“The amount of money that people in Europe spend on ice-cream each year would be enough to cover the cost of providing clean water to all the people in developing countries.”
Many peoples and organisations have looked at the problem of poverty and the need for world development. In 1980 a man called William Brandt who was a former Chancellor of West Germany, published a report, which looked at the problem of world poverty. This was called the Brandt report. It showed that people would need to do more than send out food and money, they needed to investigate poverty and make changes to both the Developed world as well as the Developing world.
Pope John Paul II also realised that people needed to be taught about poverty the need for investigation into it. In 1987 the Pope published an encyclical called “Sollicitudo Rei Socialis.” (Social Concern.) This document made a number of observations about the causes of poverty. It stated that the worlds markets favoured the rich and profits were not shared equally. As a result the Developing countries are not given the chance to develop their economies. Debt repaid by poorer countries to the richer nations outweighed the amount that they were given in aid. War has caused a number of problems, which have had a particularly negative effect on poorer countries. Such as neglect by world leaders for the well being of poorer nations because they have been too focussed on war. This also resulted in more money being spent on weapons than on the poor. Wars have also caused there to be more refugees and famine, increasing the problem of poverty for the world as a whole.
The causes of poverty can be put down to a number of other factors as well as those listed above. There is often a large population in developing countries, which means that there are more people to feed, clothe, etc. The problem is that parents feel that they need a lot of children so that they will have more help with work to bring in food and will have a better chance of having children to look after them when they get too old to look after themselves. Despite the fact that richer countries have smaller families they tend to consume more food than the poorer families in developing countries.
Disaster are also linked to poverty, as people who live in disaster areas can be made homeless by an earthquake or tsunami destroying their homes or farm land. Poor people usually can not afford to move to a safer place and the safer areas are usually already occupied with richer peoples. When a disaster does take place the country’s government may not have enough money to offer sufficient aid to the victims.
Developing countries are often in debt to the International Monetary Fund who they received loans from so that they could build up their economy. But a lot of the time they can not afford to pay back the debts with interest and so the IMF impose Structural Adjustment Programmes which make the developing countries spend less money on areas such as health and education and more on repaying the debts.
Developing countries receive increasingly low prices for their exports of goods and have to pay higher prices for imports. In Zambia debt repayment cost 34 times the amount spent on primary school education, which suffered an 80% fall. Because some workers in developing countries have unfair working conditions where they are given a ridiculously small amount of pay for the amount of work they have done. People have been given the choice of buying products that ensure fairness to workers in developing countries. The Fairtrade Mark is a sign put on products to allow consumers to buy them at a higher price and tell them that the workers will receive a fair amount of pay for their work. A similar Idea is the Rug Mark which is put on rugs to tell buyers that they were not produce by child labour workers.
Organisations and initiatives have tried to tackle some of the problems that developing countries face. One way was the Jubilee 2000 project, set up by Christians to put pressure on the world’s governments and encourage them to cancel debts. The project was called Jubilee 2000 because the year 2000 was announced a Jubilee year and in the bible it was stated that every seven years a worker had to cancel the debt of a neighbour or release a slave:
“He and his children are to be released in the year of the Jubilee.” (Leviticus 25:54)
CAFOD and Christian are to other religious organisations who try to help poor countries.
There is a desperate need for world development. So that we can at least reduce the pain and suffering of the people in developing countries. But Jesus said “You have the poor with you always.” This is not a signal for us to ignore the problems of the Developing World but it means that we have to look after them.
The Roman Catholic Church sees a lot of poverty as the result of sin not just by governments but by wealthier countries neglecting their responsibility to look after their fellow human being. The world does not just need to be developed but also re-educated to the reality of poverty in the world and the effect that a lot of our actions have on the poor. For example, supermarkets fighting for lower prices to please the customer and in the process reducing the amount that the developing countries receive in return for their goods.
