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‘How to tackle poverty in the Third World’
A speech to the Conference on poverty and immigration, by NWASDG, 23 June 2007.
The North West Asylum Seekers Defence Group (NWASDG) would like to thank TARA and Jules, for inviting us here to speak today. NWASDG was set up in May 2006 by some anti-deportation campaigns and Manchester Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! (FRFI).
The world we live in today is dominated by the economic system called capitalism, which has developed into imperialism. Imperialism has divided the world into two types of countries – oppressed and oppressor countries – a handful of countries such as the US, Britain, France, Germany, Japan, etc., dominate, exploit and impoverish numerous underdeveloped countries, creating a system of global oppression and financial strangulation of the majority of the population of the world.
It is this system of oppression – imperialism, that is the cause of poverty and mass migration that we see in the world today. The billions of migrants and refugees are trying to escape this system of exploitation and poverty.
Before
outlining how to tackle poverty, it is worth describing exactly what is
meant by poverty. There are various degrees of poverty, which exists in
every country of the world including the rich industrialized countries. However in what is called the third world, the degree of poverty is truly obscene: The
underdeveloped countries with some 80% of the world’s population have
less than 20% of the world’s wealth. More than a quarter of the 4.5bn
people living in underdeveloped countries do not have some of life’s
most basic needs. - 1.3bn people live on incomes of less than $1 a day, almost 3bn on less than $2 a day.
- 1.3bn people do not have access to clean water.
- 2.5bn people lack basic sanitation.
- 2bn people lack access to electricity.
- More than 850m people are illiterate.
About
46m people in the world were living with HIV/AIDS at the end of 2005,
most of them living in the third world. AIDS caused over 3.3m deaths
and 15
million orphans in 2005. At least 27 million people in Africa face
starvation due to food shortages. About half of African children, 43
million, are out of school. 300 million sub-Saharan Africans live on
less than about 50p a day. In Latin America, the picture is similar,
with at least 30% of the population live in poverty. Poverty among indigenous people in reaches 96% in the rural areas, showing the racist nature of Latin American ‘democracies’. Unsurprisingly,
as a result, 11 million people die each year, 30,000 a day, due to
hunger, preventable diseases and extreme poverty, including 4.8 million
children under five. The
rich countries of the world have been trying to tackle poverty in
Africa and latin America for the last 50 years, with no success.
Poverty continues to rise. People in Africa are poorer now than they
were 50 years ago. Every year the rich countries called the G7 or G8
have a conference on poverty, scratching their heads as to how to
tackle poverty. In reality they are not interested in tackling poverty,
but they are the very cause of poverty in the first place. After African people struggled to free themselves from colonial rule, the colonialists put in place measures to achieve colonialism while preaching ‘independence’. The first method is their control of the economies of these countries, their exports and the
world market, as well as of the prices of commodities bought and sold there. Another
technique of neo-colonialism or imperialism is the use of high interest
rates from their loans and ‘aid’. According to the World Bank, which is
controlled by the rich countries, in 1962 71 Asian, African and Latin
American countries owed foreign debts of some $27bn. $6 billion
was given in economic aid between 1960 and 1962. But in a sample year,
1961, the average sums taken out by such donors, was $5bn in profits,
$1bn in interest, and $5,8bn from non-equivalent exchange, or a total
of $11.8bn extracted against $6bn put in. Thus, ‘aid’ is another means
of exploitation, under a more cosmetic name. This aid is usually given
directly, called bilateral aid, but sometimes it is given through
international financial institutions like the world Bank or the IMF.
All these institutions have, significant, U.S. and British capital as
their major stock holders. These agencies forcing would-be borrowers to
submit to various offensive conditions, such as supplying information
about their economies, submitting their policy and plans to review by
the World Bank and accepting supervision of their use of loans, and
paying interest on any loans not used. As for the so-called
development, promised only a small amount is actually received. The whole story of ‘aid’ is not only contained in figures, for there are conditions which hedge it around: - signing of commerce and navigation treaties;
- agreements for economic co-operation;
- the right to meddle in internal affairs, to lower trade
barriers in favour of the rich donor country’s goods and capital;
- forcing them to end subsidies in fuel, health and education, to privatise state assets, which affect poor people the most;
- forcing them to protect the interests of private investments of donor corporations;
- determination of how the funds are to be used;
- forcing the recipient to supply raw materials like oil, to the donor;
- and use of such funds a majority of it, in fact
to buy goods, mainly arms, from the donor nation. These conditions apply to all aspects of industry, political and military.
