DEVELOPMENT AND EQUALITY

by Douglas Roche

A former Canadian Member of Parliament and Ambassador for Disarmament, Douglas Roche is author of The Ultimate Evil: The Fight to Ban Nuclear Weapons and other books, and served for 6 years as GEA's Chairperson.

hotel rooms CoimbraNotwithstanding past efforts by the international community, one-fifthof the world’s 5.8 billion people live in extreme poverty. The UN has developed anintegrated agenda reinforcing all the components of sustainable development, at the coreof which is the recognition that the human person must be the central subject ofdevelopment. In other words, people have a right to development.

There is no doubt that over the past 15 years, the world has seenspectacular economic advance for some developing countries, bringing rapidly risingincomes to more than a quarter of the world’s population. But the same period hasseen unprecedented decline or stagnation, reducing the incomes of another quarter of thepopulation. The world has become more polarized and the gulf between rich and poor haswidened even further. Of the $23 trillion global Gross Domestic Product in 1993, $18trillion was in the industrial countries and only $5 trillion in the developing countries,with 80 percent of the world’s people. In 1960, the richest fifth of humanity had anincome thirty times greater than the poorest fifth; in 1990, the richest fifth's incomewas sixty times greater. The 1996 Human Development Report stated that the assets of theworld’s 358 billionaires exceeded the combined annual incomes of countries with 45percent of the world’s people.

How can poverty be reduced unless a great deal more of the resources nowavailable are put into the alleviation of distress, the development of the human person atthe local level through education and health? How will any form of equity be establishedunless more resources are aimed at developing people who are at the bottom of the economicladder? Years after the end of the cold war, the world’s governments continue tospend more than $800 billion a year on arms and the arms trade is once again expanding.Though the bulk of military spending is on conventional arms, the possession of nuclearweapons by the powerful is driving militarism around the globe. Grotesque imbalancesresult:

• In at least 84 countries, military expenditures exceed expenditures on health alone.
  
  
• In one out of three developing countries, military expenditures exceed half or more of all expenditures on health and education. In more than one out of six developing countries, military expenditure actually exceeds combined expenditure on all forms of health and education, in eight cases by two to four times.
  
  
• The countries spending the highest proportion of their resources on military uses are also those countries whose standing in human development lags most behind their standing in wealth and GNP. In contrast, countries with the lowest military expenditures generally rank considerably higher in human development than in GNP per capita.
  

Sustainable development requires huge investments in scientificresearch, technological development, education and training, infrastructure developmentand technology transfer. But the goals of sustainable development set out in the 1992Earth Summit’s major document, Agenda 21, are blocked by political inertia,which countenances continued high military spending. The Committee on SustainableDevelopment, an international nongovernmental organization, has urged governments toreduce military expenditures by 5 per cent per year for five years, redirecting thesefunds to sustainable development. The opposite is happening. Arms merchants will makebillions of dollars from NATO expansion as the new members re-equip to Western standards.A Special Session of the UN General Assembly in 1997, intended to renew the 1992 globalcommitment to sustainable development, was an abject failure. It could not agree on thewording of a political statement and did not even consider the transfer of military fundsto sustainable development. The Western nuclear powers are primarily responsible forkeeping the relationship between disarmament and development off the political agenda.

There is a dynamic, triangular relationship between disarmament,development, and security. The more disarmament and development are advanced, the moresecurity is enhanced and strengthened. But most nations haven’t yet made the mentalleap that security today requires the development of the human being, not the preparationfor war.

There are fresh ideas for new sources of money to stimulate thedevelopment process. Former UN Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali suggested a fee onspeculative international financial transactions. Because of the $1.3 trillion tradedevery 24 hours in the global market, the smallest taxation, which would hardly be noticed,could finance all the UN’s development programs. A levy on fossil fuel use or itsresulting pollution has also been suggested, but has elicited a hostile reaction from thepetroleum industry. A tax on international travel is long overdue. Such programs wouldfoster a greater sharing of resources between the developed and developing world in waysthat would not hurt the developed world.

The question of equality is central to any discussion of development. Wedo not yet have an understanding of equality in the world. Of course, we are not allequal: some people are born with high intelligence, some with low intelligence; some withhandicaps, some without handicaps. There is a distinction between equality and sameness.I interpret equality to mean equitability. The world's lack of equitabilityis shown most dramatically in the split between the North and the South. The world'spopulation will reach 8.2 billion in the next twenty years; approximately 7 billion willlive in the South, 1 billion in the North. The ecosphere stress factor is worsening:approximately one-fifth of the world in the North has access to and control overthree-quarters of the capital and technology and resources of the world, while four-fifthsliving in the South have access to only one quarter of the capital and technology.

The North resists even a dialogue on global economic negotiations totake on questions of resources, raw materials, trade, and finances so that the South wouldhave equitable access to these means of ensuring the fulfillment of basic human needs on auniversal basis. This perpetuates great divisiveness in the world.

We have not yet begun to understand the full meaning of human rights,despite their proclamation in rhetorical ways. I don’t dismiss the need fordeclarations and for articulating a concern. But when it comes down to it, we aretolerating intrusions on human rights every day. It’s violence to have 30,000children dying daily of waterborne diseases and malnutrition. It’s violence againstour planet to have the ozone layer depleted by states which put industrial developmentbefore the good of the environment. It is certainly violence against me personally to besubjected to the effects of weapons of mass destruction with the power to decimate hugeareas of the world.

The need for a new understanding of the roots of violence in thepost-cold war era is perhaps seen most clearly in this concept of equality. How to buildequitability into human (and thus state) relations is a huge challenge as we enter the newmillennium.

 
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