Conference Tackles Global Issues

Over 80 students, activists and concerned citizens gathered Saturday, September 18 for “Global Problems, Global Solutions,” a conference hosted by LaRoche College.

Rain and flooding from the remnants of Hurricane Ivan had led to the cancellation of the Friday evening portion of the conference, but participants gathered Saturday for a reconfigured program.

The day featured discussions of world problems and the effect that local action can have on poverty and other problems around the world.

A key feature of the conference was the United Nations Millennium Goals Campaign. The program is an outgrowth of the Millennium Summit held in 2000, and calls for governments around the world to honor commitments made at the Summit to “put a people-centered development at the heart of global, national and local agendas.”

The campaign features eight specific goals to accomplish by 2015: 1) Eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, 2) Ensuring that all boys and girls complete primary school, 3) Promoting gender equality and empowering women, 4) Reducing by two-thirds the mortality rate among children under five, 5) Reducing by three quarters the ratio of women dying in childbirth, 6) Halting and beginning to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS and the incidence of malaria and other major diseases, 7) Ensuring environmental sustainability, and 8) Developing a global partnership for development.   

One of the highlights of the meeting was the keynote speaker Eveline Herfkens, executive coordinator of the United Nations Millennium Goals Campaign. She outlined the campaign and discussed ways in which citizens can participate.

She offered specifics in a pre-conference interview. “There actually is a division of labor [in achieving the goals],” she said. “It is the primary responsibility of developing countries to produce the first seven goals. But we acknowledge that poor countries will not be able to act unless rich countries act on Goal 8.”

But Herfkens warns that rich countries like the United States and the countries of Europe will not act unless pressured by their people.

“[People of these countries] are the only ones who can do it,” said Herfkens, a former minister for development cooperation in the Netherlands. “There is already organizing going on: Whenever a politician goes to an event like this, they start making promises. Politicians need to understand that they can win votes, not lose votes, by (for example) attacking poverty in Africa.”

Herfkens said that she sees American attitudes about global issues changing. “Pre-911, Americans felt they were safe, and that what happens elsewhere does not affect them,” she said. “But I see the understanding increasing that there are no glass walls dividing us any more. It is essential to be globally responsible. There is a feeling of global insecurity. There are things that you just can’t fight militarily.”

She also emphasized that, contrary to what many politicians and others believe, the goals are realistic. “We have the resources and we know what to do,” Herfkens added.  “It’s up to countries to keep their promises, and only their electorates can hold them accountable.”

Other speakers focused on particular goals of the UN campaign.

Elizabeth Carty, a campaign coordinator for Oxfam America, talked about how trade policy creates poverty.

“The reality is that poor countries comprise 40 percent of the world, but control only one percent of the trade,” she said. “The rules of trade are rigged against the poor.” Carty pointed out that countries receiving aid and loans from the World Bank are required to reduce tariffs on products from other countries, particularly those produced by Western corporations. While countries like the U.S. protect their products by keeping out those made in other countries, poor countries are not allowed to do that. Consequently, the farmers in African countries who grow items like rice and cotton cannot sell their wares within their own countries, because U.S.-made goods, which are more cheaply mass-produced, are more available and less expensive. “We’re asking subsistence farmers to compete against U.S. agricultural markets,” said Carty.

Barney Oursler, co-director of the Mon Valley Unemployed Committee, spoke on the need to empower and organize citizens. “Most people know that things are wrong, but most people don’t know that there are things you can do,” he said, adding that this is why his organization “combines teaching people to organize for their immediate needs with working on changing public policy.”

The relationship between poverty and gender issues was a particular focus during the program. “I cannot imagine being able to meet the UN goals without addressing gender inequality,” said Astrid Kersten, a management professor at LaRoche. “Violence against women continues to be a worldwide problem. Women are affected by armed conflict in ways disproportionate to other populations, and we need to change how we think of women’s work and paid work for women.”

Carty talked about the experience of helping Oxfam bring running water to a village in a developing country. “The people were able to get this pump and it was very emotional,” she said. “One elderly woman told me that she was glad for this because now the girls would be able to go to school. Girls had been staying home to fetch water, instead of going to school.”

Herfkens said that, despite being controversial among UN member countries, birth control issues are important as well. “Kofi Annan has said that we can’t begin to achieve these millennium goals without improving the reproductive rights of women,” she said. “As a UN person, I have to be careful about this, but population problems would not be if every woman had the right to have as many or as few kids as she would like, when she likes, and if you send girls to school they will have fewer kids.”

The conference also featured several workshops, covering issues such as “Pushing Back Poverty,” “Peace and Global Justice,” and “Toward a Sustainable Environment.”

- Leah Samuel