Oxfam: Private sector is not the answer to poverty...

[marmar]

Published on Friday, September 1, 2006 by the lndependent/UK
Private Sector 'Not the Answer to Poverty'
by Philip Thornton

Rich countries must deliver more money directly to poor nations to avert a growing health and sanitation crisis spreading across the southern hemisphere, Oxfam will say today.

Also See:
In the Public Interest: Health, Education, and Water and Sanitation for All
The global charity said investment in health care, water, sanitation and education must be delivered by governments rather than the private sector.

Belinda Calaguas, the head of policy at WaterAid, which produced the report jointly with Oxfam, added: "There are more than a billion people living without access to clean, safe water and 2.6 billion people have nowhere to go to the toilet. That leads to the inevitable spread of water-related diseases which claim the lives of 6,000 children every day."

The report condemned the World Bank for forcing privatisation or inappropriate private sector projects on developing countries, and criticised Western governments for signing up to the so-called Washington agenda.

It said the scale of the problems in areas such as sub-Saharan Africa was so vast it could be solved by direct government action - in the same way the industrialised world tackled its own health and water issues in the 19th century.

The report said it was a "scandal" that people were still living without basic services. It said in a single day, 4,000 children are killed by diarrhoea, a disease caught from dirty water; 1,400 women die needlessly in pregnancy or childbirth; and 115 million school-age children, most of them girls, do not go to school. It would cost an extra $47m (£25m) a year to meet the goals set by the UN to be achieved by 2015.

Barbara Stocking, the director of OxfamGB and a former regional NHS director, said: "The key message is that this can be done. The amount of money is not huge." Oxfam said that developing countries would only achieve healthy and educated populations if their governments took responsibility for providing essential services.

The complete article is at: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0901-04.htm

[EFerrari]

1. How much do we spend in Iraq every day? K&R

[DoBotherMe]

2. $80,000,000 a day spent in Iraq is what I

read somewhere. D ; )

[EFerrari]

3. I believe that is right, Dana. That's a lot of clean water.

:(

[marmar]

4. I saw a digital billboard that clocked it at $11 mil an hour...

I can't think about it without flying into a rage. How many children around the world could be fed, educated and given proper health care for HALF that? :grr:

[EFerrari]

5. I can't look at those counters, either, or I'd need blood pressure

medication.

Oxfam deserves SO much credit for just repeating their message endlessly. That must be one deep well of patience and tenacity. :)

[malaise]

6. Globalizaion and neo-liberalism

have failed big time.

[marmar]

9. Yup...

I hate to say this, but maybe it's time for another great depression, or some big correction that will require a reshaping of geoeconomic systems. One where the common good is the driving force.

[AngryOldDem]

7. Is Third World debt forgiveness the answer?

I'm beginning to think it is.

[marmar]

8. Agreed. And if every first-world country was named Sweden...

it might actually happen.

[malaise]

15. In 1985 at a Debt Conference on Latin America

and the Caribbean, Fidel presented a speech called 'The Debt is unpayable'.
He was that far ahead of the pack. He wa absolutely correct but the problem is way bigger than that.

When the IMF and World Bank implemented the 'Structural Adjustment' neo-liberal paradigm, it failed from day one because it depresses wages through devaluation, destroys local industry and opens markets to cheap foreign imports. All it facilitated(s) was and is the 'brain drain' of significant numbers of the Developing World's trained people. With cuts in social services and the role of government scaled down to Grover's bathtub, education, health, housing and all other social cushions were removed so illegal migration also followed.

The privatization of basic infrastructure like water, electricity and destruction of decent health care means that diseases that were seemingly extinct are back in business.

The Reagan/Thatcher Globalization and Neo-liberal paradigm has fugged up the planet and Bushco has made it worse. More than a few people have turned to the drug trade to maintain their standard of living.

It won't be long before this rubbish crashes and burns. You may be right that a global depression will lead to this, but I suspect that once Bush and his goons are removed, things will change as they did for a few years after the Vietman War.

The entire illegal immigrant problem that the US is now facing was created by their own stupid neo-liberal policies.

[jwirr]

10. I have always been curious about Oxfam and also an organization

called Heifer. Who are they and do they have a good reputation with progressives. I know who they say they are what I want to know is who is behind these two groups - the backgrounds. I am very careful who I support and need to know more about each group.

[marmar]

13. Here's a link to the Oxfam page on the NGO monitor website:

http://www.ngo-monitor.org/archives/infofile.htm#oxfam

[Selatius]

11. Capitalism is a far worse killer than Communism ever was

Tally up the tens of millions if not hundreds of millions who have died in abject poverty in the last 20 years, while a relatively small portion of earth's population had more food than they needed, had more property and capital than they needed, and most definitely had more money than they needed. The wealth polarization is so extreme that there are people within the US who are living in poverty with less than a fair's chance of making a happy life.

The World Bank and the IMF should be dismantled, and its chief bureaucrats and secretaries and aids should be tried for crimes against humanity. I'm not justifying Stalinism/Maoism in any way, but anytime people hysterically red-bait people who think there should be a fairer distribution of wealth, maybe they should stop assaulting others and look real hard at the very system they are trying to prop up before tossing stones at other people.

[marmar]

12. "The World Bank and the IMF should be dismantled"

With a wrecking ball.

[The Backlash Cometh]

14. The private sector is the CAUSE of poverty.

Greed creates need.

[undergroundpanther]

16. You got it

Take from and limit how much the GREEDY have and get,then nobody will be left needy.
Until people realize no one DESERVES to be wealthy to the point they own most of the land and resources people need to survive and some people who are no better quality of human being than you or I,have more wealth than they can use in several generations nothing will get better. The rich people in the world are NOT better or more deserving of being insulated from the horrors of life than any of the rest of us are..I say EQUALITY now,Financial,Social,etc.


We must learn to bite the hand that controls distribution and eat the rich because if we do not demand to have a decent living a decent amount of respect as human beings,and confiscate some of what they steal(have)from this world.. if their wealth and profits and property acquisition is not CAPPED ,the rich see us as expendable tools they will consume us, our lives our happiness,our futures and throw us away when we are no longer ""productive" enough for them .Rich people, the owners, Destroy lives ,sicken people,create problems,the reactions to the problems and sell us the solutions, everything suffers to feed own their greedy addiction to having more than they ever deserved to have. The rich are rapaciously competitive,self absorbed,greedy to take from and acquire more at the dire cost of the rest of the world's needs and sanity.The people the world over need not suffer and be miserable or sick for maintaining the obscene levels of abundant 'wellbeing' of these few generational 'financial 'alpha' assholes.

Rich soulless shit-heads who prey and parasite off the misery and desperation of billions who buy their scams and lies,and work their lives away for very little.The Market itself is a big huge Ponzi Scam.That is why so few poor people ever"make it".For every bill Gates there are BILLIONS who will NEVER be who work and try as hard as Bill sometimes HARDER,and they fail..regardless...

[The Backlash Cometh]

17. How they steal from us can fill volumes.

It happens right under our noses and when we catch it and witness it, it's like watching our daughters getting raped, knowing there is nothing we can do to stop the next attack. There are no public agencies that will help the public stop an official from corrupt behavior even when that line between the private sector and public office has been breached. Only in extreme cases where someone is no longer politically expedient, does it happen.