[Muhammad Yunus is the head of Grameen Bank, the winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for it's innovative work on microcredit lending with the poor of Bangladesh. This is an excerpt of his acceptance speech, given on December 10 to the Nobel Foundation in Oslo. The full text can be read here.]
Ladies and Gentlemen:
By giving us this prize, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has given important support to the proposition that peace is inextricably linked to poverty. Poverty is a threat to peace. World’s income distribution gives a very telling story. Ninety-four percent of the world income goes to 40 percent of the population while 60 percent of people live on only six per cent of world income. Half of the world population lives on two dollars a day. Over one billion people live on less than a dollar a day. This is no formula for peace.
The new millennium began with a great global dream. World leaders gathered at the United Nations in 2000 and adopted, among others, a historic goal to reduce poverty by half by 2015. Never in human history had such a bold goal been adopted by the entire world in one voice, one that specified time and size. But then came September 11 and the Iraq war, and suddenly the world became derailed from the pursuit of this dream, with the attention of world leaders shifting from the war on poverty to the war on terrorism. Till now over $ 530 billion has been spent on the war in Iraq by the U.S.A alone.
I believe terrorism cannot be won over by military action. Terrorism must be condemned in the strongest language. We must stand solidly against it, and find all the means to end it. We must address the root causes of terrorism to end it for all time to come. I believe that putting resources into improving the lives of the poor people is a better strategy than spending it on guns.
Poverty is Denial of All Human Rights
Peace should be understood in a human way—in a broad social, political and economic way. Peace is threatened by unjust economic, social and political order, absence of democracy, environmental degradation and absence of human rights.
Poverty is the absence of all human rights. The frustrations, hostility and anger generated by abject poverty cannot sustain peace in any society. For building stable peace we must find ways to provide opportunities for people to live decent lives.
The creation of opportunities for the majority of people—the poor—is at the heart of the work that we have dedicated ourselves to during the past 30 years.
Free Market Economy
Capitalism centers on the free market. It is claimed that the freer the market, the better is the result of capitalism in solving the questions of what, how, and for whom. It is also claimed that the individual search for personal gains brings collective optimal result.
I am in favor of strengthening the freedom of the market. At the same time, I am very unhappy about the conceptual restrictions imposed on the players in the market. This originates from the assumption that entrepreneurs are one-dimensional human beings, who are dedicated to one mission in their business lives—to maximize profit. This interpretation of capitalism insulates the entrepreneurs from all political, emotional, social, spiritual, environmental dimensions of their lives. This was done perhaps as a reasonable simplification, but it stripped away the very essentials of human life.
Human beings are a wonderful creation embodied with limitless human qualities and capabilities. Our theoretical constructs should make room for the blossoming of those qualities, not assume them away.
Many of the world’s problems exist because of this restriction on the players of free-market. The world has not resolved the problem of crushing poverty that half of its population suffers. Health care remains out of the reach of the majority of the world population. The country with the richest and freest market fails to provide health care for one-fifth of its population.
We have remained so impressed by the success of the free market that we never dared to express any doubt about our basic assumption. To make it worse, we worked extra hard to transform ourselves, as closely as possible, into the one-dimensional human beings as conceptualized in the theory, to allow smooth functioning of free market mechanism.
By defining “entrepreneur” in a broader way we can change the character of capitalism radically, and solve many of the unresolved social and economic problems within the scope of the free market. Let us suppose an entrepreneur, instead of having a single source of motivation (such as, maximizing profit), now has two sources of motivation, which are mutually exclusive, but equally compelling—a) maximization of profit and b) doing good to people and the world.
Each type of motivation will lead to a separate kind of business. Let us call the first type of business a profit-maximizing business, and the second type of business as social business.
Social business will be a new kind of business introduced in the market place with the objective of making a difference in the world. Investors in the social business could get back their investment, but will not take any dividend from the company. Profit would be plowed back into the company to expand its outreach and improve the quality of its product or service. A social business will be a non-loss, non-dividend company.
