Madam, – It certainly looked and sounded good when the world’s most powerful politicians came together in New York recently for a three-day UN summit on global poverty. Or it would have, if we hadn’t seen and heard it all so often before.
Afterwards, the predictable grand-sounding declarations about meeting Millennium Development Goals were delivered, only this time with a few extra promises thrown in. Speculative noises were made about halving world poverty, getting to grips with HIV and Aids, and much else besides. But it was just empty rhetoric and posturing for the media.
Again, the biggest single issue affecting the poor and deprived in the developing world was ignored. The UN leaders couldn’t even bring themselves to mention it. Yet while corrupt and brutal regimes are allowed anywhere near aid money, the people they lord it over will be kept living in abject poverty Are democratic leaders in the UN afraid to confront those who gorge like pigs at a trough with their lackeys on western aid money while people starve? Are they afraid to tell them that in future all western aid will be delivered directly to the people for whom it is intended; that there will be no more government-to-government aid for them to fill their coffers with? They must be. Yet until they do, things in the developing world will remain much as they are. – Yours, etc,