Canada lags on UN poverty goals

[Moonlight Graham]

http://www.cbc.ca/politics/story/2010/06/08/canada-un-millenium-development-goals.html

Canada is only meeting half of its United Nations commitments to help the world's poor, a coalition of aid groups says.

In a report to be released on Wednesday, Make Poverty History says that while Canada has made progress in tackling problems such as hunger and disease, it is falling behind when it comes to education and maternal health.

The benchmarks are part of the UN's Millennium Development Goals — to which Canada is a signatory.

The aid groups also warn that matters will only get worse now that Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservative government has frozen its spending for international development.

Make Poverty History says Canada ranks 14th among 23 developed countries when it comes to foreign aid as a percentage of national income. Canada is less than halfway to the UN agreed-upon level of 0.7 per cent of GDP, according to the groups.

Ahead of this month's G8 and G20 meetings in Ontario, the groups are urging Canada to take a leadership role on the international stage and encourage all developed countries to live up to the millennium goals.

The prime minister has said Canada, as the host of the G8 summit June 25-26, would champion maternal and child health in developing countries.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/politics/story/2010/06/08/canada-un-millenium-development-goals.html#ixzz0qJ8Xn9CH

They say that during a global recession, the developing countries are affected the most. I believe it. 14th among 23 developed countries in GDP spent on foreign aid, that isn't very good. I think we are still at 0.33% of GDP towards aid.

It would be great if Canada became one of the leaders in area of development. We have a lot of bright minds in this country that can help continue to try and help discover better ways to tackle this monumental problem. I suppose monumental is an understatement.

[Smallc]

Everyone always wants money for everything.

[ToadBrother]

It would be great if Canada became one of the leaders in area of development. We have a lot of bright minds in this country that can help continue to try and help discover better ways to tackle this monumental problem. I suppose monumental is an understatement.

Because pouring money into despotic military dictatorships and tribalistic war zones has proven so effective so far.

What these people need is the self-serving monsters running their countries and the equally psychotic rebel movements who put AK-47s and machetes in the hands of little kids to be blown into a million bits by smiling modern western armies, like the British SAS did in Sierra Leone.

Edited June 8, 2010 by ToadBrother

[lukin]

UN darling Robert Mugabe needs more money now. We as Canadians owe it to him.

[ToadBrother]

UN darling Robert Mugabe needs more money now. We as Canadians owe it to him.

Mugabe is just my point. March in a few thousand troops along with a little air support, and offer Mugabe and his "veterans" a free ride out of Zimbabwe or coffins, and I guarantee you, that vile monster's rule would be over in very short order.

[Moonlight Graham]

Everyone always wants money for everything.

You're right. But then why did we promise to give 0.7%? Pretty sure we're going to miss that by the 2015 target. All the Millenium Development Goals sounds great on paper and countries just sign on like its nothing, then forget about. Pretty typical.

[Moonlight Graham]

Mugabe is just my point. March in a few thousand troops along with a little air support, and offer Mugabe and his "veterans" a free ride out of Zimbabwe or coffins, and I guarantee you, that vile monster's rule would be over in very short order.

...to be replaced by another authoritarian regime. Democracy doesn't just "happen".

Yes dictators suck, and yes they suck some of the wealth from their countrymen. However, international development has overall had success over the past decades. The problems of the developing world are far from being solved, but areas such life expectancy, literacy rates, materal health, child mortality rates, women's rights, access to clean water, proper sanitation etc. have all improved since the decolonization after WWII.

It's not like all foreign aid goes right into the pockets of dictators and is given without conditions. If a schoolhouse is build in rural Zimbabwe, does Mugabe tear it down and sell the lumber? If a well for clean water is dug, does he rip out of the ground and bring it to his house?

As i've said, greedy and violent governments are a huge problem for international development, but its not like foreign aid is a direct money transfer from the Canadian gov't directly into the bank account of dictators with a yellow sticky-note attached with us asking them to "please spend this on the poor". Quite a bit more complicated than that.

