a collective decision to fight diseases, promote science and quality education, as well as provide critical infrastructure to help the poorest of the poor. Without this precondition, markets can cruelly bypass a large part of the world, leaving them impoverished and suffering without end.

The formula — collective action through effective government, provision of health education and infrastructure as well as foreign assistance when needed — spells economic success.

Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren

"Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren" is the title of the 1930 book written by British economist John Maynard Keynes as he reflected on the great Depression. He envisioned the end of poverty in Britain and other industrial countries in his grandchildren’s day, toward the end of the 20th century.

Keynes emphasized the dramatic march of science and technology to be the basis of continued economic growth at compounded interest. Keynes got it just right, of course: extreme poverty no longer exists in today’s rich countries.

Today, we can invoke the same logic to declare (thanks to UNESCO) that extreme poverty can be eliminated, not in the time of our grandchildren, but in our time.

(For more information or reaction, please e-mail at exec@obmontessori.edu.ph or pssoliven@yahoo.com)