| AMSTERDAM--Grappling
with the very difficult question of "why," a
somber James D. Wolfensohn, president of the World
Bank, surprised many people on Sunday by bringing
up the subject of world poverty.
Pressed
by veteran BBC host Sir David Frost, who was digging
deep for root causes of the tragedy faced by the
world community in the wake of the World Trade Center
attacks, Wolfensohn brought up the theme of "inequality" in
the world that he said the bank had been fighting
for years.
"We have three billion people that
live under $2 a day and a billion two
hundred million that live under $1 a
day," he said. "We have to
fight that poverty."
He said
the new world is one in which "a
few people can do what armies used to
do" in the old world.
Frost cut off Wolfensohn because of
television's time restraints, but Wolfensohn
was not, in fact, making news. Last year
he told an international banking meeting
in this city that inequality and disruptions
of peace are interrelated:
- It is a very split globe between
developed and developing, and that
within countries you have very considerable
inequities.
- It really is an issue of peace, because
it is unlikely that you will have stability,
in a world of inequity. People who
have nothing, or have little, or no
place to go or no opportunity, react
like you or I would react. You want
to protect your kids. You want to create
a life. So you react.
- Now you need to ask yourself the
question: Why is this of any concern
to me? Why, if you live in Holland
or the United States or Europe, is
this a relevant consideration? And
the answer is that we are in a world
that is very different to the world
that we knew 20 or 30 years ago. It
is different because the pace of change
and the pace of globalization is accelerating
more rapidly than ever in history.
And instead of there being two worlds
of this developed and that developing
world, everything is pushing us together.
- Interconnectedness in trade, finance,
health, migration, drugs, crime, war--interconnectedness
of all types -- is making this world,
instead of two worlds, one world.
- And all the academic analysis indicates
that within countries the cause of
crime and distress is frequently associated
with poverty, and the extension of
that to the international condition
is that if you have instability and
inequity, then you lack peace
- So at its simplest, the issue which
is of concern to me and of concern
to my colleagues is the issue of equity,
of social justice or, if you look at
it beyond that, the issue of peace.
- If you want your
kids to live in a peaceful world
in the next
25 years,
then you better be interested
in the question of poverty."
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