We must rock the world to make poverty history
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By: Father Shay Cullen
I have something in common with the world’s best known Irish rock stars, Bono and Bob Geldof organisers of the world-wide live 8 music concerts that rocked the world earlier this July to “make poverty history”. Bono lives up the road from my home in Ireland and Bob is a fellow town mate from Dun Laoghaire. We were all members of teenage rock bands in our youth. Bob and Bono went on to try and save Africa and I came to the Philippines as a Columban missionary 36 years ago.
We are driven by the idealism to end world poverty and economic injustice. We believe too in the power of theatre and music to increase public awareness about the suffering of the poor just like Jesus used parables. During the “Make Poverty History” campaign, the Preda-Akbay theatre group was doing its little bit performing in Ireland as part of a European tour.
This powerful emotionally charged musical drama by talented Filipino teenagers brings across how irresponsible mining causes environmental destruction that leads to poverty and the trafficking of youth into the sex industry. Their performance won long-standing ovations wherever they performed.
The performance of the G8 leaders of the rich nations at Gleneagles in Edinburgh could have been better. It brought 250,000 protesters onto the streets and the rock concerts reached millions more. The campaign’s goals are to cancel unjust debt, establish Fair Trade and increase development aid.
It is focused on Africa where 852 million people are more impoverished now than they were 25 years ago. Millions are dying of HIV-Aids. There a baby dieing every five seconds of preventable diseases and malnutrition. In a TV advertisement, the rock stars appeared one by one every five seconds and clicked their fingers as one more baby died. The last to appear was a small African boy, as if he was the next to die.
It was a soft non-confrontational approach pitched to the leaders as a one-time historical chance to change Africa. It placed the responsibility for world hunger at their feet. The single message to the world was “these men must be held accountable”.
Powerful stuff indeed but did it really move the hardened hearts of the world leaders? Bob Geldof declared it a great success. Others are more sceptical and doubt if hearts so hardened by corporate interests and greed could be changed by singing and dancing pop stars.
True it is that many leaders and officials of the impoverished nations are corrupt and are at the root of poverty and it’s attendant evils. But who lures them into dependency by pushing on them unsustainable loans? Who manipulates, controls and uses them to exploit their own people and their nation’s natural resources if not the multinationals of the rich nations. Who excludes the poor from the world markets?
The very same ones, some say, that finance the election of the G8 leaders and in return get protection for their immoral exploitation of the poor nations.
John Hilary, director of campaigns and policy at War on Want, a member of the “Make Poverty History” coalition, said: "The G8 has given less than 10 percent of our demand on debt cancellation and not even a fifth of what we called for on aid."
"The pledged US$50 billion uplift in annual aid, said others, amounted to just US$20 billion in new aid - and even that just on the basis of vague commitments' to development assistance," Hilary said. For all that the campaign and concerts are a big step forward in building public awareness and challenging the rich to give back what they have stolen from the poor. Perhaps I should have been a rock star too. [End]
