February 2006, Ida Urso,  The 57th Annual DPI/NGO Conference

"Millennium Development Goals: Civil Society Takes Action" 8 to 10 September 2004; United Nations Headquarters New York City

The image on the agenda booklet of the 57th UN/NGO Conference is a most telling and symbolic statement about this year's NGO conference. It depicts a chain of people efforting to raise the globe of earth up a set of stairs; concerned humanity cooperatively striving to uplift Earth up the stairs of consciousness, thus lessening and eliminating suffering, darkness and despair.

One newspaper publication of the Millennium Campaign (http://www.millenniumcampaign.org) made available at the Conference put it this way, "In September 2000, 189 nations came together and agreed on 8 goals to make the world a better place for everyone." Then each page of the newspaper is dedicated in large, bold type to one of the following possibilities:

• What if governments lived up to their promise?
• What if everyone could eat when they were hungry?
• What if everyone were guaranteed a basic education?
• What if everyone were equal regardless of gender, ethnicity or religion?
• What if A.I.D.S. disappeared?
• What if more mothers and children survived the miracle of childbirth?
• What if environmental resources were here for generations to come?
• What if everyone were to work together as a global community?
• What if you could make it happen?

Below is the communication from the Kerry organization endorsing the work and position of STWR. It goes further in associating itself with those outside the USA who seek the elimination of poverty and other forms of oppression around the world.


September 29, 2004

Dear Professor Gluck,

Thank you for forwarding the very thoughtful comment of Founder and Chairman Mohammed Mesbahi of Share the World's Resources. All civilized thinking people (among whom we like to think we are included) know that the elimination of poverty would go a long way toward more peaceful relations among people and countries. War is not a good way to make friends. If we are elected we will work to help the United States resume its good relations with the rest of the world and to use peaceful means to sway aggressor nations away from destruction.

We wish you well in your endeavors.

The Kerry-Edwards Campaign

By Don Monkerud (STWR Member)

Luckily, for President Bush, the rest of the world doesn't get to vote in his run against John Kerry. If they did, Bush would fare about as well as a small town Little League team playing the New York Yankees.

Not only do recent polls reveal much about how the rest of the world views U.S. foreign policy but they also provide insights on how Americans choose politicians.

Recently, GlobeScan Incorporated, a global consulting firm, polled 35,000 people in 35 countries and found that 46 percent favor Kerry, while a mere 20 percent favor Bush.

Especially among traditional U.S. allies in Western Europe, Kerry trounces Bush. In Norway voters prefer Kerry over Bush 74 to 7 percent; in Germany 74 to 10 percent; in France 64 to 5 percent; in Italy 58 to 14 percent; in Spain 45 to 7 percent; and in England, the U.S.’s major ally in Iraq, Kerry beats Bush 47 to 16 percent.

STWR at the European Social Forum, London

STWR would like to announce to all our members, contributors and visitors, that we will be active participants at the upcoming European Social Forum in London between the 14th and 17th of October. We will be displaying and distributing our information on sharing at a stall in Alexander Palace, North London, which will be the main focus of the 4 day event. Our stall will be situated along side other organisations, who share common objectives such as establishing global justice, peace and liberty.

The event will commence on the Thursday with an opening event specifically for participating organisations and will be open to the general public all day Friday and Saturday, and on Sunday morning.

The Assembly of Social Movements will take place on the Sunday morning followed by an International demonstration on Sunday afternoon starting at 2pm from Malet Street, ending in Trafalgar Square around 5 or 6pm.

This will provide STWR with a great opportunity to raise awareness of the need to share the world's resources and take part in a valuable forum and demonstration. It is expected that tens of thousands of visitors will attend the event over the course of the four days.

This was the underlying message of a comprehensive speech delivered at the national seminar on "Alternative Strategies for Development"� held in Bhopal, India last month, by one of STWR's contributing writers, Devinder Sharma.

