Weapons of Mass Salvation: what are the arguments in favour of industrialized nations transferring money to developing nations? If you view the human race as a single community, then it's the right thing to do; families pull together to help out those going through a rough spell.

In 2000, Roy Culpeper wrote a newspaper article about his view that the world's richest nations should tackle the problem of how to "enable half the planet's population to share in the considerable wealth and prosperity being generated by the other half. There's a growing consensus that the world must struggle to reduce the number of people living in absolute poverty at least by one-half in the next 15 years (through) much more foreign aid and (by) giving (the poorest countries) greater access to industrial markets." When Mr. Culpeper wrote the article he was president of The North-South Institute, the Ottawa-based think tank that had just released its report, Global Financial Reform: How? Why? When? The G20 (the group of 20 countries that represent 75% of the world's people and produce 85% of its Gross Domestic Product) were gathering in Montreal, Quebec, and Mr. Culpeper said the group needed to seize "an unequalled opportunity to rid the world of the scourge of poverty in the first decades of this century ..."

When Globe and Mail columnist Paul Knox suggested in Match 2002 that some of the requested $48 billion (U.S.) boost in annual U.S. defence spending should go to foreign aid, one reader called him a self-righteous jerk. Others thought he was being anti-American. And, while some thought helping the poor was a good idea, others felt that giving money to the Third World was a waste of time because corruption stopped it from reaching the people who need it most.

According to Mr. Knox, even aid professionals say foreign aid is pointless unless it can be shown that it actually helps the poor become better off and stay that way.

Nevertheless, he noted a spark of progress at the United Nations conference on financing for development held in Monterrey, Mexico the same week his column appeared: the U.S. government announced a $5 billion boost in foreign aid spending, and the European Union set aside another $4 billion.

But, the Millennium Development Goals of cutting poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation, and discrimination against women set out at the United Nations Millennium Summit in 2000, are a distant dream. The goals, to be achieved between 1990 and 2015, include:

* Halving extreme poverty and hunger (for the more than a billion people who still live on less than $1 U.S. a day);

* Achieving universal primary education (for the roughly 113 million children who do not attend school);

* Promoting gender equality (given that two-thirds of illiterates are women, and the rate of employment among women is two-thirds that of men);

* Reducing under-five mortality by two-thirds (every year nearly 11 million young children die before their fifth birthday, mainly from preventable illnesses);

* Reducing maternal mortality by three-quarters (in the developing world, the risk of dying in childbirth is one in 48);

* Reversing the spread of HIV/ AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis;

* Ensuring environmental sustainability (despite their commitments at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, fewer than half the world's countries have adopted strategies for sustainable development to reverse the loss of environmental resources, and even fewer are implementing them); and,

* Developing a global partnership for development, with targets for aid, trade, and debt relief.

The goal is for developed donor countries to give 0.7% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in official development assistance (ODA) to developing countries. UNICEF, the World Bank, and the World Health Organization estimate that meeting the goals by 2015 will need an extra $50 billion a year in development assistance. That sounds like a lot of money but it represents only about one-fifth of one percent of income in donor countries.

Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University in New York, is an expert on international development, and director of the UN Millennium Project. He thinks U.S. President George Bush should be spending more time and money on Weapons of Mass Salvation (WMS) to make the world "a safer and more hospitable home." WMS "are the arsenal of life-saving vaccines, medicines and health interventions, emergency food aid and farming technologies that could avert literally millions of deaths each year in the wars against epidemic disease, drought, and famine," he writes in The Economist. "Yet while the Bush administration is prepared to spend $100 billion to rid Iraq of (Weapons of Mass Destruction), it has been unwilling to spend more than 0.2% of that sure ($200 million in 2002) on the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria."

U.S. environmentalist Amory Lovins gives national security as a good reason for increasing development aid. At the center of his argument is the notion that it is a safer world when no large group of people is without basic needs (food, shelter, energy). He says increased foreign aid needs to be at the centre of any national security strategy. Mr. Lovins says providing everyone on Earth with clean water, sanitation, basic health care, adequate nutrition, and education, would cost less than the amount the U.S. spends on its anti-terrorism programs. As he sees it, it's highly worthwhile investment that could help calm social and political unrest throughout the world, and mend America's battered reputation.

In a speech to the United Nations General Assembly session on African development in New York in September 2002, Prime Minister Jean Chretien expressed the same view: "Helping Africa get on its feet is in out interest from the perspective of out common humanity, from the perspective of creating a more prosperous world with new markets and it is profoundly in our self-interest from the point of view of out own security," he said "We have seen right here in New York the tragic consequences that can result from failed states in faraway places (referring to the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center)."

Jeffrey Sachs couldn't agree more: "Out interconnectedness on the planet is the dominating truth of the 21st century. One stark result is that the world's poor rive, and especially die, with the awareness that the United States is doing little to mobilize the weapons of mass salvation that could offer them survival, dignity and eventually the escape from poverty ... If Mr. Bush would only lead his country to that end, (he would mobilize) billions of people in the fight against terrorism ..."

In fact, Mr. Bush appears to be listening: his visit to Africa in July 2003 was seen by many as a key part of a plan to quell rising anti-American sentiment. In an attempt to change the global image of the United States as an international bully, Mr. Bush made his first visit to Africa to show his country is sensitive to development issues, including HIV/AIDS, poverty, and trade. Mr. Bush announced a new $15 billion package to fight HIV/ AIDS.

