*During the UN Annual Summit, Latin American leaders made big efforts to
tell to the international community that poverty and inequality are the
most important challenge the world faces. *
"Poverty and inequality leads to violence". This statement may well
summarize Latin American leader's message to the United Nations Annual
Summit celebrated in New York this week. Presidents from Brazil,
Argentina and Chile urged other nations to find ways to narrow the gap
between the reach and poor, which widened to unprecedented levels during
the nineties and shows its deadly consequences everyday.
All in all, efforts made by Latin leaders -openly backed by France,
Germany and Spain- are meant to show the world that Iraq and the fight
against terrorism are not the only issues in the global agenda.
According to official statistics, every four years 60 millions children
die in the world on causes linked to poverty. That means, a WWII against
children every four years.
In an attempt to draw the attention of US president George W. Bush,
Brazilian President Luiz InАcio Lula da Silva said overwhelming hunger
and unemployment in developing nations were contributing to
international violence. President Bush was invited but did not attend to
meetings.
"How many more times will it be necessary to repeat that the most
destructive weapon of mass destruction in the world is poverty?" Lula
asked during a session on the growing economic disparity. "Fair
globalization must begin with the right of everyone to a job," Lula
said, adding that "dignified work, like the fight against hunger, cannot
wait."
According to recent polls conducted all over the region, Latin American
citizens stand for a good job and a better standard of life rather than
for democracy and civil rights. In a region where basic needs are badly
satisfied in 40% of its population, people put less attention on
freedom, which could undermine new and fragile democracies.
Therefore, the fights against poverty and inequality is a matter of life
and death for Latin Americans, which means that they are not prepared to
put more money in sophisticated security systems to protect their
citizens from an improbable attack of fanatics. The horrendous face of
famine is more real, more accurate in Latin America, that the Bin
Laden"s one.
French President Jacques Chirac said he and Lula would propose new
approaches to fund the alleviation of poverty. "The price of selfishness
is rebellion," Chirac warned. "We should ensure that the world's
unprecedented wealth becomes a vehicle for the integration. It is up to
us to give globalization a conscience," he said.
In a statement to the UN General Assembly, Argentine president Nestor
Kirchner, made the International Monetary Fund (IMF) responsible for the
outstanding increasing in the foreign debt of the emerging nations.
"While they spend time in useful self-criticism, we have to deal with
millions of poor in our countries", said Kirchner. Kirchner, also asked
for a structural transformation of multilateral lending institutions.
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[Homestead] Worst Weapons of Mass Destruction are poverty and inequality,
Tvoivozhd, 09/22/2004