These
measures were put in place by persuasion of African ruling elites and
if they refused by force. For example, in 1961 in what is now the
Democratic Republic of Congo (then Zaire), leaders like Patrice Lumumba
were assassinated by the US, Britain and Belgium, because he wanted to
kick out private corporations of the imperialists, and give the land to
the people. The British government of the time, colluded in this
murder. To keep this system going, civil wars and coup d’etats
have been fomented throughout Africa. African and Latin American
leaders who were independent of mind or anti-imperialist have been
stigmatised, assassinated. This exploitation and control continues till today: in 1998, the poor countries owed about
$2.4
trillion and in 2005, they owed $3 trillion. So every year they pay
more and more in debt repayments while owing more and more, even more
than they originally borrowed. These debts will never be paid and these
countries will remain hooked in debt and poverty until this system of
exploitation is ended. It is the imperialist system that is responsible
for third world poverty and only the end of imperialism can save the
11,000 children who die every day from poverty. Let
us not forget that this poverty is the main cause of migration from the
poor countries to the rich countries, as people seek to escape hunger,
disease, starvation, civil wars and deaths. And when they get here the
racist British Labour government locks them up in prisons they call
‘detention centres’, calls them liars and scroungers and deports them
back to face rape, torture and death, which their own system of
exploitation has caused in the first place! The example of Cuba The
system is not impossible to remove, look at the tiny Caribbean island
of Cuba, which is a poor country, yet everybody in Cuba enjoys free
education up to University level; every one has access to free health
care regardless of whether you are black or white, from a rich family
or from a poor family. As a result, infant mortality is better in Cuba
at 5.3, than in Manchester, Bradford, Birmingham or Glasgow where it is
about 12 per thousand live births. While life expectancy in parts of
Africa is as low as 33 years, or 48 years in Afghanistan, it is 75 in
Cuba. There are no malnourished children or street children in Cuba,
and yet Cuba doesn’t have the wealth of Congo or Iraq or Nigeria. It
has instead a different system not based on imperialism and capitalist
exploitation. In 1959, they kicked out the imperialists and their local
sponsors and have been building a different society ever since, a
socialist society. Now
Venezuela in Latin America, is following their example. This year
Venezuela kicked out the IMF, last year the World Bank. They have taken
more control of their own oil companies and forced the multinationals
like BP to pay tax! Since
1998 seven new universities have opened, 50 new high schools, tens of
thousands of new college places. Last year they eradicated illiteracy.
Cuba eradicated illiteracy in 1961. 30,000
Cuban doctors and nurses provide free health care to 17 million
Venezuelans in impoverished areas. Around 100,000 Venezuelans received
free eye surgery from Cuba in 2005 alone. Cubans doctors, mostly women
have been providing free health care in areas where a doctor had
previously never been seen such as in Pakistan in 2005. Cuba
and Venezuela have turned their backs on imperialism and capitalism and
their people are staring to see the results. In 2002, the US tried to
orchestrate another coup in Venezuela just like they have been doing in
the third world for decades, to remove democratic leaders who lead in
the interests of the poor, and not in the interests of the rich and
powerful. In
Venezuela, poverty has dropped from 25% in 2003 to 9.1% in 2006 – in
just three years, and yet in Britain the Labour government continue to
look for ways to tackle poverty and since they came to power in 1997,
100,000 more children have fallen into poverty. Even those they claim
they have raised from poverty have been raised from just below the
poverty line to just above it – any little shock, like losing their
jobs and they will be back in poverty. The British Labour government
and the G8 represent the rich and powerful – the banks, multinational
corporations, millionaires, the middle classes - that is why they don’t
know how to tackle poverty, and will never tackle poverty, because its
not in their interests. It will be like killing the goose that lays the
golden egg. While Cuba exports doctors, nurses and teachers, Britain
and the US export bombs, missiles and helicopter gunships, under the
cover of ‘peace keeping’ and ‘humanitarian aid’ – that is why when NGOs
and aid agencies call for ‘more and better aid’ to quote them, are
actually calling for more imperialism, more exploitation and more
death, because they are unable or unwilling to understand the real
nature and purpose of that so-called ‘aid’. These aid agencies also
benefit indirectly from the aid, as they are the ones who will
administer the aid and it pays their wages. Poverty in Britain Inequality is growing also within the rich countries themselves. By 2005, 27% of children in Britain, lived in poverty while in 1979 it was 14%. Today, some 3.4 million children remain in poverty, despite living in the fifth richest country in the world. The
top 1% of the population owned 23% of all wealth in 2002, which
had risen from 17% in 1989, whilst the bottom 50% of the population own
only 6% of the national wealth. Poverty in a relatively rich country like Britain is deeply debilitating and socially isolating. - 9.5m people cannot afford to keep their homes adequately heated, damp free and in a decent state of decoration.
- 7.5m are too poor
to engage in social activities such as visiting friends or attending weddings and funerals.
- 6.5m adults go without essential clothing such as a warm waterproof coat.
- 10.5m suffer financial insecurity, cannot save or insure their house contents and spend small amounts of money on themselves.
- 4m people do not have enough money for fresh fruit and vegetables or two meals a day.
- 8m cannot afford items such as a fridge, telephone or carpets.
The
only way to truly tackle poverty is to eradicate imperialism and
capitalism and build socialism like Cuba and Venezuela are doing. In
Britain, we have to organise and protest against the racist attacks
being directed by the state against refugees and asylum seekers. We
have to educate ourselves on what really going on and who our enemies
are, i.e the racist Labour government. Thank you. |