Role of Social Businesses in Globalization
I support globalization and believe it can bring more benefits to the poor than its alternative. But it must be the right kind of globalization. To me, globalization is like a hundred-lane highway criss-crossing the world. If it is a free-for-all highway, its lanes will be taken over by the giant trucks from powerful economies. Bangladeshi rickshaw will be thrown off the highway. In order to have a win-win globalization we must have traffic rules, traffic police, and traffic authority for this global highway. Rule of “strongest takes it all” must be replaced by rules that ensure that the poorest have a place and piece of the action, without being elbowed out by the strong. Globalization must not become financial imperialism.
Powerful multi-national social businesses can be created to retain the benefit of globalization for the poor people and poor countries. Social businesses will either bring ownership to the poor people, or keep the profit within the poor countries, since taking dividends will not be their objective. Direct foreign investment by foreign social businesses will be exciting news for recipient countries. Building strong economies in the poor countries by protecting their national interest from plundering companies will be a major area of interest for the social businesses.
We Can Put Poverty in the Museums
I believe that we can create a poverty-free world because poverty is not created by poor people. It has been created and sustained by the economic and social system that we have designed for ourselves; the institutions and concepts that make up that system; the policies that we pursue.
Poverty is created because we built our theoretical framework on assumptions which under-estimates human capacity, by designing concepts which are too narrow (such as concept of business, credit- worthiness, entrepreneurship, employment), or developing institutions which remain half-done (such as financial institutions, where poor are left out). Poverty is caused by the failure at the conceptual level, rather than any lack of capability on the part of people.
I firmly believe that we can create a poverty-free world if we collectively believe in it. In a poverty-free world, the only place you would be able to see poverty is in the poverty museums. When school children take a tour of the poverty museums, they would be horrified to see the misery and indignity that some human beings had to go through. They would blame their forefathers for tolerating this inhuman condition, which existed for so long, for so many people.
A human being is born into this world fully equipped not only to take care of him or herself, but also to contribute to enlarging the well-being of the world as a whole. Some get the chance to explore their potential to some degree, but many others never get any opportunity, during their lifetime, to unwrap the wonderful gift they were born with. They die unexplored and the world remains deprived of their creativity, and their contribution.
Grameen has given me an unshakeable faith in the creativity of human beings. This has led me to believe that human beings are not born to suffer the misery of hunger and poverty.
To me poor people are like bonsai trees. When you plant the best seed of the tallest tree in a flower-pot, you get a replica of the tallest tree, only inches tall. There is nothing wrong with the seed you planted, only the soil-base that is too inadequate. Poor people are bonsai people. There is nothing wrong in their seeds. Simply, society never gave them the base to grow on. All it needs to get the poor people out of poverty for us to create an enabling environment for them. Once the poor can unleash their energy and creativity, poverty will disappear very quickly.
Let us join hands to give every human being a fair chance to unleash their energy and creativity.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Let me conclude by expressing my deep gratitude to the Norwegian Nobel Committee for recognizing that poor people, and especially poor women, have both the potential and the right to live a decent life, and that microcredit helps to unleash that potential.
I believe this honor that you give us will inspire many more bold initiatives around the world to make a historical breakthrough in ending global poverty.
Thank you very much.
[Please note that the above is an excerpt from a speech by Muhammad Yunus, and was not written by me.]
…according to the USDA report, more than 35 million people were living in households that are “food insecure.” That means 12 percent of the U.S. population didn’t get enough to eat for at least part of last year.
According to the report, things got even worse for those who are worst off. The number of people in the USDA’s “very low food security” category–households in which “the food intake of some household members was reduced and their normal eating patterns were disrupted”–rose in 2005 to 10.8 million.
Hunger rates were higher for Black households (22.4 percent) and Hispanic households (17.9 percent) than the national average.
IN SPITE of the Bush administration’s claim that the economy is strong, food pantries and soup kitchens report being stretched to the breaking point.