Water "wake-up call" given by UN

By Imogen Foulkes
BBC correspondent in Geneva

The UN says the world faces a silent emergency because of the continued lack of clean water and sanitation.

A new report reveals that more than 40% of the world's population does not have even the most basic sanitation.

More than one billion people have no access to clean water sources, the document adds.

The report was prepared by the UN's children's fund, Unicef, and the World Health Organisation to assess progress towards reaching millennium goals.

A key development goal is to cut by half the number of people without clean water and sanitation by the year 2015. The report makes depressing reading.

If things continue as they are, half a billion people will still have no sanitation 11 years from now.

In a recent letter to Tim Grosser, Chairperson of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Committee on Agriculture, a large number of politicians, NGO’s and individuals have petitioned for the right of each nation to protect its own agriculture.

The petition was organised by Devinder Sharma and Helge Christie, prior to the WTO's agricultural negotiation sessions, which will attempt to create a framework for agricultural trade by 27th July 04. The aim of the petition is to set out three immediate steps that will protect the interests of farmers in the developing as well as developed countries. These steps will increase the capacity for a country to consume its domestic produce, there by directly reducing levels of poverty and hunger.

Click Here To Sign The Petition

The full letter, together with the list of signatories is presented below:

If you live on less than $1 per day, you are deemed as living in poverty. This is currently experienced by around 1.2 billion people (almost 1 in every 5 people). Even if the Millennium Development Goals are met in 2015, there will be some 900 million people who will be living in poverty.

Of these people, currently there are up to 420 million people who fall into the category of ‘Chronic Poverty’. These are people who are born into abject poverty, live and die in abject poverty and have no hope of ever breaking through this cycle.

It is clear that a more in-depth understanding of chronic poverty is necessary in order to be more effective in tackling this global ‘cancer’. This task has been taken up by the Chronic Poverty Research Centre (CPRC). Their recent report "The Chronic Poverty Report 2004 – 2005" is a thoroughly researched and informative analysis of the issue of chronic poverty. Initially funded by the UK’s Department For International Development (DFID), the aim of the CPRC is to conduct research into chronic poverty with the intention of informing development strategy and policy.

A recent briefing paper from the Department For International Development (DFID) has reiterated the government's commitment to reduce extreme poverty through debt relief. The countries that qualify for this debt relief package (worth US$100 billion) are exclusively Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC). You can view the full report here.

To qualify for the debt relief, all HIPC have to develop a somewhat controversial "poverty reduction strategy" according to IMF guidelines and must specify exactly how the debt relief savings are used. Under the revised framework, countries can qualify for this relief with lower "Debt to Export" and "Debt to Government Revenue" ratios than before, thus increasing eligibility for other countries. However, the relief is given in stages, with the majority of relief provided only after HIPC governments have implemented reforms that have been agreed with the IMF and World Bank.

It is clear that debt relief is an important weapon in the fight against poverty, and indeed the UK government does seem committed to achieving the Millennium Development Goals target of halving poverty by 2015. On the other hand, the government has also agreed that as things stand, these targets will not be met. Along side this there are still concerns that the HIPC initiative is not available to enough poor countries, that the relief takes too long to materialise, the amount of aid is too little and that it is therefore not creating a significant impact on global poverty.

Africa Commission's Uphill Task

ANALYSIS
By Steve Schifferes
BBC News Online economics correspondent

UK Prime Minister Tony Blair has been chairing the first meeting of his Commission for Africa on Tuesday. The 16-member commission has been launched to tackle the myriad economic problems facing the continent.

Africa has fallen dramatically behind other developing regions, with declining growth rates, increasing poverty, and falling life expectancy. Meanwhile, declining aid from rich countries and closed markets for African goods have made things worse.

Falling behind

The economic problems of sub-Saharan Africa are well known. It was Tony Blair himself, in October 2001, who called Africa's situation "a scar on the conscience of the world".

Since then, if anything, conditions have deteriorated. Africa is the only region of the developing world which is no better off than it was 25 years ago.