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Later this month, in my capacity as chair of the U.S. bishops' committee on international peace and justice, I will be spending two weeks in Africa to witness firsthand the economic and political problems being experienced on that continent.

While we in the United States are coping with the challenges of domestic poverty - exacerbated by the recession, which the Wall Street debacle and too many people spending beyond their means have created - it is important to realize that our economic problems pale in comparison to those experienced by people living in Third World countries.

This harsh reality was captured graphically in a shocking picture that appeared in many European newspapers. It showed a young couple sunbathing on a sandy beach. At first sight, it appears like any other summer holiday snapshot.

Then you notice a dark shape in the sand beyond the couple. It is the body of an African migrant. He has drowned trying to cross to Europe - like many others, desperately seeking to provide a better life for his family.

The couple in the photo seem unconcerned about the body. Whether they were aware of the dead African, we cannot say for sure. But the image remains a powerful symbol of our ability to carry on enjoying the good life while our brothers and sisters die by the thousands every day as a result of poverty and inequality.

Everyday tragedy
Unfortunately, often it is major natural disasters or humanitarian crises that grab the headlines, but the daily reality of global injustice is not news.

Most donations to international development and relief organizations are made in response to emergency appeals, even though far more people die from the effects of extreme poverty than from natural disasters and quick onset emergencies.

For example, more than 200,000 people died as a result of the Haitian earthquake earlier this year. A record sum of more than $7 billion (more than $1 million from residents of the Albany Diocese alone) was donated by the general public to various appeals - and yet, the same number of people die every five days from the effects of extreme poverty.

In his recent encyclical, "Caritas In Veritate" ("Charity in Truth"), our Holy Father, Benedict XVI, suggests three ways to address this inequality: foreign aid, trade and debt relief.

FOREIGN AID
A major problem in any effort to increase foreign aid is overcoming that pernicious perception that it just does not work. Too often, we hear the complaint that billions of dollars have been given in overseas aid during the last 50 years and all to no effect.

Poor governance and corruption in developing countries is often blamed for the failure of development aid to eradicate poverty. But this is far too simplistic an argument.

We need to question the actions of donor governments which have supported corrupt dictatorships when it has suited them and of companies that have encouraged corrupt practices to further their business interests in developing countries.

Further, we need to examine closely how our aid has been delivered and learn from our mistakes. Have we directed our aid to where it can be most effective - and, more important, where it is most needed? Are we primarily supporting our own national self-interests?

Has our aid been undermined by too many conditions that have meant developing countries have not been able to manage their own development programs?

Catholic teachings
As Catholics, our preferential option for the poor demands that we call on our governments to target the poorest, particularly those who are sidelined from the economic growth associated with globalization.

Further, the principle of subsidiarity found in Catholic social teaching such as "Caritas in Veritate" means that we call for aid delivery that is a true partnership between donor and recipient governments, in which the recipients take a role in leadership of the development process.

It is also important for us to highlight success stories. It is not all bad news, and there are some good examples of real progress that is being made in lifting people out of poverty.

In 1990, more than 1.2 billion people - 28 percent of the developing world's population - lived in extreme poverty. However, by 2002 that proportion had decreased to 19 percent.

During that period, rates of extreme poverty fell rapidly in much of Asia, where the number of people living on less than $1 a day dropped by nearly a quarter of a billion.

TRADE
While an increase in development aid is clearly urgently needed, foreign aid alone is not enough. It must go hand in hand with coherent and just policies on trade and debt relief.

Indeed, fair trade policies do more for global poverty reduction than generous aid policies, although both are needed.

In other words, international trade has the potential to lift millions of people out of poverty. But these trade rules are stacked in favor of rich countries and multinational companies.

It is estimated that poor countries lose out on more than $2 billion a day as a result of unfair trade - 14 times what they receive in aid.

World trade rules have a huge financial impact on individual people in the world's poorest countries, most of whom make their living from agriculture. Global poverty can only be ended if trade rules let the poor earn an honest wage for an honest day's work. Subsidies, tariffs and dumping currently prevent this from happening.

Many parishes throughout the United States are seeking to call the attention of people to this issue by promoting the "Work of Human Hands" projects. This is a marketing method which finds buyers in the U.S. for products produced in poor countries of the developing world.

Others are involved in making Fair Trade coffee available to parishes. Catholic Relief Services is active in facilitating these connections and in advocating for fair-trade principles (www.crsfairtrade.org).

DEBT RELIEF
Significant progress has been made on debt cancellation since the Jubilee Debt Campaign, but many of the poorest African countries are still saddled with heavy debt burdens.

Therefore, we should advocate very proactively with Congress to cancel remaining debts of these countries so that the money they would have spent on debt repayments can be redirected to health, education and poverty reduction.

Further, we should encourage our government to fulfill the millennium goals. At the end of the 1960s, the rich nations of the world got together to decide what would be a reasonable percentage of their incomes to devote to overseas development aid. They decided on the figure of 0.7 percent.

Now, more than 30 years later, only five countries have met that target: Sweden, Norway, Den-mark, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.

The United States is the world's largest single official aid donor. But when surveys ask what percentage of U.S. gross national income is devoted to aid, most people think the figure is 20 times higher than it really is.

In one survey, only 5 percent correctly answered that the figures of our aid is less than 1 percent.

New initiative
To address this issue of confronting poverty, which the Pope calls for in his encyclical, our U.S. bishops' committee on international justice and peace - in conjunction with Catholic Relief Services - has launched a "Catholics Confront Global Poverty" initiative, which calls upon Catholics to

* learn about and share the stories of those struggling to rise above extreme poverty;

* pray for the poorest members of the human family and

* advocate with policy makers on behalf of poor people worldwide.

To date, more than 250 thousand people from our parishes, schools, religious communities and universities have participated. I commend this initiative to your attention as a tangible way to address global poverty (www.usccb.org/sdwp/global poverty).

Conclusion
To sum up, let me return to the image I mentioned earlier in this presentation: the image of the couple sunbathing while the poor migrant was dying.

Global poverty is a fact of life which can and must be eradicated. We simply cannot continue to sunbathe while the poor are dying.

Recently, another startling image appeared in the media: a huge fishing net being towed behind a trawler. On closer inspection, it revealed a chilling reality: Around the edge of the net, 27 migrants were clinging for their lives.

They had been abandoned by "people traffickers" in a small wooden boat that soon began to sink. But the captain of the trawler refused to take them on board, fearing that a change in course would jeopardize his valuable catch of tuna.

So, they clung to the net, ignored by the captain, until rescued by the Italian navy.

This picture is a powerful metaphor for our world: the poorest people clinging precariously to life as others steam blindly on in pursuit of greater wealth.

We need to stop this ship. We need to get the world's poor on board now. And then, together, as one humanity, we need to set a new course for a better future.

(08/05/10) [[In-content Ad]]

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