In Battle Creek, Mich., the Food Bank of South Central Michigan is using leftover food from restaurants to fill the gap between the needs of hungry people and what corporate and private donations will buy. “This is what we call ‘deep diving,’” Teresa Osborne, who leads the food bank’s donor and community relations program, told the Chicago Tribune, describing collecting discarded food from local restaurants.
At the same time as the need has increased, federal food assistance to pantries, in the form of commodities like milk products and canned goods, is down about 55 percent since 2001.
Read entire Counter Punch article by Elizabeth Schulte.
This demonstrates the way in which government never solves the hunger & poverty problem. Accordingly, it also demonstrates the futility of our appeals to government. Quite frankly, a government will only give people enough to make them dependent on the government. Similarly, generally the people in power will never empower the impoverished and disenfranchised people. Naturally, the people in power do what helps themselves and what allows themselves to retain or increase their own power. If we want to solve the problems facing our communities and world, such as hunger and poverty, we have to do it ourselves through voluntary cooperation and non-governmental organizations, such as private charities and local trade networks.
I agree with Elizabeth Schulte that we have serious problems facing us and our world, such as hunger and poverty. I agree with Elizabeth Schulte that these problems need immediate attention, and that our society needs change. However, the government will not cause this change, and only makes our society’s problems worse. Thus, I disagree with Schulte when she suggests implementing or increasing government programs and subsidies.
Nonetheless, her well-written article raises many good points and contains many enlightening facts. For example, I agree with her when she says the following:
EVERY DAY, people are forced to make what could be life-and-death decisions, based on poverty.
According to America’s Second Harvest’s Hunger in America Study 2006, 42 percent of the people they serve had to choose between paying for food and paying for utilities or heating fuel. Thirty-five percent had to choose between paying for food and paying their rent or mortgage.
It makes no sense, in a country with so much wealth and resources, that a single person goes hungry.
[...]
No one should ever have to make the decision between food, shelter or other fundamental human needs.
What do you think?
Economist Muhammad Yunus accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on Sunday for his breakthrough program to lift the poor through tiny loans, saying he hoped the award would inspire “bold initiatives” to eradicate a problem at the root of terrorism.
Yunus, a 66-year-old Bangladeshi, shared the award with his Grameen Bank, which for more than two decades has helped impoverished people start businesses by providing small, usually unsecured loans known as microcredit.
“We must address the root causes of terrorism to end it for all time,” Yunus told hundreds of guests at City Hall in Oslo, Norway. “I believe putting resources into improving the lives of poor people is a better strategy than spending it on guns.”
Economics winner Edmund S. Phelps was cited for research into the relationship between inflation and unemployment, giving governments better tools to formulate economic policy.
Read entire AP article by Karl Ritter.
We have previously blogged about microfinance loans and the Grameen Bank. (See: Fighting Poverty $1 At A Time.) In addition to the above article, you can check out the Grameen Foundation Website.
I see the greatest aspect of the microcredit philosophy as the fact that it helps people help themselves. With just a small loan, the Grameen Bank enables its clients to permanently escape poverty through their own businesses and labor. This works much more effectively (and cheaply) than other methods which involve just throwing money and food at the problem. In fact, just dumping food into these malnurished communities often hurts them, because it undermines the local markets. In contrast, microloans stimulate the economies of these places by giving these underprivileged people the opportunity to help themselves and develop their businesses.
What do you think?
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Posted by
Scott Hughes |
Categories:
Poverty News |
10 December 2006 marks the 58th birthday of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted and proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948. During the last 60 years many achievements have been made in the name of human rights, but considerable challenges still remains to be fulfilled in making human rights an irreversible reality in the world.
[...]the fact remains that around 3.2 billion people still live on less than $2 a day, which might be the correct estimate of today’s poverty. “Poverty is more than just a lack of income,” the UN has declared (A Human Rights Approach to Poverty Reduction Strategies, UNHCHR, 2002). “It is also the lack of health care, education, access to political participation, decent work and security.”