However, the 2003 United Nations Human Development Report pointed out that, although foreign aid rose to $57 billion from $52.3 billion in 2001, the annual aid flows are still far short of the $100 billion needed every year.

SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES:

1. Jeffrey Sachs, one of the world's foremost authorities on foreign development, says the United Nations should be empowered to organize a global response to the global challenges of disease control, hunger, lack of schooling, and environmental destruction, with the United States as a major participant and financier as it has pledged. But be says criticism of the UN bas left the inaccurate impression that it cannot "provide real leadership on the great development challenges." However, he says the UN "has vastly outperformed expectations in Kosovo, East Timor, and other tough assignments in recent years." Research and report on some of the achievements UN agencies have made in troubled spots around the world.

2. The U.S. spends 0.1% of GDP on foreign assistance, placing it last among the 22 donor countries in aid as a share of income. The United States falls far short of the Millennium Project target of 0.7%, while annual military spending has risen dramatically in America since Mr. Bush became president. Report on the contributions of other donor countries and discuss why some countries appear to be more concerned about global humanitarian issues.

3. Former U.S. Treasury Chief Paul O'Neill was quoted in a Canadian Press article in June 2002 as saying that few gains have been made in poor countries over the last half century despite the hundreds of billions of dollars they've received in assistance. But, critics say western governments have spent their budgets on propping up friendly and often corrupt leaders, rather than tackling poverty in the Third World. Find examples of where this has happened.

A BETTER WORLD FOR SOME

The UN report, 2000A Better World for All, which outlines the Millennium Goals, explains that the goals come from the agreements and resolutions of the world conferences organized by the United Nations in the first half of the 1990s.

The report also acknowledges that meeting the goals is not going to be easy, but cites China as an example of a country that has made some progress: China reduced its number of poor people from 360 million in 1990 to about 210 million in 1998.

The report also says Mauritius, as a result of cutting its military budget and investing heavily in health and education, has given all Mauritians access to sanitation, while 98 percent enjoy safe water, and 97 percent of births are attended by skilled health staff.

Also, many Latin American countries have moved much closer to gender equality in education, an essential part of reducing poverty and mortality.

But, stumbling blocks abound. A Better World for All points out the sad facts that "conflict is reversing gains in social development in many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. The spread of HIV/AIDS is impoverishing individuals, families, and communities on all continents. And, sustained economic growth--that vital component for long-run reductions in poverty--still eludes half the world's countries. For more than 30 of them, real per capita incomes have fallen over the past 35 years. And, where there is growth, it needs to be spread more equally."

CONDITIONS FOR AID

Edward Luttwak, a senior foreign policy expert in the U.S., believes that foreign aid can be used as a tool for keeping local officials in line. He cites the example of Afghanistan, where he advocates doling out aid to leaders who cooperate with the central government and withholding it from warlords who seek to make trouble.

Another American foreign policy expert said the situation in Africa, for example, remains dismal, and the government believes "much of the aid has been stolen and sent to Swiss bank accounts."

Africa is cited as a particularly sorry case hot only of corruption, but disease, drought, and despair: in sub-Saharan Africa, more than 300 million people subsist on less than $1 U.S. a day. In southern Africa, AIDS touches 25 million people and in 2001 alone it deprived a million students of their teachers. Across Africa, infant mortality is around 10 percent and life expectancy is about 45 years. Yet, according to a 2002 World Bank report, annual aid to Africa fell $5 billion to $12 billion in the last decade.

The New Economic Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) is an aid program to help reduce the continent's chronic misery and improve its crippled democracies. Under the 2002 plan, African leaders have pledged economic liberalization and peer-review monitoring of democratic reforms in exchange for $64 billion U.S. in aid and investment. But, the money is conditional upon African governments rooting out their own corruption, ending the wars raging in several countries, and proving to international donors and investors that their money is being well spent.

Aid to Russia is also linked to the country's ability to prove the money will not fall into corrupt hands or be misspent on legal disputes: the G7 has promised the country $20 billion (including Canada's share of about $1 billion) to clean up its store of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons as long as it meets the conditions. Russia has 40,000 tonnes of chemical weapons, the world's largest arsenal, which it has pledged to destroy under the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention, but it needs help. It's in the world's interest to help Russia dispose of its arsenal, which includes 122 decommissioned, nuclear-powered submarines that need to be safely dismantled and destroyed. Russian scientists have calculated that the total nuclear energy from the submarines is 3,000 times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima, Japan in 1945. And, Canada's Foreign Minister Bill Graham thinks they pose a serious risk to the Canadian Arctic.

FACT FILE

The G20 was formed in 1999 by the G7 (Group of the world's seven richest industrialized nations--Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the U.S.) to find ways of stabilizing world financial markets. The G20 includes the G7 and Russia, plus Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, the European Union, India, Indonesia, Korea, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and Turkey.

Websites

Center for International Development at Harvard University--http://www.cid. Harvard.edu/

International Development Research Centre--http:// www.idrc.ca/

North-South Institute http://www.nsi-inc.ca/

United Nations Development Program--http://www.undp. org

United States Agency for International Development http://www.usaid.gov/