“We will spare no effort to free our fellow men, women, and children, from the abject and

dehumanizing conditions of extreme poverty, to which more than a billion of them are now

subjected.”

Poverty and MDGs

Christ Church, Advent Sunday 2003

Three weeks on Global Poverty Nov 30: UNDENIABLE POVERTY - Facts &

TrendsWhat are the MDGs? Who are the poor? How much progress have we made?

Dec 7: OUR CURRENT RESPONSEWhat has been our response? Why has it diminished? How much would it cost to meet the MDGs? What is the response to date of our government, our church, our foundations and our corporations?

Dec 14: THE CAMBRIDGE CONSULTATIONWhat do our different kinds of responses achieve – Praying, Advocating, Teaching, Going, Giving, Sending?

UNDENIABLE POVERTY Now anxiety is the mark of spiritual insecurity. It

is the fruit of unanswered questions. But questions cannot go unanswered unless they first be asked. And there is a far worse anxiety, a far worse insecurity, which comes from being afraid to ask the right questions—because they might turn out to have no answer.

One of the moral diseases we communicate to one another in society comes from huddling together in the pale light of an insufficient answer to a question we are afraid to ask.[1]

[1] Merton, Thomas.No Man is an Island xiii

Planet Earth houses 6 billion children of God. One in five of us live in extreme material poverty.

God’s children who live in poverty say: “Poverty is like living in jail, living under bondage,

waiting to be free” – Jamaica

For Brazilian parents, poverty is “to come home and see your children go hungry and not have anything to give them”

“This is a selfish land, with no place for the poor”. — India

“For a poor person everything is terrible – illness, humiliation, shame… We are like garbage that everyone wants to get rid of.” A blind woman from Moldova

A middle-aged woman in Bulgaria said: “A normal person has … some self-esteem, to take a holiday, read a book. While now – you work here or there all day in order to have something to eat, and at night you can’t even exchange a couple of words like normal persons, you drop off asleep as if you were dead. It’s as if you were dead while you were still alive.”

10391

132

166

223

8378705948

1960 1970 1980 1990 2000

Social progress has been great but hasslowed down globally during the 1990s.

Under 5 Mortality Rate

Net Enrollment Rate

Population below $1 a day 1987 & 1998

Nearly ¾ of the poor lived in Asia in 1987, In 1998 65% of the poor live in Asia, 24% in Sub-Saharan Africa, and 6% in Latin America

25.0

474.4

415.1

217.2

63.71.1

Eastern Europe and Central Asia

Middle East and North Africa Latin America and the

Caribbean

Sub-Saharan Africa

East Asia and the Pacific

South Asia

1987

(0.1%)

(2.1%)

(5.3%)

Number of Poor (millions): 1,196.5(100.0%)

(18.2%)

(34.7%)

(39.6%)

290.9

24.078.2

278.3

522.0

20.9

South Asia

Eastern Europe and Central Asia

Middle East and North Africa

Latin America and the

Sub-Saharan Africa

East Asia and the Pacific

1998 (estimate)

Number of Poor (millions): 1,214.2(100.0%)

(2.0%)

(1.7%)

(6.4%)

(24.0%)

(22.9%)

(43.0%)

The Millennium Development Goals

A pledge to achieve eight goals, made by 189 nations + others in the year

2000. Goals:

1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger (1.2 B, 815M)

2. Achieve universal primary education (115 M children)

3. Promote gender equality and empower women4. Reduce child mortality (11 M under 5 deaths)5. Improve maternal health (500,000+ die in

childbirth)6. Combat HIV/AIDS (3 M deaths 2003), malaria

and other diseases7. Ensure environmental sustainability (1 B lack

safe water)8. Develop a global partnership for development

E.g. Universal Primary Education – Three regions are on track to achieve the goal. But three others are in danger of

falling short. Sub-Saharan Africa lags farthest behind. South Asia houses nearly twice as many illiterate folk, and has chronically low enrollment and completion rates.

Under 5 Mortality (reducing by 2/3 the proportion of children who die before their fifth birthday).

7

Safe water

Maternal mortality

Child malnutrition

Gender equality

Basic education

Child mortality

HIV/AIDS

Poverty

Achieved To be achieved

No reliable and comparable data

1990 2000 2015

MDG progress in 1990s40%

HIV AIDS and Africa:December 03 update

Approximately 40 million people are now living with HIV/AIDS (34-46m).

Of these, 26.6 million were living in Sub-Saharan Africa, and 3.2 million in SSA were newly infected in 2003. One in five people are infected.

In SSA women 15-24 are 2.5 times as likely to be infected as are men.

About 30% of people living with HIV/AIDS worldwide live in southern Africa, an area that is home to just 2% of the world’s population.

Poverty – silent, vast, incomplete, but solvable in our times

The MDGs do not attend to violence / conflict

The MDGs do not stress human rights These things also deserve our utmost

attention

But nearly ten times more people perish of poverty-related causes than of war or conflict (over 22 million in 2001 from preventable disease; vs 230,000 in war).

On Sept 11th, 2001, over twice as many people perished of HIV/AIDS than in the tragic and horrific attack on the World Trade Towers.

I didn’t know how to make garlands, or to keep a rose garden. Now it feels easy.

Suppose a woman is not feeling well, we can do each others work. We have done so many times, to help each other out.

People in the village now respect me.

In the early morning, I pick flowers. When I do this, I feel I have done sawab – holy work. Inner peace comes.

People tell me that the fragrance of roses is always in my clothes.

I do not mean that there should be relief for others and pressure on you, but it is a question of a fair balance between your present abundance and their need, so that their abundance may be for your need, in order that there may be a fair balance.

As it is written, “The one who had much did not have too much, and the one who had little did not have too little.”

2 Corinthians 8:13-15

Global Distribution of Malnourished Population, 1997-99

Malnutrition Among Children

55%

32% 32%

11%13%24%

48%

31% 28%

8%17%16%

0

20

40

60

80

100

South Asia Sub-Saharan Africa

East Asia /Pacific

Mid. East/NorthAfrica

LatinAmerica/Carribean

DevelopingCountries

% U

nd

er-F

ives

Un

der

wei

gh

t

1990

2000

Source: UNICEF 2001

Total Malnourished Population = 804 mil.

Source: FAO

Total Malnourished Children 150 mil.

No Data

< 1 mil.

1 - 10 mil.

10 - 100 mil.

> 100 mil.

Number of illiterate women

0 50 100 150 200

SSA

India

China

Bangladesh

Pakistan

Nigeria

Indonesia

Ethiopia

Brazil

Congo, Dem Rep

Philippines

(Millions)

Chances of Not Surviving to Age 40,Females 2000

Source: Mortality: WHO 2000

No Data

<5%

5% - 25%

25% - 50%

>50%