It is admirable that the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, has identified poverty as the gravest challenge of human rights today in her 2006 pre-Human Rights Day Statement. It goes as follows: “Today, poverty prevails as the gravest human rights challenge in the world. Combating poverty, deprivation and exclusion is not a matter of charity, and it does not depend on how rich a country is. By tackling poverty as a matter of human rights obligation, the world will have a better chance of abolishing this scourge in our lifetime. Poverty eradication is an achievable goal.”
What might be necessary for poverty eradication is to make sure first that no one dies of hunger. But this is far from the world reality today. Among the poor, overwhelming majority are young and children (both girls and boys), because the poor normally don’t grow old. The second important task is to make sure that children go to school and get education, of course ensuring at least basic health care and housing for them as well as their parents. When they grow up, these children should be trained with the skills needed to acquire jobs or seek self-employment, in addition to facilities for those who are willing and capable of seeking higher education.
Read entire Asian Tribune article by Professor Laksiri Fernando.
I highly recommend you follow the above link and read the entire article, not just the excerpt that I have included. In it, Professor Laksiri Fernando explores the statements of the UN, and expresses information about social inequality – such as that the world’s largest economies are corporations, not nations – and he explains the steps required to put an end to hunger and poverty.
Unfortunately, in the last 58 years since the declaration of human rights, hunger has continued to plague humanity. Innocent children suffer and often die in the agony of hunger and poverty. In fact, 16,000 children die of hunger every day. Even in the United States, 14 million children live in food insecure households. It seems the UN lacks the capability to solve this problem. The governments of the world have more interest in putting tax-dollars to military spending, going to the moon, enforcing drug laws, etc., rather than feeding and educating innocent children who suffer from preventable poverty and hunger, and preventable diseases.
Thus, if we want to solve these problems, we the people have to do it ourselves. We need to stop appealing to negligent governments, and instead create non-governmental organizations and solve these problems ourselves through voluntary solidarity. Our governments and politicians have no interest in solving our problems, so the only effective solution comes from grassroots activism. To that end, I highly recommend the book Globalize Liberation: How To Uproot The System And Build A Better World by David Solnit.
What do you think?
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Posted by
Scott Hughes |
Categories:
Poverty News |
About 6.3 percent of households in South Carolina – roughly 100,000 families – had “very low food security,” according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture study issued last month.
That means normal eating patterns were disrupted and some had less to eat.
The percentage is the highest in the nation and well above the U.S. average of 3.8 percent.
“If you look at transportation and livable wages, South Carolina is really not doing well,” said Susan Berkowitz, director of the S.C. Appleseed Legal Justice Center, another anti-poverty advocacy group.
“We have high levels of uninsured, low levels of education. It just all adds up.”
The USDA and Legal Justice Center reports don’t indicate South Carolina families regularly go without food.
Instead, advocates say the working poor rely more on aid agencies and programs for food as they use more of their modest income on increasingly expensive needs such as transportation and health care.
Read entire Sun News article.
South Carolina needs to unify and fix these problems in their state, which as the article points out extend beyond hunger and poverty. Hunger and poverty are just symptoms. All of us, including South Carolina, cannot solve the problem by attacking the symptoms. We need to take all the factors into consideration, including education, healthcare, and employment opportunity. Even high employment rates mean little when the jobs fail to pay enough for the workers to support themselves, and avoid hunger and poverty.
We all need to heed that advice, because this problem not only exists in South Carolina, but also exists at the national and global level. Let’s continue the war on poverty and hunger long after the holiday season.
What do you think?
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Posted by
Scott Hughes |
Categories:
Poverty News |
The suburban poor outnumbered inner-city counterparts for the first time last year, with more than 12 million suburban residents living in poverty, according to a study of the nation’s 100 largest metropolitan areas released today.
