PRESS BRIEFING ON ERADICATION OF POVERTY

Press Briefing

PRESS BRIEFING ON ERADICATION OF POVERTY

At a Headquarters press briefing today -- the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty -- the Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), James Gustave Speth, told correspondents the occasion was a call to arms for the international crusade against that scourge. The intention was to raise the world's awareness of the problem and mobilize support for programmes meant to reduce it.

The press briefing was also addressed by writers and performers and four winners of UNDP awards for their struggle against poverty. The artists were South African song-writer and jazz musician, Jonathan Butler; 1991 Nobel Laureate, Nadine Gordimer of South Africa; American comedian, philosopher and anti-drug crusader, Dick Gregory; and rhythm-and-blues singer, song-writer, actor and radio host, Isaac Hayes.

The award winners were:

-- Hoang Thi Mai, of the UNDP/Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Freshwater Fish Culture Extension Project in Viet Nam, who won a prize for promoting aquaculture among ethnic minorities in hard-to-reach areas;

-- Lynette Cameron of the "Trickle Up Program" in New York, recognized for running a catering business and working for better schools;

-- Joaquin Rodriguez of the UNDP/FAO Agroforestry Project in El Salvador, for training villagers in a war-ravaged community to conserve soil and cultivate fruit trees; and

-- Patricia Matolengwe of the South African Homeless People's Project, rewarded for helping poor women own their homes and develop self-reliance.

After the introductions, the first guest to speak was Nobel Laureate Gordimer, who described the event as an example of what the world could achieve when it united behind a common purpose. She expressed hope that everyone would take part in eradicating poverty "because we are all in it together".

Mr. Glover, who has appeared in such popular movies as "Lethal Weapon" and played the title role in a television production, "Mandela", said he had a sense that artists should make a greater effort to help eradicate poverty. They could do so by calling attention to the problem and move people towards actions that produced tangible results.

Mr. Gregory said that 17 October was a great day that had brought together people with common objectives. No one in the room had a hidden agenda and no one had to be a rocket scientist to realise the need to do more

to eradicate poverty from the face of the earth. The planet's abundant resources should be used to fight that scourge. Even though the artists at the briefing had left poverty behind them, they had important roles to play to check that ill. "I've been out of poverty for so long, but when I look at my credit card bills, I realize that I'm about to work my way back in," he said.

For his part, South African musician Jonathan Butler recalled how he grew up in shanties around Cape Town with 16 siblings, a drunken father and a mother who struggled in back-breaking work as a hairdresser to keep the family housed, fed and schooled. As a result of those circumstances, he said, the family sometimes went days without food, a situation that made him determined to help his mother climb out of poverty. With such a background, he was willing to fight poverty at anytime, not only in South Africa but all over the world.

In a subsequent question-and-answer session, a reporter asked Nobel Laureate Gordimer to explain what she had meant by talking, in a previous statement, of poverty of the intellect. She explained that such poverty was tied to high illiteracy rates, as was the case in South Africa. Her efforts were directed towards calling attention to the need to promote literacy.

Asked what could be done to make the progress in development promised by the 1995 Copenhagen Summit for Social Development, UNDP Administrator Speth said that among the Summit's achievements was the commitment of governments to frame the kinds of actions needed against poverty and to set deadlines for eradicating absolute poverty. The UNDP, which had made that objective its No. 1 priority, was working towards such ends in more than 80 countries. Among the countries that had made progress in reducing poverty were those that had broadly framed their strategies and placed poverty-eradication at the top of their agendas. Generally speaking, poverty could be effectively tackled when governments made broad national commitments to create enabling environments that helped grassroots actors struggle and make a difference. Broad national commitments by governments would liberate the energies of those in the grassroots who worked to promote social progress.

Asked why Haiti was still mired in poverty even though more than $3 billion had been spent there in the past few years, Mr. Speth said that, while the country's situation was complicated, resources available to it were limited. To further complicate matters, official development assistance (ODA) was sliding, rather than rising. In spite of those circumstances, the types of resources made available through such United Nations entities as the UNDP and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) yielded very large and tangible results towards eliminating poverty.