And also, as we've seen in Afghnaistan and Iraq, war against corrupt governments isn't exactly beneficial to the civilian population, at least as we've seen in the short-term.

[lictor616]

http://www.cbc.ca/politics/story/2010/06/08/canada-un-millenium-development-goals.html

They say that during a global recession, the developing countries are affected the most. I believe it. 14th among 23 developed countries in GDP spent on foreign aid, that isn't very good. I think we are still at 0.33% of GDP towards aid.

It would be great if Canada became one of the leaders in area of development. We have a lot of bright minds in this country that can help continue to try and help discover better ways to tackle this monumental problem. I suppose monumental is an understatement.

World poverty is a problem chiefly derived from foreign aid... Foreign aid artificially maintains populations that would not exist or be as large were it not for western meddling.

Feeding 1 african mother in say: Togo, merely postpones her demise long enough for her to engender 5+ children... who are almost guaranteed to be dependents themselves...

In this age of overpopulation and environmental catastrophes... I'm not sure why people are still staggering on trying to keep the exploding populations of the third world fertile.

Besides aid is heavily criticized among the people to whom we give: "Dambisa Moyo, the Zambian economist, educated at Harvard and Oxford and a former employee of The World Bank and Goldman Sachs, has created an inspiring, and provocative argument in her book titled “Dead Aid" - Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa".

Aid does nothing but tax us to further accentuate overpopulation, and animate hatred in those who receive our "aid"...

really does the gullibility and "will to interfere" of liberals know no limits?

[Moonlight Graham]

World poverty is a problem chiefly derived from foreign aid... Foreign aid artificially maintains populations that would not exist or be as large were it not for western meddling.

So you're saying world poverty is worse now than pre-WWII? Countless statistics say you are very wrong on that.

In this age of overpopulation and environmental catastrophes... I'm not sure why people are still staggering on trying to keep the exploding populations of the third world fertile.

Foreign aid/development is about a heck of a lot more than "feeding people". Some of it involves sexual education to males and females so they are aware about reproduction & the sexual diseases they are spreading. It also involves things like providing birth control so that severe overpopulation can be curbed.

Besides aid is heavily criticized among the people to whom we give: "Dambisa Moyo, the Zambian economist, educated at Harvard and Oxford and a former employee of The World Bank and Goldman Sachs, has created an inspiring, and provocative argument in her book titled “Dead Aid" - Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa".

Tell me something i don't know. Aid is and has always been criticized by many, both by aid-giving and aid-receiving countries. International development is one of the most complex problems that the human mind has ever attempted to tackle. You can help one area, but it can cause havoc in two others. Development efforts have certainly caused a great deal of problems in many ways rather than help (especially during the "modernization theory" era in the couple of decades post-1945. However, overall, the statistics say we are helping. As i said to Toad, areas such life expectancy, literacy rates, materal health, child mortality rates, women's rights, access to clean water, proper sanitation etc. have all improved over the last few decades. And as time goes on, we learn more about what works and what doesn't, such as allowing people in developing countries to determine their own fate rather than the West shoving it down their throats, and when to intervene and when to leave well enough alone.

Edited June 9, 2010 by Moonlight Graham

[ToadBrother]

It's not like all foreign aid goes right into the pockets of dictators and is given without conditions. If a schoolhouse is build in rural Zimbabwe, does Mugabe tear it down and sell the lumber? If a well for clean water is dug, does he rip out of the ground and bring it to his house?

What it does is free up more resources for Mugabe to use for purposes decidedly not humanitarian. Every bit of aid that goes into doing what the government of Zimbabwe doing is just encouraging the government to keep to its course. Remember, it wasn't that long ago that Zimbabwe was the bread basket of Africa. That it is a disaster in the political, economic and agriculture sense is because of a vile monster named Robert Mugabe. We'd be doing the people of the country a favor if we intervened, through him out and wiped out his "veterans", who have wiped out a fair chunk of the productive farms in Mugabe's mad pursuit of tossing out all the white farmers.