“Economies are regional now,” said Alan Berube, who co-wrote the report for the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. “Where you see increases in city poverty, in almost every metropolitan area, you also see increases in suburban poverty.”
Nationally, the poverty rate leveled off last year at 12.6 percent after increasing every year since the decade began. It was a period during which the country went through a recession and an uneven recovery that is sputtering in parts of the Northeast and Midwest.
The federal government defined the poverty level as $15,577 for a family of three in 2005.
The poverty rate in large cities (18.8 percent) is higher than it is in the suburbs (9.4 percent). But the overall number of people living in poverty is higher in the suburbs, in part because of population growth.
In 1999, the number of poor people living in cities and suburbs was roughly even, at about 10.3 million each, according to the report. Last year, the suburban poor outnumbered their urban counterparts by about 1.2 million.
Cleveland was the city with the highest poverty rate last year, at 32.4 percent. McAllen, Texas, was the suburb with the highest poverty rate, at 43.9 percent.
Read entire AP article.
It’s hard to imagine a family of three of living on a 16 thousand income, but such a family wouldn’t even be considered poor with the low numbers the government uses to determine the poverty rate. With a more appropriate number, I imagine the suburban poor would outnumber the urban poor by even more; especially since the cost of living is higher for the suburban poor.
These new findings demonstrate that the problem of poverty isn’t some tiny foriegn issue affecting strangers. Poverty is a major widespread issue affecting our own communities. In fact, most Americans live in debt. Although, obedient middle-class Americans can put food on their tables with credit-cards, an economic recession or a hike in interest rates could quickly bring back a new American depression and put physical hunger right into the lives of the average working-class American.
Americans could effectively eliminate this threat by making fundamental change to the economic status quo. This change doesn’t need to come from the government, but rather the American people can stop participating in the credit-based economic system and instead utilize habits that retain the wealth in the working-class communities. Currently, the working-class is trapped by a government-backed credit-based economic system in which a lazy unproductive ruling class (namely the bankers and corporate shareholders) weasel the wealth from the productive masses via theft and manipulation. Suburban poverty is a symptom of this non-meritocratic social inequality.
An unprecedented effort to protect the world’s food supplies from the ravages of climate change will be launched today by an international consortium of scientists. The move marks a growing recognition that serious changes in weather patterns are inevitable over the coming decades, and that society must begin to adapt.
Some £200-million a year will be poured into the research by governments across the world to help agricultural experts develop crops that can withstand heat and drought, find more efficient farming techniques and make better use of increasingly fragile soil and scarce water supplies.
The Stern review of the economics of climate change said a 2-3C rise in average global temperatures would put 30-200 million more people at risk of hunger. Once temperatures rise 3C, 250-550 million extra people will be at risk, more than half in Africa and western Asia. At 4C and above, global food production is likely to be hit hard. The British scientist James Lovelock warned last week that such food shortages could trigger a growing number of conflicts this century between nations desperate to find fertile land to feed their people.
Read entire U.K. Guardian article.
Thankfully, these organizations realize this particular effect of global warming, and work to counter it. However, the article says nothing about preventing man-made global warming in the first place. The dangerous gases that certain corporations and people let into our air cause many other problems in addition to global warming.
In fact, the legal immunity with which these polluters destroy our environment shows the governmentally-enforced socioeconomic inequality, which factors into the serious issues of hunger and poverty.
Live and let live. If these corporations and other polluters want to make money, good for them, but they must only do it without offensively harming anyone else. When they pollute our air and kill our environment with poisonous gases and such, they offensively harm us. Let’s defend ourselves, and the hungry and poor.
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Posted by
Scott Hughes |
Categories:
Poverty News |
by Scott Hughes
A few weeks ago, my grandmother told me about the veterans’ charities that asked her for donations. She told me that she regularly gave to a specific veterans’ organization, but that other organizations continued to solicit her. She asked me, “if I give to one, I shouldn’t be obligated to give to the others, right?”
I responded, “you’re not obligated to give to any at all.”
