Periodically we receive, via email, reflections from Tom Getman, World Vision's Director of Humanitarian Affairs. I found his thoughts on the G8 Summit challenging and helpful. What would a real war on poverty look like? Following are his thoughts:
"It is far too late, and unproductive, for us to rehash how foolish were the reasons for the costly present Iraq debacle. Although it is urgent that we remind ourselves in light of the meager offerings from the G8 meeting that world military spending at $1 trillion a year is more than 100 times the new pledges for the suffering world for debt relief, agricultural price supports, trade reform, micro enterprise investment and long term sustainable development. It is urgent that we reflect on this inequity especially when upwards of 40,000 people (mostly children) are dying each day for lack of basic nutrition and medicines which are readily available to all of us reading this reflection.
But it is not too late now for us to mobilize ourselves as advocates in new and more effective ways to counter any misguided assumption that crude force and state sponsored counter-terror can be used now and in the future to address conclusively the root causes of poverty and so called “Jihadist” activities.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu said it so well last week on a Swedish TV interview. “Each of us is called to participate, like the Apostle Paul, ‘when the time had fully come’ (Galatians 4:4), to do what no one else can to be a collaborator with God to make this a better world, to make this a more caring world, to make this a more compassionate world, to make this a more peaceful world”. He went on to assert that “in the fullness of time” it is not bombs and guns, but a convergence of positive forces, actions and prayers through committed people that brings change, indeed democracy.
Each of us is called to do what no one else can with one person, family, neighborhood, state, or country. Or else how will we answer the question one day from our grandchildren who ask, “Where were you when 40,000 little children and their family members were dying every day of preventable causes? What did you do in that ‘war’ on their behalf?” The peace achieved in this war that grinds on largely below the radar may well be the answer to the more public one of terrorism."
July 2005 –by Tom Getman
"It is far too late, and unproductive, for us to rehash how foolish were the reasons for the costly present Iraq debacle. Although it is urgent that we remind ourselves in light of the meager offerings from the G8 meeting that world military spending at $1 trillion a year is more than 100 times the new pledges for the suffering world for debt relief, agricultural price supports, trade reform, micro enterprise investment and long term sustainable development. It is urgent that we reflect on this inequity especially when upwards of 40,000 people (mostly children) are dying each day for lack of basic nutrition and medicines which are readily available to all of us reading this reflection.
But it is not too late now for us to mobilize ourselves as advocates in new and more effective ways to counter any misguided assumption that crude force and state sponsored counter-terror can be used now and in the future to address conclusively the root causes of poverty and so called “Jihadist” activities.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu said it so well last week on a Swedish TV interview. “Each of us is called to participate, like the Apostle Paul, ‘when the time had fully come’ (Galatians 4:4), to do what no one else can to be a collaborator with God to make this a better world, to make this a more caring world, to make this a more compassionate world, to make this a more peaceful world”. He went on to assert that “in the fullness of time” it is not bombs and guns, but a convergence of positive forces, actions and prayers through committed people that brings change, indeed democracy.
Each of us is called to do what no one else can with one person, family, neighborhood, state, or country. Or else how will we answer the question one day from our grandchildren who ask, “Where were you when 40,000 little children and their family members were dying every day of preventable causes? What did you do in that ‘war’ on their behalf?” The peace achieved in this war that grinds on largely below the radar may well be the answer to the more public one of terrorism."
July 2005 –by Tom Getman
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