The
dangers of not going forward -
a new UN report published today
By
Jonathan
Power
July 26, 2002
LONDON - The world is still going forward, but only
just. After September 11th, after Enron, after the stock
market crash, after the Israeli invasion of Palestine,
after the war talk about Iraq that continuously hovers in
the air above us like some putrid cloud, and after the
latest reports that say that AIDS is the biggest plague
in the history of humanity, we can still argue the world
on the whole is getting better.
Economic growth is picking up in Africa and the share
of the world's people living in extreme poverty is slowly
but steadily declining. Primary school enrolments have
risen worldwide. Since 1990, 800 million people have
gained access to improved water supplies and improved
sanitation. On the political and civil liberties front
there has also been enormous progress. Since 1980 some
eighty countries have taken significant steps towards
democratisation, and the number of people being killed by
war has fallen dramatically.
Still, it is obvious to all of us that these
achievements are precariousness. If the Clinton boom can
evaporate overnight so can all this. We cannot let our
guard down for a moment.
Today the United Nations Development Program publishes
its annual Human Development report and its director,
Mark Malloch Brown, observes in his downbeat preface:
"Many countries are poorer than 10, 20 and in some cases
30 years ago. Just as troubling, the flush of euphoria
that saw the number of countries embracing many of the
hallmarks of democracy soar to 140 over the past fifteen
years is starting to turn into frustration and
despair."
Are we going backwards? "Globalisation is forging
greater independence, yet the world seems more
fragmented- between rich and poor, between the powerful
and the powerless, and between those who welcome the new
global economy and those who demand a different course."
One of the important reasons for the rapid rate of
progress during the 1990s was that no one was any longer
distracted by the demands of the Cold War- building up
alliances, winning friends and influencing people, "he
may be a son-of a-bitch but he is our son-of-a-bitch",
and all the Machiavellian policies that went with it. At
last human rights, democracy and a more
honest-to-goodness economic development were able to move
to centre stage. Today there is a real danger, despite
the Bush Administration's decision to sharply increase
economic aid, that in this new age when "who is not with
us is against us" we will regress to a state of affairs
where strategic alliances move back to the centre of
national policy-making. Who is given aid and help will
depend once again more on their political stance vis a
vis America than on their long term economic and social
policies, and human rights will be traded off for a
supposed added security.
Two problems seem intractable and a third is becoming
more complicated. The first is what the UNDP calls
"income poverty". To halve the share of people living on
$1 a day we need to see at least an annual per capita
income growth in poor countries of 3.7% a year. But even
in the "boom decade" of the 1990s only 24 developing
countries grew that fast. (Admittedly China and India,
which between them contain two thirds of the people of
the developing world, were of the 24 and that is a
momentous achievement.) 127 countries with 35% of the
world's population have not grown at this rate. Indeed,
many have suffered negative growth in recent years.
The second major problem is child mortality. The good
news is that 85 countries appear to be on track to reduce
by the year 2015 under 5 mortality rates by two thirds
compared with 1990 levels. But another 81 countries with
more than 60% of the world's people won't, at their
present rate, make this goal. Most of these countries are
in Africa.
On the democracy front a growing number of the new
democracies of the 1980s and 90s are finding themselves
in trouble. Too many are slipping back into increasingly
undemocratic practices, with leaders altering
constitutions, bullying weak legislatures and judiciaries
and openly manipulating elections. Further, even though
majority rule is now established, minorities are
persecuted or discriminated against. Too often the
absence of a democratic culture means that those who lose
elections are either persecuted by the winners or refuse
to accept the electoral verdict. Democracies require not
just legitimate governments but legitimate oppositions
too. Of the 81 countries that embraced full democracy in
the last twenty years only 47 have gone on to become
fully functioning democracies. Several have returned to
authoritarian rule- a mercifully small 6 - but many other
countries have got stalled somewhere between democracy
and authoritarianism.
The progress of the world is very finely balanced.
Since the 1980s - thank Jimmy Carter for this- and even
more since the end of the Cold War- thank Mikhail
Gorbachev for that - the steps forward became very
apparent. But they will only continue if the world gives
the unmet problems its undivided attention. India and
Pakistan have not been doing that with their talk of
nuclear war. Africa with its multitude of wars and run
away corruption has not either. Nor has America which
under President George Bush sees the world through an
ever-narrowing prism of self-interest.
I can be reached by phone +44
7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Copyright © 2002 By
JONATHAN POWER
Follow this
link to read about - and order - Jonathan Power's book
written for the
40th Anniversary of
Amnesty International
"Like
Water on Stone - The Story of Amnesty
International"
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