Tackling Global Poverty - The Conservative Way!
Overseas Aid
Having been an overseas aid worker in both Pakistan and Afghanistan for a number of years, I have actual experience of what poverty in developing countries is really like.
(Martin - left - conducting a literacy survey with amongst an ethnic minority group in a remote mountainous region of Afghanistan - one of poorest regions in one of the world's poorest countries)
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| Causes of Poverty | The Gleneagles Agreement | A Conservative Approach to International Development | Free and Fair Trade |
There are many causes of poverty - not just one!.
Poverty is due to a variety of causes - sometimes it is due to war and refugees crisis, sometimes it is caused by natural disasters such as droughts, floods, or earthquakes, often poverty is due to long term problems. In one area of Afghanistan where I worked the main problem was lack of accessible water. The area was mountainous with steep valley sides - only the small amount of land on the valley floor could be farmed. All the children were at least 20% malnourished and every few years nearly all the children under 5 would be wiped out by common diseases such as measles - simply because their bodies weren't strong enough to fight against it. They also had no education, as their language wasn't yet written down. Life expectancy was about 40 years old.
The point is this, there is no one single cause of global poverty - and no one solution! This is what is most fundamentally wrong with the Labour government's approach to tackling global poverty. (see
The Gleneagles agreement: And Conservative Alternatives
I have no doubt that Gordon Brown's motivation in responding to the Make Poverty History campaign was highly commendable, but I do have some serious questions about the appropriateness of some of the solutions he proudly announced to the press afterwards, and as to whether he has not already started to water down quite significantly some of the public promises he made then.
The package that Gordon Brown announced after the Gleneagles summit was essentially a promise that he would borrow from the next 10 year's aid budget and spend it all in the first five years. He would use this money for thee main purposes: to cancel the debts of some of the world's poorest countries; to eradicate measles; and to provide primary education for every child in Africa. In themselves these are highly commendable goals, which in principle most of us support as one part (but not necessarily the main part) of Britain's aid programme.
However, there are a number of major problems with Gordon Brown's approach to overseas aid which this deal exemplifies.
1. Spending the next 10 years aid budget in five years is a high risk strategy. Gordon Brown has said that he's doing this because if he spends all this extra money now - places like Africa will develop so much that they won't need so much aid in five years time. However, this is an incredibly high risk strategy - both because he is only targeting a very small number of the things that cause poverty in developing countries - like measles - on the assumption that much of global poverty is due to high rates of infant mortality. This is incredibly naive as there are many different causes of poverty and where poverty is due to, for example, lack of food, focusing aid on reducing infant mortality - won't deal with the underlying problem - it will just mean that there is even less food per person. One of the major causes of poverty in developing countries is the absolutely colossal and widespread corruption at every level of national and local government. It is extremely unlikely that this will lessen significantly in the next five years. So in 2010 when Gordon Brown plans to have spent ten years aid budget in just five years - but left the government then in power to pick up the bill for the next five years, he will have effectively handicapped the Uk's ability to respond to the needs of the world's poor. But then, maybe he's not terribly confident that there will be a Labour government in 2010. Maybe he thinks that it's a future Conservative government that will have to pick up the bill for him spending 10 year's aid budget in just 5 years and leaving the UK's aid budget with five years of debt to pay off between 2010 and 2015. Gordon Brown's scheme is a bit like borrowing an extra month's wages from your employer - then spending two month's money in the first month. All very well until you get to the second month and you haven't got any housekeeping money, because you've got to spend the second month's money paying back the extra you borrowed to spend the month before. The trouble is - it's not just a future Conservative government that he'll leave with crippling debts, he'll also have handicapped the Uk's ability to respond to the needs of the world's poor.
2. The second major problem with the aid package Gordon Brown announced to the press at Gleneagles is that - as with New Labour's approach to so many things - it is a highly centralised approach where the government in London decides what is right is everyone. As with so many New Labour policies - it's a one size fits all approach. But poverty isn't like that - there isn't one single cause of poverty across the globe - and there isn't one single solution.