Instead, we'll make Mugabe's life easier by taking over what Zimbabwe, under good leadership, would be more than capable of doing, and that's feeding its populace. Zimbabwe is more than capable of that, it could be an exporter. So don't come singing me silly songs about how foreign aid in Zimbabwe is needed. What's needed is a bullet between Mugabe's eyes.

As i've said, greedy and violent governments are a huge problem for international development, but its not like foreign aid is a direct money transfer from the Canadian gov't directly into the bank account of dictators with a yellow sticky-note attached with us asking them to "please spend this on the poor". Quite a bit more complicated than that.

It might as well be. In a lot of these places, without troops who aren't basically serving the despots to make sure the food gets doled out, as often as not it ends up in the hands of the tinpot dictators.

And also, as we've seen in Afghnaistan and Iraq, war against corrupt governments isn't exactly beneficial to the civilian population, at least as we've seen in the short-term.

I was never in favor of Iraq, but if I were to analyze it, I'd say the chief problem was that more troops were needed. In Afghanistan, the chief problem right now is that the Taliban know they only have to outlast cowardly Western governments.

[dre]

Never mind the poor!

Canada just spent 10 billion dollars helping the world arms dealers. Thats gotta count for SOMETHING no?

[Keepitsimple]

Where do all these "activist" groups come from? Make Poverty History? Who pays these guys?

[Bonam]

Canada lags on UN poverty goals

And we should care why?

[Guest TrueMetis]

Because pouring money into despotic military dictatorships and tribalistic war zones has proven so effective so far.

What these people need is the self-serving monsters running their countries and the equally psychotic rebel movements who put AK-47s and machetes in the hands of little kids to be blown into a million bits by smiling modern western armies, like the British SAS did in Sierra Leone.

If we can assure some way of preventing an even more self-serving monster from taking control, which would end up costing more money. There are probably better ways to do this but just killing the leaders has been shown not to work.

[lictor616]

So you're saying world poverty is worse now than pre-WWII? Countless statistics say you are very wrong on that.

I'm not saying it the UN, Human Rights Watch, and even lefty humanitarian like Noam Chomsky are... and world wealth gap that keeps widening ever year... that too

just about every single fact about poverty and demographics is about how people are much worse off today then they were before the second world war: http://socialanalysis.org/

-Shaohua Chen and Martin Ravallion note that although "a clear trend decline in the percentage of people who are absolutely poor is evident ... with uneven progress across regions...the developing world outside China and India has seen little or no sustained progress in reducing the number of poor"

http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/wealth_distribution1999.html

-While global GNP grew 40 percent between 1970 and 1985 (suggesting widening prosperity), the number of poor grew by 17 percent.

Although 200 million people saw their incomes fall between 1965 and 1980, more than 1 billion people experienced a drop from 1980 to 1993.

-In sub-Saharan Africa, twenty nations remain below their per capita incomes of two decades ago while among Latin American and Caribbean countries, eighteen are below their per capita incomes of ten years ago.

UNDP reported in 1996 that 100 countries were worse off than 15 years ago.

-At least 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 a day.Source 1

-More than 80 percent of the world’s population lives in countries where income differentials are widening.Source 2

-The poorest 40 percent of the world’s population accounts for 5 percent of global income. The richest 20 percent accounts for three-quarters of world income.Source 3

-According to UNICEF, 24,000 children die each day due to poverty. And they “die quietly in some of the poorest villages on earth, far removed from the scrutiny and the conscience of the world. Being meek and weak in life makes these dying multitudes even more invisible in death.”Source 4

-Around 27-28 percent of all children in developing countries are estimated to be underweight or stunted. The two regions that account for the bulk of the deficit are South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

There are more people living in abject poverty today (relative to the population in the 50's) then ever before in recorded history.

-Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names.

[lictor616]

Foreign aid/development is about a heck of a lot more than "feeding people". Some of it involves sexual education to males and females so they are aware about reproduction & the sexual diseases they are spreading. It also involves things like providing birth control so that severe overpopulation can be curbed.

Sexual education please! As if any of the billion dollar schemes to show african bushmen to use condoms have provided any success!

Birth Control! Now that would be an excellent implementation but I know that nothing effective would ever be done: because the media would at once jump on it as racist... as surely as it did here:

[ToadBrother]

Sexual education please! As if any of the billion dollar schemes to show african bushmen to use condoms have provided any success!

On top of being a racist, you're also a considerable moron. The "bushmen" of Africa are pretty much as endangered a population as you can get. Over the last five or six thousand years they have been pushed into the most marginal regions of their former territories, mainly by Bantu speakers.

I'm curious, did your profound ignorance stem from your racism, or your racism from your profound ignorance? That's the problem with being a racist, all you see is skin color, and never go any further than that.

Edited June 9, 2010 by ToadBrother

[Jack Weber]

On top of being a racist, you're also a considerable moron. The "bushmen" of Africa are pretty much as endangered a population as you can get. Over the last five or six thousand years they have been pushed into the most marginal regions of their former territories, mainly by Bantu speakers.

I'm curious, did your profound ignorance stem from your racism, or your racism from your profound ignorance? That's the problem with being a racist, all you see is skin color, and never go any further than that.

I'm surprised that Lictor does'nt really like a few SubSaharan African dictators...

There's a few really good Fascists among them!

[lictor616]

On top of being a racist, you're also a considerable moron. The "bushmen" of Africa are pretty much as endangered a population as you can get. Over the last five or six thousand years they have been pushed into the most marginal regions of their former territories, mainly by Bantu speakers.

I know that full well, using it as an amusing example... to highlight to lack of cultural relevance in using modern trinkets such as condoms and birth control pills,

like a medieval serf with an ipod knawimsayin...

there you go almost giving an expose of this errant tribe... and getting all emotional..

[lictor616]

I'm surprised that Lictor does'nt really like a few SubSaharan African dictators...

There's a few really good Fascists among them!

for instance?

[lictor616]

I'm curious, did your profound ignorance stem from your racism, or your racism from your profound ignorance? That's the problem with being a racist, all you see is skin color, and never go any further than that.

lol you remind me of micheal jackson in that southpark episode: "naaah, dats ignarant... noooo, that's igna-ant"...

why is looking at race as a manifestation of clusters of human genes (clines) a manifestation of ignorance...

Edited June 9, 2010 by lictor616

[Jack Weber]

for instance?

You have to promise us you will not become orgasmic and make a mess first...

[Jack Weber]

Lictor,please don't tell us your preparing the lube and the kleenex,because if you are...

I'm not going to show you!

[Jack Weber]

I think he's gone,so we might be safe from any projectile ejaculate!

(just to be safe,could someone page Mr.Canada and have him bring the film crew to the Federal Politics board?....Thanks)

Here you go,Lictor....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coat_of_arms_of_Cameroon

Check out those two crossed thingy's in the back!!!

EVERYONE.....

TAKE COVER!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Oleg Bach]

The UN are confused ass holes - first they want some sort of Trotskyite international blend and equality..so they enforce or try to enforce the policy of internal displacement of natural inhabitants of certain nations including our own - they assist in the displacement of our own..with an immigration policy that is nice in theory but destroys the economy...our workers mostly white are slowly hitting the welfare roles...poverty is spreading...when you use the word PROTECTIONISM...you get pounced on by the socialist along with the capitalist - what's wrong with with protecting our common national wealth? The UN can not have it's cake and eat it too. THEIR plan of international socialism is ill planned and fine if you are an idealist university student that admires Marxist theory - but theory is speculation and to speculate leads to error.