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[Back to index of October articles] Cathedral Conferees deliver message to U.N. By Al Karr After a two-day consultation at Washington National Cathedral, thirty-one world religious leaders delivered a communiqué to the United Nations last month calling on governments and churches to build a “global movement” that will, by 2015, substantially alleviate the poverty afflicting one-sixth of the world’s people. The communiqué was delivered on September 13 to Louise Frechette, Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations, and H.E. Jean Ping, Co-Chairman of the United Nations 2005 World Summit, for consideration by more than 170 world leaders who met at the U.N. to confer on global poverty and other world issues. The document, delivered by a delegation that included Bishop John Bryson Chane and the Cathedral’s dean, the Very Rev. Samuel T. Lloyd, III, urged summit participants to enter into partnership with religious leaders to make real the promises of the Millennium Development Goals, or MDGs, set by world leaders five years ago. The communiqué noted the nations’ “historic commitment to eradicate poverty” made by their Millennium Declaration of 2000 but said that after five years, “despite this triumph of principle, there has been a failure in practice.” The religious leaders called on governments to promote accountability and transparency where corruption sometimes exists, cancel more debt of poverty-stricken countries, boost development aid, promote fairer trade for developing nations and move to reduce armed conflicts in those countries. Frechette responded: “I applaud your commitment to scaling up the work done by your religious institutions against poverty, and I encourage your determination to establish stronger partnerships with governments, civil society and the broader international community, especially at the country level.” The consultation was the inaugural event of the Center for Global Justice and Reconciliation, a part of the newly reconfigured Cathedral College at the National Cathedral. An international, multi-denominational meeting, it was convened by the Most Rev. Njongonkulu W. H. Ndungane, Primate of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa. The communiqué’s sentiment echoed criticisms of U.S. policy made by economist Jeffrey Sachs during the speech that launched the consultation on September 11. Sachs, a leading proponent of measures to reduce or eliminate global poverty, said that the Bush administration, through U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, has actually been working to “expunge” the record of a commitment by it and other rich nations, contained in the 2002 Monterrey Consensus, to make “concrete efforts” to spend 0.7 percent of their gross national products for development assistance aimed at reducing global poverty. For the U.S., that would work out to about $80 billion annually. Currently, the U.S. government spends only about $16 billion a year on foreign aid aimed at global poverty. Sachs, who is director of the Earth Institute and Quetelet Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University and also Special Adviser to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan on the MDGs, contrasted the U.S. anti-poverty spending with its $500 billion in military spending. The solutions for global poverty are really “low cost,” Sachs said. To provide the kind of comprehensive assistance needed to cope with the food, safe water, health, schooling and transportation needs of the “poorest of the poor” would cost 0.5 percent of the gross national product of the world’s richest nations. When he urged that the U.S. government allot $1 billion a year to fight deadly but “largely preventable and 100 percent treatable” malaria, with insecticide-treated bed nets and medicine, the Bush administration responded by providing $200 million, and proposed selling bed nets “to people who have no money,” Sachs said. Frustrated by what he views as the meager response of the U.S. government, Sachs developed Millennium Promise, a privately funded campaign to fight malaria and develop an “integrated strategy” to help villagers grow crops, develop safe drinking-water sources and get access to medicine and health services. He has begun to get pledges of money from some wealthy people, who want to be sure there’s a “practical” solution for poverty, and said he will seek $10 individual donations to fight malaria. “It’s fair to say that eight million people will die this year because they lack even the most rudimentary access to essential health services,” Sachs said. “Every step of the way it’s been a fight with our government. It can’t represent the spirit of our country. Something is terribly wrong in how we’ve come to view the poor as our enemy.” During a prayer service at the cathedral following Sachs’ speech, Madeline Albright, former U.S. Secretary of State in the Clinton administration, echoed his theme. Noting that 600,000 women living in poverty die every year from pregnancy problems that should have been avoided and that 10 million poor children die annually-”the equivalent of 10 9/11s a day,” Albright said, “defeating poverty is not a question of whether we can, but of when we can.” “Nothing disappoints me more than to have (the U.S.) label attached to policies that fail to reflect the generosity and compassion of the American people,” she said. What’s needed is a revival of the foreign-aid policy of former President Harry S. Truman, later expanded by President John F. Kennedy, and, she told the religious services attending the service, “Your leadership is essential, for you represent the world’s most effective force-the power of faith.” Sachs similarly applauded the effort of the religious leaders gathered at the cathedral to throw a new spotlight on global poverty. “The great religious traditions have been behind every great movement for human dignity and justice,” including civil rights and peace over war, “and now need to spearhead the campaign to end extreme poverty on our planet - a goal that is as achievable as fortifying the levees of New Orleans before disaster hit,” Sachs said. [Back to index of October articles]
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