In response to a question as to who was responsible for poverty and how it was related to corruption and dictatorship, Mr. Speth asked the two South Africans, Ms. Gordimer and Mr. Butler, to answer since they came from a country that had very many poor people despite its immense wealth.

Poverty Briefing - 3 - 17 October 1997

Ms. Gordimer said poverty, the legacy of the policy of apartheid, was virtually induced by paying people low wages, by limiting the type of jobs they could aspire to and by providing them with inferior education. At one point in the past, ten times as much was spent to educate a white child as was spent on his black compatriot. Even in the eighties, four times as much was spent on each white child. In addition to the limits on their education, blacks were robbed of their land and restricted only to the bantustans. "This is government-induced poverty," she said.

Asked to explain the links between corruption and poverty in the wake of the death of Mobutu Sese Seko, the former President of the former Zaire, who reputedly amassed billions of dollars in assets, Mr. Speth said: "Corruption is a cancer on the development process, as it deters international investments and is a disincentive to people." Its absence was a hallmark of good governance, which was essential for good policies on poverty and for getting necessary resources to the people.

Speaking on reputedly corrupt leaders such as the late Mr. Mobutu, Mr. Gregory said the international forces behind them should be held accountable, as the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had a hand in killing his predecessor, former Congolese Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba. A scheme by former colonial governments entrenched poverty by, among other things, using bad education to keep people illiterate.

Mr. Glover said that intellectual and other types of poverty were used by various regimes, with external support, to further entrench poverty in their countries.

A reporter asked Mr. Speth whether, with the lack of resources and the dream of a "peace dividend" at the end of the Cold War fading, there were efforts to divert some defence allocations towards social development. Mr. Speth said the idea of diverting defence dollars to social causes was not gathering steam, even though the UNDP had made such a proposal in its 1995 Human Development Report.

Mr. Butler said children's future should be given more importance than developing new spacecraft or weapons. Mr. Gregory said that defence spending was maintained by politicians' need to keep weapons factories in their Congressional districts. In order to counter that, the mass media should be used to campaign against the attractiveness of weapons, warfare and the defence industry. The gains of the civil rights movement in the United States had been partly due to the use of the media to relay pictures of the effects of racism into Americans' living rooms. "We can show the effects of the arms race now, and little by little people's minds would get groomed and we will see the whole war machine turn around," he said.

Recounting how publicity could make warfare attractive, he said that when he grew up he "couldn't wait to go to war because war was a Hollywood

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movie". He said there "were no ugly people, all the women were beautiful and you died glamorously. But when we went to Viet Nam, we saw in our living rooms all those body bags, with no speeches before the soldiers in them died, then the whole war thing stopped being glamorous".

Ms. Gordimer expressed her disappointment with the refusal of the United States to sign the recently approved treaty to ban anti-personnel landmines.

Speaking on poverty generally, musician and actor Isaac Hayes said alternative solutions should be pursued, with emphasis placed on promoting literacy. Money spent on space exploration could be put to better use, such as education to help prevent the negative effects of poverty like crime and disease.

Among the award winners, Patricia Matolengwe of the South African Homeless People's Project said that poor people should not wait for governments and the donor community to solve their problems. Rather, they should organise themselves and support common struggles against poverty.

Lynette Cameron of the "Trickle Up Program" in New York said successful people should stop criticising and looking down on those whose struggles they knew little about. Rather than dwelling on criticising the shortcomings of the poor, they should go to their habitats and help concretely. "Poverty at a person's doorstep today might be at yours tomorrow," she said.

Speaking through a Spanish interpreter, Joaquin Rodriguez, of the UNDP/FAO Agroforestry Project in El Salvador, called on the wretched of the earth to take whatever opportunity they found to break out of the cycle of poverty. They could do so by moving to areas where opportunities existed, by staying away from drugs and by educating their children. As for policy planners, they should ensure that resources actually went to the streets where the poor eked out a living and survived.

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