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Cautious Optimism

G8 hammers out debt relief deal for poor nations
Sat Jun 11, 2005 12:19 PM ET

By Sumeet Desai and Brian Love

LONDON (Reuters) - The world's wealthiest countries agreed on Saturday to write off more than $40 billion of impoverished nations' debts in a drive to free Africa from hunger and disease.

The deal was struck by finance ministers from the Group of Eight industrialized nations in London after months of tense negotiations and leaves leaders to consider proposals for doubling aid at a summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, next month.

"We are conscious of the abject poverty that so many countries and individuals face. We're being driven forward by the urgent need to act. We've found ourselves united with a shared purpose," British finance minister Gordon Brown told a news conference.

Link to complete Reuters piece

Day 141

Day 141 of Bush's Silence
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: May 31, 2005
New York Times

Today marks Day 141 of Mr. Bush's silence on the genocide, for he hasn't let the word Darfur slip past his lips publicly since Jan. 10 (even that was a passing reference with no condemnation).

Link to full article

Which Millenium?

Armed conflict, the HIV/AIDS pandemic, natural disasters and climate change are the leading causes of hunger worldwide, according to a report (.doc) released on Monday by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization during the 31st Session of the Committee on World Food Security in Rome, Reuters AlertNet reports (Reuters AlertNet, 5/23). The report, titled "Assessment of the World Food Security Situation," says that the Millennium Development Goal of reducing by half the number of hungry people in the world by 2015 -- established by the World Food Summit in 1996 -- is "almost certain to be missed by a wide margin if current trends persist," according to a FAO release. However, the report also finds that the target of reducing the proportion of people affected by extreme poverty and hunger by 2015 might be achieved in most regions except sub-Saharan Africa (FAO release, 5/23). "Peace encourages investments and allows social and economic development. Conflict destroys lives, opportunities and environments," the report says, adding, "It can destroy in hours and days what has taken years and decades to develop" (AFP/Yahoo! News, 5/23). The report also says that armed conflict "contributes to the spread of HIV/AIDS through displacement, rape or commercial sex" (Reuters AlertNet, 5/23).
From Kaiser Network.org (Daily Report, 5/25)

Here's an excerpt from the report that caught my eye:

"FAO estimates that 852 million people worldwide were undernourished in 2000–2002: 815 million in developing countries, 28 million in the countries in transition and 9 million in the industrialized countries (see Table 1). South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa have disproportionate share of the world’s hungry. The number of undernourished people in developing countries decreased by only 9 million during the decade following the World Food Summit baseline period of 1990–1992. During the second half of the decade, the number of chronically hungry in developing countries increased at a rate of almost 4 million per year, wiping out two thirds of the reduction of 27 million achieved during the previous five years."

Shattering

AIDS numbers 'shattering'
South African crisis only getting worse
Linked to 44% of all deaths in 2004: Study

Forty-four per cent of deaths in South Africa last year were caused by HIV/AIDS, according to projections from the country's Medical Research Council.

"South Africa is in the grip of an HIV/AIDS epidemic of shattering proportions," the council says in introducing recent research on causes of death in the country.

From the Toronto Star, May 19 2005. Click here for the full story (free registration required).

The Elemental Madness

After watching the webcast of Stephen Lewis' keynote address to The Public Broadcasters Global Media Summit on HIV/AIDS in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago (which I posted on both WorD and 3Click under The Moral Void), I picked up the phone and called my friends at World Vision.

I asked my friend and former colleague Jenny to send me out a copy of the video from the fundraising dinner I refered to in my earlier post. I was there in Winnipeg that night in November 2002, and was profoundly moved by the presentation. Later, watching the tape of the evening with my wife Sue would be a pivotal point in our decision to sell off, pack up, leave our eastern lives behind and move out here.

Jenny also kindly included a DVD of a similar evening in Toronto, in November 2003. Again, Stephen Lewis was the key note speaker.

I've just finished watching that presentation. Here are some of Stephen's comments, so in keeping with his thoughts on the moral void and also indicative of the rage that is always there, just under the surface, given the things he has seen.

There is an elemental madness about it.

I guess what engages me the most when I make these visits to the continent is the irrationality, the sheer insanity of what is happening, and how the world is prepared somehow to tolerate the decimation of hundreds of millions of people - their lives, their families, their communities.

We have tolerated it. Now is the time to shake ourselves out of the stupor of indifference and do something.

Witness To Evil

CBC Archives has put together a comprehensive page gathering video history on the genocide in Rwanda, and the role played by Lt.-Gen. Roméo Dallaire. This is the story of an extraordinary man who stood his ground and did what he could while the international community turned their backs on him, his small collection of UN troops, and more importantly, on the people of Rwanda.

With more than 800,000 people slaughtered in 100 days the Rwandan genocide stands as one of the most horrific mass murders of the past century. In the middle of the horror was a Canadian peacekeeper whose efforts to avert the tragedy were thwarted by political apathy and incalculable evil. CBC Digital Archives looks back at this sad chapter in Africa's history and how Lt.-Gen. Roméo Dallaire managed to survive to become Canada's most famous casualty of war.

Link

The Moral Void

(Reposted from Waving or Drowning, May 6)

I think I've written about this in the past, but one of the privileges of spending a year at World Vision was the opportunity to hear Stephen Lewis speak on two occasions. The first was in New York at a World Vision Canada and United States summit, and the second at a huge fund raising dinner in Winnipeg. He is without a doubt the most gifted orator I have ever heard.

I've just finished watching a webcast of his keynote address to The Public Broadcasters Global Media Summit on HIV/AIDS (May 2, 2005) in San Francisco. (Webcast here, full transcript here.)

Here are his closing comments. He always does this when he speaks - he puts away his prepared notes (which he rarely refers to anyway) and speaks from his heart. The volume of his voice rises, and his eyes glisten as he starts to pound the pulpit. I've heard him say that he tries to keep a lid on the rage that he lives with... it's at times like these that we get a glimpse of it.

I beg you as I take my seat to be involved to the extent you possibly can. I feel an intense personal solidarity with my African colleagues in particular. I cannot get over how valiantly and heroically those countries are struggling for survival. I have had heard Festus Mogae the President of Botswana use the word extermination to describe what he feels he’s coping with. I’ve heard the lovely Prime Minister of Lesotho as sweet and decent a man as I’ve encountered use the word annihilation to describe what he feels his country is coping with. I sat with the President of Zambia a few weeks ago and he used the word holocaust to describe what he felt he was coping with.

I’m 67 years old. I've spent some time in politics, some time in diplomacy, some time in multi-lateralism. I’m no sweet innocent. I thought I understood the world, I don’t. The behavior of the world is inexplicable to me. I cannot stand going to back to the continent I love, I first visited Africa in 1959, 46 years ago, I’ve been visiting regularly since. Every time I visit these young women in their twenties come to me with their children in tow, and they always say, “Mr. Lewis, what is going to happen to my children when I die?” And then they say to me - they don’t use these words, but this is what they mean - you, Mr. White Man, you have drugs in your country to keep your people alive, why can’t we have drugs to keep ourselves alive?

I note with all of you that we are spending this year internationally one trillion dollars on armaments and that by the end of this year we will have spent 300 hundred billion dollars to fight wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and we cannot summon a pittance of that to keep millions of people alive. That seems to me to constitute a moral void in international behavior which cries out for a media response which is principled, uncompromising and universal.

I'd encourage you to take the time to watch the webcast. You can also swing by the Stephen Lewis Foundation to see what he's been doing with funds raised.