A lot of problems plague the world, and a lot of people need help. However, we still need to respect the right of anyone to help or not help as they please. I define slavery as forcing someone to help. Enslaving others or robbing them cannot help our causes; it just creates needless conflict and enemies. Yes, we need people to help, but we have to ask and persuade them to help, not force them, because nobody has an obligation to help or give, neither morally nor legally.
Indeed, different people have different opinions about what constitutes ‘help,’ and these different people can choice to use their own money, body, labor, and time to help or not help as they see fit.
Everyone has their own moral judgments. Using these judgments against others has caused much conflict in the world. A wise man who we call Jesus said, “judge not lest ye be judged.” And, he said, “let he who has not sinned cast the first stone.” To have a positive effect, we need to focus our moral judgments internally. Focused externally, people tend to use their moral judgments to excuse violence and conflict, and to force their will on others. In contrast, we can use our moral judgments to direct our own actions and better ourselves, rather than harm or coerce others.
I personally avoid using the concept of morality at all, at least in the public light. I try to analyze and describe everything amorally.
Legally speaking, unfortunately many places in the world force people to help or give. For example, consider taxes. Taxation literally involves robbery.
Again, many preventable problems plague the world. For example, 16,000 children die of hunger every day. Just like those children, the world needs help. Nonetheless, we cannot force people to help out or give. Even ignoring my personal disgust with theft and slavery, such offensive coercion cannot effectively solve these problems.
Attacking and coercing people only angers and offends them. It creates conflict. It creates problems, instead of fixing them.
To solve the problems such as hunger, poverty, and non-meritocratic inequality, we must not try to legally force people to help. We can ask for help, but not demand it. We can persuade people, but not coerce them.
We must tolerate the inaction of others. ‘Tolerance’ doesn’t mean ‘like’ or ‘promote.’ ‘Tolerance’ just means allow. We must allow others to do what they wish, insofar as they do not harm anyone else. We need to focus on actually solving our problems, and we cannot do that if we intolerantly waste time and effort using offensive force to coerce people who mean us no harm.
We have every reason to legally obligate people not to offensively harm us or anyone. Similarly, we have every reason to use defensive force to stop people from offensively harming us or anyone. Still, we must recognize the difference between ‘harming’ and ‘not helping.’
People have every right not to help if they wish not to. People have every right not to give if they don’t want to. For example, if a person works and earns money, that person now owns that money and can do or not do with it what ever they want, insofar as they do not offensively harm anyone else. Similarly, a person can use their body, labor, and time anyway they please, insofar as they do not offensively harm anyone else. That’s freedom, and we cannot solve socioeconomic problems such as hunger and poverty if we fail to respect people’s freedom.
This isn’t about morality. This is about practicality and effectiveness. If we waste time bickering and battling with others to offensively force them to do what we think they “should” do, then we just create needless conflict and more problems.
We have serious and difficult issues that we need to address, and come up with well-though-out and effective plans to fix. We cannot succeed if we lazily attempt to use the big clumsy hand of an interfering government to rob or enslave others, or “punish” them for acting “immorally.”
Instead, we need to use an open-minded approach to persuade others to help. We need to discuss and address the concerns of others, not pathetically attempt to coerce them to our line-of-thought. Based on voluntaryism, we can create non-governmental organizations and implement agreeable initiatives to actually provide effective help to society and solve the problems facing us, such as hunger, poverty, and non-meritocratic social inequality.
These terrible problems tear my heart apart, to think of the innocent children dying in the agonizing pain and suffering of preventable hunger. Like so many others, I desperately wish to solve these terrible problems plaguing our society. Nonetheless, we must not let that desperation trick us into using offensive coercion. We cannot afford to make enemies of our peers. Instead of working against each other, let’s work with each other. Let’s respect the rights of others, and fight the problem not the people.
About The Author: In addition to this blog, Scott Hughes administrates the World Hunger and Poverty Forums, where you can discuss this article and poverty in general.
