Fairness is not charity

The dam is breached. The current migration crisis seems unstoppable. They keep coming from Africa, Americas, Asia, and Middle East. This crisis was predicted 50 years ago. Pete Seeger sang, “When will they ever learn?”

They haven’t learned but instead elected Trump and a few others like him. In 1968, the United Nations called a conference in Uppsala in Sweden to launch the “Decade of Development.” Prime Minister Lester Pearson was one of those initiated the idea. The goal was to eradicate poverty in the underdeveloped world. The declaration called for a commitment to give one per cent of GDP of the industrialized countries for that purpose.

Didn’t happen. The target was reduced to more realistic 0.7 per cent, but even that wasn’t achieved. In retrospect, it was not charity but fairness in business that was needed.

The Conference warned that failure to eradicate poverty would lead to unrest, civil wars, hunger, inequality, political instability and autocracy in the global South. Because of rapid development of mass media, people everywhere knew how affluent others lived. It was predicted that those trying to enter the richer countries would be a torrential flood. But not many people have taken the warning seriously.

That year, 1968, I went to Africa. I was naive and optimistic believing we could avoid the disaster if many people spoke about it often enough. That year, Pope Paul VI issued the encyclical, “On Development of People.” But the situation got worse. In 1974, the UN called another conference in Rome, Italy; this time concerning hunger. U.S. Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, promised, “In 10 years, there will be no child going to bed hungry.” What happened after 10 years, in 1984? The catastrophic famine hit the African continent. About a million people starved to death in Ethiopia alone.

It’s not because there was not enough food. There is lots of food in the world but the poor can not buy it. Nor can they grow food without means. Cause was poverty. Needed was a chance to make money to develop on their own. Remember how Germany and Japan became richer since 1945 despite the devastation of the Second World War? Look how China and India are getting richer. It’s not charity but fairchance in business.

We complain about migrants, forgetting that many of our ancestors were poor migrants, too, often escaping oppression.

When will we ever learn?

Tadashi (Tad) Mitsui

Lethbridge