Today is International Human Solidarity Day – Have We Got It Right?

The question remains: how far have we progressed in eradicating poverty?  

Future humanity

by Dr. Ruwantissa Abeyratne in  Montreal-December 20, 2020

“ESTRAGON: Don't touch me! Don't question me! Don't speak to me! Stay with me!

VLADIMIR: Did I ever leave you?

ESTRAGON: You let me go.” 

― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

The United Nations, by General Assembly Resolution 60/209, assigned 20 December as International Human Solidarity Day.  The Resolution was adopted on 22 December 2005 during the World Summit on Sustainable Development.  Earlier, on 20 December 2002, the General Assembly had adopted Resolution 57/265 which established the World Solidarity Fund which  was calculated to   eradicate poverty and to promote social and human development in the developing countries, while stressing the voluntary nature of the contributions and the need to avoid duplication of existing United Nations funds and encouraging the role of the private sector and individual citizens relative to Governments in funding the endeavours.

Going back to A/RES/60/209, one notes that the Resolution reflected the  deep concern of the international community that the number of people living in extreme poverty in many countries continued to increase, with women and children constituting the majority and the most affected groups, in particular in the least developed countries and in sub-Saharan Africa.

The general message conveyed by the purported significance of what 20th of  December stands for is seemingly that we have to stand together to face poverty in the world and all that goes with it such as starvation, homelessness, illiteracy and ill health, the latter giving those afflicted no recourse to medical attention and services, with the ultimate goal of eradicating poverty.  Although in general terms, the world is a better place than what it was, and significant steps have been taken to lift the poor and downtrodden out of their misery, nonetheless large gaps remain, mainly because the true meaning of solidarity has proved to be evanescent.  Solidarity is not merely helping others with handouts.  As Srećko Horvat says in his The Radicality of Love     “Solidarity is something much more than mercy: usually when you appease your conscience (donate money to starving children in Africa, to use the usual Starbucks example), you can go on with your daily life as if nothing really happened. However, once you are enacting solidarity you can even abstain from charity or mercy: even if you don’t give a dollar to every beggar, you can’t go on with your daily life as if nothing really happened. Why? Because you carry him in your life; you live with him not like with some “integrated reject” (as we live with immigrants or refugees today), but he is a part and even a presupposition for your very action: he can never be fully integrated, because injustice can’t be integrated in acts of love. This is why solidarity already contains love.”

This goes to the root of the problem regarding human solidarity: it is mercy, without emotion or feeling.  There is no love in our current perspective of solidarity.  We do not carry the poor with us.  We may give them some support, only to let them go until we visit them again.  Of course, Resolution 60/209 carries some fancy, and seemingly heartfelt words.  For instance: “ … eradicating poverty is the greatest global challenge facing the world today and an indispensable requirement for sustainable development, in particular for developing countries…” and “  for developing countries to reach the targets set in the context of national development strategies for the achievement of the internationally agreed development goals, including the Millennium Development Goals, in particular the goal on the eradication of poverty, and for such poverty eradication strategies to be effective, it is imperative that developing countries be integrated into the world economy and share equitably in the benefits of globalization?”.

The question remains: how far have we progressed in eradicating poverty?  The United Nations progress report is encouraging: “ There has been marked progress in reducing poverty over the past decades. According to the most recent estimates, in 2015, 10 per cent of the world’s population lived at or below $1.90 a day. That’s down from 16 per cent in 2010 and 36 per cent in 1990. This means that ending extreme poverty is within our reach. However, the decline has slowed. In April 2013, the World Bank set a new goal to end extreme poverty in a generation. The new target is to have no more than 3 per cent of the world’s population living on just $1.90 a day by 2030. By measuring poverty we learn which poverty reduction strategies work, and which ones do not. Poverty measurement also helps developing countries gauge program effectiveness and guide their development strategy in a rapidly changing economic environment”.

If this be so, why then, when the Nobel Peace Committee awarded the 2020 Nobel Peace Price to the World Food Programme, for its tenacious and relentless efforts of feeding the hungry, certain disturbing figures came into focus which brought to bear that, although we may live among a united humanity we are still in a divided and self-serving world.  David Beasley, Executive Director of The World Food Programme, in a recent interview with BBC’s hard hitting programme Hard Talk commented that there are 2200 billionaires in the world who made 2.7 trillion dollars during the months of April to July this year.  He was not asking for annual contributions but a one-time contribution of just 5 billion dollars that is needed to prevent mass famine, destabilization and migration that is currently rampant in the world.   Is that too much to ask?

Jeffrey Sachs, onetime Special Advisor to former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan on the UN Millennium Development Goals and Economic Advisor to Governments around the World, in his book, The End of Poverty – Economic Possibilities of Our Time (Penguin: New York, 2005) states without reservation that by 2025, we could be totally poverty-free by using the wealth of the world and the power of unending repositories of knowledge that we have. Of course, as every good news has a caveat, Sachs lays down the condition that our ability to transcend global poverty would depend on our collective wisdom in using our resources prudently and with good judgment. In his book, Sachs shows the way towards charting a wiser path towards global wealth and prosperity.

Someone has shown the way.  It is up to the world to carry the poor on its shoulders and not let them go.  Being there is not enough.

Dr. Abeyratne is a former international civil servant.