Human Solidarity and World Poverty

Abstract

Paradoxically, human solidarity reached a nadir at the close of the twentieth century, side-by-side with unprecedented globalization through the development and spread of instantaneous, electronic communication. In contrast, World War II was the bloodiest war ever waged but was followed by idealism and international human solidarity. There were three developments in the immediate postwar period that powerfully captured the spirit of human solidarity. With the creation of the United Nations and its specialized agencies, the peoples and nations of the world came together to promote peace, human rights, and social and economic development. The adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights signaled an official recognition that all human beings are entitled to similar rights and committed the world community to the achievement of these rights. The establishment of programs of development assistance from rich to poor countries affirmed the responsibility of the more fortunate to promote the living standards of the destitute people in the world. Never before in world history had the family of nations supported such ideas and institutions of human solidarity. Fifty years later, there are few signs of such vitality of world solidarity. The most visible institutions of such solidarity, the UN family, have been increasingly marginalized. The resources channeled through them to combat world poverty, already woefully inadequate, have suffered further declines over the past two decades. While the protection of human rights now occupies a more central place in international discussions than during the Cold War, there is a tendency to accord primacy to civil and political rights and to neglect social and economic ones. But perhaps the clearest sign of flagging international solidarity is the downward trend, over several decades, in official development assistance as a proportion of the output of the rich countries. There are only four countries that adhere to the aid targets that, on many occasions, all rich governments have committed themselves to. The recent spurt of growth and prosperity in the rich countries has not done much to reverse the declining trends in development assistance. The year 2000 witnessed a remarkable debate in the richest and the most powerful country in the world on what to do with the expected budgetary surpluses of $3.1 trillion over the next decade. Amid the numerous proposals made in Washington and elsewhere about the possible uses of this largesse, no one ever suggested that even a tiny fraction of this staggering amount might be utilized for poverty reduction in the world. For good measure, this period of great prosperity coincided with the persistent refusal of the United States to pay the dues it has owed the United Nations for several years. The contrast with the early post-war years could not be greater, for it was the United States that took the leadership in creating the UN and in establishing programs of development assistance, starting with the Marshall Plan. The decline in global social solidarity is all the more astonishing given that the world community has never been so unanimous in regarding the eradication of absolute poverty as the most important moral, social, and economic challenge of our times. The series of world conferences held in the 1990s reached agreement on specific goals for universal minimum living standards. These goals targeted, among others, the areas of gender equality, children's welfare, nutrition, health, family planning, education, clean water, and sanitation. The rich countries committed themselves to many of these goals in the 1996 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) declaration Shaping the 21st Century: The Contribution of Development Cooperation. The Millennium Summit, convened in September 2000, reiterated its commitment to halving the incidence of world poverty by 2015 and to achieving some other social goals. …