|
|
ILPS Denounces U.N. Millennium Development Goals as Scheme to Aggravate Imperialist Plunder and Poverty
By Prof. Jose Maria Sison
Chairperson, International Coordinating Committee
International League of Peoples' Struggle
12 September 2005
The scheduled high-level review of the Millennium Development Goals
(MDGs) by the United Nations (UN) on 14-16 September is merely another
attempt to further legitimize the sham being peddled by the UN and the
international financial institutions (IFIs) under the auspices of the
most predatory imperialist powers.
Far from promoting global economic and social justice, the MDGs is a
shrewd scheme of the imperialist powers to distract attention from
structural issues that are the root cause of the chronic and worsening
poverty which afflicts billions of people around the world today. Worse,
the MDGs is being used to promote the same policy prescriptions of
imperialist globalization that have hastened and aggravated the massive
destruction of livelihood and economic opportunities in poor countries
where more than 1 billion people are forced to survive on less than US$1
a day.
Originally conceived by the imperialist countries through the
Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development (OECD) in 1996 and picked up by the UN in
its 2000 Millennium Declaration, the MDGs conveniently distorted the
issue of poverty, and ignored its causes and conditions. Thus, it did
not only set token and selective targets to eradicate poverty but also
twisted the very concept of poverty eradication to accommodate the
corporate agenda of imperialist globalization while avoiding such
crucial demands as unconditional cancellation of debt of all poor
countries, the reversal of World Trade Organization (WTO)-type
international trade regime, and the reversal of International Monetary
Fund (IMF)-World Bank-imposed neo-liberal economic reforms.
The scale of debt in the poorest countries has so crippled their
economies that development has become impossible because much of the
limited resources are being deflected to debt servicing. In 2002, the
level of debt of the poorest countries was almost 21 times its size in
1970. The international usury perpetrated by the IFIs has siphoned off
US$550 billion in interest and principal payments for US$540 billion of
loans, yet the poorest countries still owe foreign creditors US$523
billion as of 2002. [1]
The declaration last June of the Group of Seven (G7), the principal
cabal of imperialist powers, to cancel 100% of the US$40 billion owed by
18 heavily indebted poor countries (HIPC) is a vain attempt to fend off
criticisms on the sincerity of their much-ballyhooed 'making poverty
history' publicity stunt. By imposing the terms of the debt cancellation
including disastrous neo-liberal reforms, the G7 initiative merely
legitimized the odious and illegitimate debt incurred by the puppet
regimes of these poor countries and debt which facilitated their
economic plunder by imperialist corporations and banks.
In fact, the MDGs systematically makes semi-colonial and colonial
countries even more beholden to their imperialist patrons rather than
promoting self-reliance through genuine national industrialization.
While the MDGs commit to achieve universal access to primary education
and improve health services, it promotes the same post-Washington
consensus ( i.e. liberalization, deregulation, and privatization plus
'good governance') policies that have, in the first place, intensified
the bankruptcy and indebtedness of national governments in the Third
World, and obliterated their capacity to provide vital social services
including health and education. To finance such services, the rich
countries promised to provide more aid money such as the US$5-billion
Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) of the US. But the problem with the
MCA is not simply the doubtful commitment of the US to the MDGs with the
Bush administration's recent statement that it only supports the
Millennium Declaration but not the specific targets of the MDGs. [2]
Worse, poor countries have to first implement US-imposed preconditions
including economic liberalization to have access to the MCA.
The liberalization of trade and investment, the drastic reduction in
government spending on vital social services, the privatization and
deregulation of strategic economic activities all have pushed the
workers, peasants, urban and rural poor, indigenous people, women,
youth, and other marginalized sectors not only in poverty but also in
unspeakable desolation while generating unimaginable wealth and power
for the few. According to the UN's Human Development Report 2005, in
1990, the average American was 38 times richer than the average
Tanzanian while today, the average American is now 61 times richer. [3]
It is clear from the onset that poor countries should never hope that
the MDGs will truly address the issue of poverty precisely because the
MDGs was designed to deodorize the imperialist plunder that has
impoverished and dehumanized the people of the poor world. The MDGs runs
counter to the peoples' fight against poverty precisely because it does
not attend to the structural issues of global poverty, namely the
neocolonial relations between the rich and the poor in terms of
development cooperation, trade, diplomacy, etc. that is at the core of
the permanent crisis of backwardness and poverty in the semi-colonies
and colonies, but even perpetrates the exploitative relations between
the semi-colonies and colonies and their imperialist masters.
The only way to fight poverty is the assertion of the poor people's
inalienable human right not simply to live but to live decently and this
entails the struggle to bring to an end all structures of exploitation
and poverty. At the minimum, this means freeing all the poor countries
from the debt bondage without conditions, reversing all WTO and
IMF-World Bank neo-liberal policies, and creating a global environment
which recognizes and respects the sovereign right of poor countries and
their people to determine their own development agenda and needs. Any
effort to combat poverty should not be without these minimum requisites.
But we should recognize that these reforms will not be given to the poor
on a silver platter by imperialist institutions including and even the
UN. Like all the hard-earned victories of the people in the past, it can
only be borne out by the militant and uncompromising struggle for
national liberation, social justice and peace of the anti-imperialist
movement. This is what the International League of Peoples" Struggle is
striving to advance. #
END NOTES:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] 'The scale of the debt crisis' by Anup Shah, Global Issues website,
page last updated on 2 July 2005.
http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Debt/Scale.asp
[2] 'US, UN escalate global aid squabble' by Column Lynch, The
Washington Post, 2 September 2005.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002466174_un02.html)
[3] Chapter 1: The State of Human Development, Human Development Report
2005, United Nations Development Program (UNDP).
http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2005/pdf/HDR05_chapter_1.pdf
|
|