The poorest of the poor in the world are denied the fundamental right of life

The Church of Sweden is a member of the World Council of Churches. Within that international fellowship of churches a study document on Christian faith and world economy has been worked on since 1988. Economists, sociologists and theolog-ians from various parts of the world, and with backgrounds in different Christian traditions, have worked together. One can always raise objections to attempts at comprehensive evaluation of complex financial contexts. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to point out some signs of the time which reveal themselves in a comprehensive evaluation and which stop us in our tracks and demand reflection .

Absolute poverty

The absolute poverty in our world is shocking and so is the in-difference of the rich world to the situation. More than a fourth of the population of the earth, that means more than 1.2 billion people, live in absolute poverty. Marks of absolute poverty are starvation, scarcity of health re-sources and lack of pure water. In such contexts people are in reality denied that right of life which is the most fundamental human right. Women and children are worst off. They often face a double injustice, as inhabitants of the South and as living at he bottom end of the scale within their own societies.

Some 900 million people can neither read nor write. One in three of children born alive suffers from undernourishment some time during their first five years of life. At least 14 million of these children die from starvation each year.

The problem is not financial but moral. This shocking, abso-lute poverty is before us at a point of time in history, when the global society actually has the possibilities of providing for all a minimum of standard of life. If our rich part of the world has nothing to say about this, it is humanely and morally bankrupt. If the Christian faith has nothing to say about it, that faith is but a re-sounding gong, of no importance in reality.

The gap between the poor and the rich widens. The relations between North and South deteriorate. Such generalizations may be questioned but hardly the phenomenon as such. The world economy is dominated by this division between the wealth of the North and the poverty of the South.

The term "underdeveloped" for the greater part of the world came into use soon after the Second World War. A new world view was launched: all the peoples of the earth should proceed along the same way and the goal was precisely "development". "Increased production is the way to prosperity and peace" it was said. The industrially and technically developed part of the world, first of all the U.S.A. as the leader of the victorious powers, was to take the lead. The world was looked upon as an open play-ground for liberating economic forces.

The leaders of the new nations of the South were challenged by the idea that economic development was the foremost goal of the state. This was universally accepted, in North and South and on both sides of the Iron Curtain alike. The nation was to be moti-vated for an increase in production. Extensive plans for development were presented. The idea prevailed that human be-ings must be valued according to what they produce, and not for what they are.

Destitute countries

Already towards the end of the 1960s it was observed that the strategy for growth did not work according to plan. In spite of remarkable increases of GNP figures the poorest strata of the population got little or no economic profit. Quite the opposite, they were made even poorer and more destitute. The definition of poverty took as its starting point the demands for goods in the societies of the North. "The culture of simplicity" where the funda-mental needs are provided for, came under severe pressure from societies that built on growth.

When the foundations of a society that builds on simplicity are withdrawn, the result is destitution. "The most effective way", it has been said, "of putting the whole world in a state of destitution, or scarcity, is to look at growth as an all embracing solution to poverty as it is defined from the demands of a society that is built on the production of goods".

During the good years from 1960 to 1990 the richest fifth of the world population increased its share of the global gain from 70 percent to more than 82 percent. The poorest fifth of the countries of the world had its share reduced from a meagre 2.3 percent to the even more meagre 1.4 percent. The figures show the extent of the injustices. For all that, the poorest of the poor countries are even poorer than the figures indicate and the rich in the richest countries are even richer. The distribution of wealth with-in the countries is in many cases grossly unjust. The uneven distri-bution of power reinforces the differences. Inherited wealth, scientific and technological knowledge as well as milit-ary capa-city lead to economic power.

As the signs are to be seen right now, the development may lead to a double tracked world economy. One rail is a kind of fast line for the economic leader – the European Community, North America with Mexico and the Newly In-dustrialized Countries, the NIC countries, in East Asia such as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore. The other track is a slow line for the majority of the other regions whose progress is slower and slower and in some cases has come to a standstill. Such things have occurred previously within individual count-ries when the economy of the rich and the economy of the poor have developed in completely different directions. Sooner or later

such a disorder leads to a break down of order with social un-rest, lawlessness and open conflict to follow.

The "black holes" of world economy

The signs of the time can be seen with the North taking a strangle-hold on the producers of raw material in the South. For one thing the prices are forced below what is just; for another, substitute goods are created by technical means. When poverty deepens in the South the attraction of the North increases. The South is tapped of gifted, industrious and already educated people. At the same tine an uneasiness is engendered in relations when the North makes it difficult for people from the South to get work and residence permits. Distinctions are made between political and economic refugees to the disadvantage of the latter.

In less than twenty years, what has been called a "black hole" has formed within the world economy. It consists of those count-ries that find themselves caught in a debt-trap which be-comes worse all the time. The consequences are disastrous and difficult to grasp. They stretch into the common future of com-ing generations.

