Clean water, health care, basic nutrition and literacy provide relatively low-cost solutions for many in poverty around the world, especially children. (Eugene Hoshiko/Associated Press)
In Depth
International Aid
Five fixes for an ailing world
Last Updated January 31, 2007
By Daniel Lak, CBC News
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At times it seems our planet faces far too many challenges. From climate change to pandemic outbreaks, nuclear weapons to air pollution, the list of things to worry about gets longer by the day.
Yet these are concerns that pale into insignificance alongside the ravages of global poverty. Consider a few statistics:
- Half of the world, nearly three billion people, lives on less than $2.50 a day.
- 30,000 children die each day from causes related to poverty, mostly from preventable diseases.
- Waterborne illness keeps students out of school a total of 443 million days each year.
- One in 3 of the world's people cannot read or write.
- Worldwide military spending is more than $900 billion a year, more than enough to eliminate poverty with all of its related impacts on health, water, sanitation, politics, war and so on.
The UN, bilateral aid agencies, international charities and thousands of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) dedicate themselves to helping the world's poor. It sounds like a concentrated effort but the problems are huge, with only a very few countries meeting their own long-standing commitments on official aid spending as a percentage of national wealth. Canada is not among them.
Even if there were enough money, how should it be spent? Poverty won't simply end if we fling cash at it. As the Chinese proverb points out: "Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he'll eat for a lifetime." Poor people in poor countries could probably help themselves if they were just a little better equipped to meet the challenges of their daily lives — if they were healthier, educated and had easy access to clean water. Anti-poverty campaigners say just a few, targeted interventions — none of them very expensive — would make a big difference.
Of course, there are many other problems that need to be fixed: climate change, pollution, bad governance, hunger, corruption and war. But to focus on a few makes the larger, more numerous challenges seem easier to meet. But you have to start somewhere.
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