Forty years ago in his encyclical “Populorum Progressio”, Pope Paul VI warned that “the disparity between rich and poor nations will increase rather than diminish” and so it has happened. Eugene Quinn addresses the problem of social justice and what we must do about it.
Most people remember the tsunami disaster in Asia two years ago. The scale of the devastation and human tragedy stunned the world. There was an immense and spontaneous outpouring of sympathy and financial aid. Many Irish people felt impelled to travel to Asia and provide direct emergency assistance.
Ongoing tragedy
Trócaire’s Lenten campaign, Concern’s 24-hour fast, Fair Trade tea, coffee and bananas in our shops, remind us of another ongoing global reality and tragedy. The United Nations Human Development Report 2005 captures this reality in the following words:
‘Around the world, every hour more than 1,200 children die away from the glare of TV cameras. The causes of death will vary, but the overwhelming majority can be traced to a single problem – poverty.’ In short, we have the equivalent of three tsunamis a month, every month, hitting the world’s most vulnerable citizens – its children. The majority of these deaths are preventable. In our world today there is a growing gulf between ‘those who have’, the one fifth of humanity which thinks nothing of spending €2 on a cappuccino, and ‘those who have-not’, the one fifth of humanity that survives on less than a dollar a day.
Development goals
In 2000, at the dawn of the new millennium, the governments of 189 countries committed themselves ‘to do their utmost’ to change this situation. They agreed eight major development goals by the year 2015.
These Millennium Development Goals are solemn promises to do something concrete about child mortality, maternal mortality, education, gender equality, HIV/AIDS, the care of the environment, and the provision of water. However, the key promise was that by 2015 the proportion of people on our planet living in absolute poverty on less than $1 a day would be halved.
Five years have now passed and reports on progress towards these development goals make sobering reading. As a result of missing out on the key aim of halving poverty, some 380 million people will not be lifted out of poverty. Not adhering to the targets set for reducing child deaths will mean that an additional 40 million children will die over the next ten years.
Reasons for failure
In the past half-century there has been massive progress globally, in terms of standard of living, life expectancy and education, yet millions in developing countries remain excluded. Why have the many international, national and local attempts to combat poverty failed to impact significantly on the problem?
Any answer to this question must take account of the deep structural causes of global poverty. In other words, the underlying global economic system does not work for many of the world’s poorest people.
Almost forty years ago, in his encyclical Populorum Progressio ‘The Development of Peoples’ Pope Paul VI warned that, ‘the disparity between rich and poor nations will increase rather than diminish’. He also said, ‘the imbalance grows with each passing day’.
Populorum Progressio is a remarkable document and was a foundational one for future Church social teaching on development. Pope Paul VI had been profoundly affected by his visits to countries ravaged by poverty, hunger and war. In his encyclical, he seeks to instill in all Christians a sense of urgency about this global injustice and calls on everyone to share in the work of justice.
Authentic development is defined by Paul VI as being, ‘for each and all, the transition from less human conditions to truly human ones’. He strongly challenged the understanding of development that measures progress only in economic terms. ‘Development cannot be restricted to economic growth alone. In order to be authentic, it must be complete, that is, development has to promote the good of every person – and of the whole person.’
Irish aid
For many of us, our encounter with development issues is through charitable donations or campaigns. Irish people are very generous in their donations, whether through Trócaire boxes, church collections or direct debits to development organizations. As a state, Ireland donates large amounts of international aid, and is one of the world’s largest donors per head of population.
But more is required of us if we are to respond fully to the call to global justice. Paul VI states that as Christians, we are called to build ‘a world where all people, no matter what their race, religion or nationality, can live fully human lives, freed from servitude imposed on them by others or by natural forces over which they have not sufficient control’.
Aid alone will not succeed in eradicating poverty. The failure to reform the unfair way that financial and trade systems are structured continues to undermine much of the good work done by the aid flowing into developing countries.
Free trade
Forty years ago, Populorum Progressio highlighted these injustices in the global trade systems. Recently, the economist, Joseph Stiglitz, argued that ministers who signed the 1994 trade agreements in Uruguay effectively signed the death warrants of millions in the developing world.
They did so through the intellectual property agreement, which among other things governs patenting of new drugs. Its effect has been to deny millions of AIDS victims in developing countries access to life-saving retro-viral drugs at an affordable price. The agreement was justified on the grounds of promoting free trade but we need to remind ourselves of what Pope Paul said in Populorum Progressio: ‘Freedom of trade is fair only if it is subject to the demands of social justice.’
A fundamental requirement of Christian practice is that the welfare of our brothers and sisters is the concern of us all. Populorum Progressio reminds us of the imperative to work for a more just world. As Christians we can never be comfortable in a world where, every three seconds a child under five dies from a preventable disease. We are part of the system that sustains this. That means we can also play a part, however small, in reforming that system.
This article first appeared in The Messenger (March 2007), a publication of the Irish Jesuits.