The background is hundreds of years of economic dominance by the North. The problems have accelerated in our generation. Banks and governments in the North encouraged and even forced governments and political leaders in the South to accept big loans. Capital for speculation came from the profits of the oil-boom of the 1970s. The purpose of the loans was to create conditions for further development. The money, however, was often used for military purposes, for resource consuming indust-ry such as papermills and the like, for extensive road con-struc-tions and dam projects. Also, they were used for private invest-ments in banks in the North by leading politicians. Far too late did one discover that what would have been most beneficial were projects to produce more food.

In the 1980s the interest rate in the U.S.A. was raised, mainly to pay the bills after the costly war in Vietnam. Countries in debt to the USA – mainly Latin American countries – had to pay interest rates far above their capacity. New schemes for payment pro-vided release for a short while. Meanwhile, the economically interest-ed parties of the North required programs for structural adjust-ment with the idea that the South must raise more and spend less. Almost consistently this was done by lowering an already low standard of health care and education.

Between 1982 and 1990 it is calculated that the poor count-ries, just to pay their debts, transferred 1.345 billion dollars to meet interest and capital repayments. This is 25 % more than the total flow of money to those countries during the same period. In addition, a large part of that flow consisted of new loans. The rate of interest was set higher than the costs for handling the loans. The advantage of power was being used for the purpose of profit.

The overpayment of debts

According to a just way of calculation the debts are already more than repaid. The high rates of interest, the changed conditions for trade and the flight of capital from the South to the North has result-ed in overpayment. Strong demands have been made for the writing off of the debts of the South to the North. Debt crises occurred before during the course of history and have been solved by one-sided decisions to write off the debts. There is a good example of what happens if one lets generosity over-ride principles.

The idea of a Jubilee-year in the Bible seems to have its pro-totype in old Mesopotamia, the land of the two rivers between the Euphrates and the Tigris. In that high culture one knew that the econo-my in a society must be shaken up now and then. If too many become poor or without means and wealth is amassed only by very few, economic development comes to a stand-still. All will loose. When a new king took office, one made use of the occasion. A decree was issued to say that all promissory notes, which at that time were written on clay tablets, were to be smashed up. The rich lost, in the short term, and certainly were displeased, but the poor could start anew. The economy was revitalised.

The governor-general Nehemiah proclaimed a reduction of debts and thereby an economic reconstruction, at the time of the rebuilding of Jerusalem. Also in Sweden there was a tradition of revitalising the economy by a reduction of debts. Such a shake-up and a redistribution of wealth would be a possibility for find-ing a remedy to the stagnation in world economy that is talked about so much nowadays.

Some years back the unpaid debts of the poor countries be-came an open threat to the survival of the banks in the North. The rich world was facing a total financial crisis. In the light of that threat one was prepared to arrange an alternative scheme of repay-ment. It gave positive results that was seen almost im-media--tely. Basically, however, this was not done with the view of restoring justice. What one wanted was to restore the credit rat-ing and the economic growth of the indebted countries so as to make the continued payment of interest and capital instalments from the South to the North possible. Technically the debt crisis for some exposed countries has actually been solved. The pro-blem is that, nevertheless, their basic economy seems to have stagnated and that the poor have become even poorer. A solution that is liberatingly fresh has not yet been attempted.

A threat to life

Closely related to the urgent financial questions is the increasing threat to the environment. The threat has to do with global warm-ing, the breakdown of the ozone layer, the destitution of land through deforestation, soil erosion, the spread of deserts and salt-soaked areas, and contamination of water, air and soil. All can, more or less, be traced to industrial processes that human beings have started in order to create more wealth. If, however, the increase of wealth had been meant for the poor of the earth as well, more care would evidently have been taken. As it now has come about, the poorest have to live and work where the en-vironment is the most contaminated and dangerous.

Industrialization and other economic activities certainly have led to, and still lead to, much progress and many improvements. One has to recognize that much good is being done by modern developments. Still, it is shocking and should lead to further re-flec-tion that human beings, who have been active on earth during a vast period of time have, in only two hundred years after the be-ginn-ing of the industrial era, become a threat to the very founda--tions of life itself. Planet earth, however, has a history that stretches back in time for billions of years.

There are other ways of living in a more respectful relation-ship with the earth and the other living beings. Many aboriginal popula-tions can witness to a balance that has held firm for centu-ries and under most varying difficulties. Other religious tradi-tions than ours have encouraged a greater caution and respect for nature and all that is alive than we Christians have done. This puts a question to the North, that was once so influenced by the Christian tradition: how should God's commission to women and men at the time of creation "to fill the earth and subdue it" be understood? We should educate our senses to see the dividing line between "subduing" and exploiting and should be guided by God's words in relation to the garden of Eden: to use it and preserve it.