TakingITGlobal - Panorama

Published on: Jun 13, 2005

Topic:

Type: Opinions

https://www.tigweb.org/express/panorama/article.html?ContentID=5725

Defining poverty varies and depends from one place to another, from one time to another and from one year to another, from household to another… A poor person in my village, Kpala, owns land, has shelter, eats fresh food but does not have health care and cannot afford to send his children to school. A poor person in Rwanda does not have land, cannot send his children to school, does not have access to health care but has access to a telephone. A poor person in Canada has shelter, basic health care but will live on junk food; his children will have access to a free and compulsory primary school. We all know that poverty exists, changing parameters from one place to another. But how do we measure poverty?

Agencies, organizations and countries measure poverty differently. But UNDP has made a rule that someone or a household unable to have 1 US dollar a day is poor or under the line of poverty. That’s still a working definition. It does not render all the reality about poverty. In Canada, alone, there are seven instances including the Fraser Institute, defining differently what poverty means.

For sure, poverty is linked to a deficit between the income and the size of essential expenses one should make. If it is easy to define income, it is not as easy to define “essential and legitimate expenditures.” However we will agree with one another that sheltering (housing), health, food and education constitute basic needs for every human being today. So a person who spends more than half of his income on essential needs or basic needs is poor.

Author Christopher Sarlo (Poverty in Canada, 1997) defines poverty as lack of any item required for maintaining the long term physical well-being of a person. This definition has the value of including shelter, clothing, food, education, personal hygiene needs, health care, telephone and maybe a car!

Whatever definition we might find, we will agree that today to outline poverty one should be able to have the minimum adequate income to maintain his family as unit, to preserve his health and to live in dignity or self-respect of the individual. The minimum requirement needed for social support and self-respect is essential in any space one is living.

Debt Cancellation: The Insufficient Signal

To cancel debt for the most poor countries whose majority are in Africa will not be the end of Calvary for the African population. Even though I agree that the burden of paying debts was too heavy on the shoulders of African countries. I am still convinced that the new deal reached between G8 to cancel debts of 18 countries is not the right signal. And I have enough reasons

Ethical Justice

Debt is tied to an obligation of reimbursement from the contractor as an act of reparation, trust, justice and earning respect and protecting his dignity. Saying so, it is unfortunate that African countries who have not been able to pay their debts have pulled down the esteem they had to gain from their peers of the West. Not paying one's debts is a failure to justice and treason of trust.

Saying this, I must also agree that these debts for some of the countries were too heavy and quite impossible to be repaid even in a hundred years from now. However, bad governance, corruption and leadership deficit going on in most of the indebted countries reveal that debt is not the main and principal reason for Africa's poverty. While Congo Kinshasa owes 14 billion dollars to Western countries, Mobutu's fortune alone equals that debt. And according to the UN investigations on looting of Congo's riches by AFDL and Kabila's regime, this regime has stolen, only after five years in power, a colossal amount of five billion dollars! So the two put together will give a total of nineteen billion able to pay the external debt and also to build roads and foster free primary education in Congo-Kinshasa.

We can see clearly that bad governance with its corollaries corruption and negative leadership are the main causes of poverty in Africa. And that cannot be fixed by canceling the debts. It can be fixed only by stopping bribery and thievery. Corruption, bribery, and theft would end if and only if the international community agreed to find and repatriate the money stolen from African regimes. The impact of such a coordinate campaign will have more impact than canceling debts. This is the only way to tackle the problem of corruption by tackling the infrastructure that supports it.

By Jean Pierre Nziya Yambwa
Toronto

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by Yambwa, Nziya Jean-Pierre
Published on: Jun 13, 2005
Topic:
Type: Opinions
https://www.tigweb.org/express/panorama/article.html?ContentID=5725


Defining poverty varies and depends from one place to another, from one time to another and from one year to another, from household to another… A poor person in my village, Kpala, owns land, has shelter, eats fresh food but does not have health care and cannot afford to send his children to school. A poor person in Rwanda does not have land, cannot send his children to school, does not have access to health care but has access to a telephone. A poor person in Canada has shelter, basic health care but will live on junk food; his children will have access to a free and compulsory primary school. We all know that poverty exists, changing parameters from one place to another. But how do we measure poverty? Agencies, organizations and countries measure poverty differently. But UNDP has made a rule that someone or a household unable to have 1 US dollar a day is poor or under the line of poverty. That’s still a working definition. It does not render all the reality about poverty. In Canada, alone, there are seven instances including the Fraser Institute, defining differently what poverty means. For sure, poverty is linked to a deficit between the income and the size of essential expenses one should make. If it is easy to define income, it is not as easy to define “essential and legitimate expenditures.” However we will agree with one another that sheltering (housing), health, food and education constitute basic needs for every human being today. So a person who spends more than half of his income on essential needs or basic needs is poor. Author Christopher Sarlo (Poverty in Canada, 1997) defines poverty as lack of any item required for maintaining the long term physical well-being of a person. This definition has the value of including shelter, clothing, food, education, personal hygiene needs, health care, telephone and maybe a car! Whatever definition we might find, we will agree that today to outline poverty one should be able to have the minimum adequate income to maintain his family as unit, to preserve his health and to live in dignity or self-respect of the individual. The minimum requirement needed for social support and self-respect is essential in any space one is living. Debt Cancellation: The Insufficient Signal To cancel debt for the most poor countries whose majority are in Africa will not be the end of Calvary for the African population. Even though I agree that the burden of paying debts was too heavy on the shoulders of African countries. I am still convinced that the new deal reached between G8 to cancel debts of 18 countries is not the right signal. And I have enough reasons Ethical Justice Debt is tied to an obligation of reimbursement from the contractor as an act of reparation, trust, justice and earning respect and protecting his dignity. Saying so, it is unfortunate that African countries who have not been able to pay their debts have pulled down the esteem they had to gain from their peers of the West. Not paying one's debts is a failure to justice and treason of trust. Saying this, I must also agree that these debts for some of the countries were too heavy and quite impossible to be repaid even in a hundred years from now. However, bad governance, corruption and leadership deficit going on in most of the indebted countries reveal that debt is not the main and principal reason for Africa's poverty. While Congo Kinshasa owes 14 billion dollars to Western countries, Mobutu's fortune alone equals that debt. And according to the UN investigations on looting of Congo's riches by AFDL and Kabila's regime, this regime has stolen, only after five years in power, a colossal amount of five billion dollars! So the two put together will give a total of nineteen billion able to pay the external debt and also to build roads and foster free primary education in Congo-Kinshasa. We can see clearly that bad governance with its corollaries corruption and negative leadership are the main causes of poverty in Africa. And that cannot be fixed by canceling the debts. It can be fixed only by stopping bribery and thievery. Corruption, bribery, and theft would end if and only if the international community agreed to find and repatriate the money stolen from African regimes. The impact of such a coordinate campaign will have more impact than canceling debts. This is the only way to tackle the problem of corruption by tackling the infrastructure that supports it. By Jean Pierre Nziya Yambwa Toronto « return.