Eradicating measles won't tackle the underlying causes of poverty in the area of Afghanistan that I worked in. There, 20% of children died from preventable diseases before they reached 5 years old. However, the real underlying cause of this shocking rate of infant mortality was that people didn't have enough irrigated land that they could grow food on, so they didn't have enough to eat - we found that virtually all of the children were at least 20% malnourished - so they didn't have the physical strength in their own bodies to fight disease. What they really needed was irrigation that would enable them to grow more food - so that their children had the physical strength to fight the disease they faced - including as measles...Just eradicating measles might reduce by one the number of epidemic diseases that kill children like these - if people can't grow enough food, their children will still be malnourished - and still vulnerable and die from lots of other diseases. One size simply doesn't fit all - and sadly, just making less children die of measles - when an areas' primary cause of poverty is lack of food - is likely to mean that there is even less food per person than there was before...
There are causes of poverty on a global and particularly national scale that need to be tackled, particularly the huge problem of government corruption that is rampant in most developing countries. However, it also needs to be clearly understood that each area of poverty in the world is unique with its own unique and often complex set of different causes of poverty. That why development based on the Conservative principle of localism is likely to be so much more effective at tackling poverty in individual communities at grassroots level. We must treat each poor community with dignity recognising the very different issues that have caused poverty in each. We cannot simply adopt ‘top down’ solutions to world poverty that supposedly fit all, but must work at grassroots level up to find ‘bottom up’ solutions to the underlying problems faced by each community.
3. My third major concern with the aid package Gordon Brown announced at the Gleneagles Summit concerns his selection of needy countries. Put simply - why did Gordon Brown give such a high priority to primary education for all in Africa? Africa makes a good headline - it's the area that most people probably instinctively think of when we talk about world poverty. But actually most countries in sub Saharan Africa are doing relatively well when it comes to literacy, most claim to have literacy rates of between 60% and 75%. So why didn't Gordon Brown promise free education for countries like Pakistan, where I used to work - where just 26% of the population can read and write, or Bangladesh which has just 38% literacy. More to the point, both Pakistan and Bangladesh are countries where we have deep and historic relationships going back hundreds of years.
As a Conservative I believe in the principle of relational responsibility. Put simply it means that the first responsibility each of us has is to care for those we are in closest relationship with. i.e. first our own family, then the needy in our own community, then fellow countrymen etc. This is something that we all live by in some measure at least at the level of caring our own families needs first. In terms of long term international development this means that Britain's first responsibility is to those developing countries that have the closet relationships with either historically - such as Commonwealth countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh (where literacy rates are only 26% and 38% respectively), or through recent political involvement in that country - such as Afghanistan. (which is almost bottom of virtually all of the world's measures of poverty, including a literacy rate estimated at around only 5% of its population). As a literacy specialist who has worked in developing countries of course I believe that Africa needs primary education - BUT the priority for Britain's long term development aid should be carefully targeted towards those countries we have the strongest long term relationships with and on assessment of greatest need. Grabbing headlines should never detract from giving aid where we have most responsibility and where the greatest need lies.
4. My fourth concern with Gordon' Brown's press announcement at Gleneagles is that the details he has quietly announced subsequently represent a significant backtracking on the public promises he made so enthusiastically to the press at Gleneagles and even those which Tony Blair subsequently announced to parliament.
The "small print":- of Blair and Brown's promises to the developing world:
The G8 agreed to increase aid from rich countries by £48 billion a year by 2010. When Tony Blair announced this to parliament he stated that " In addition...we agreed to cancel 100% of the multilateral debts" of the most indebted countries. However, in fact the small print told a somewhat different story Why can't the likes of Blair and Brown just be honest?
- In recent evidence to the treasury select committee, Gordon Brown admitted that in fact the aid increase includes money put aside for debt relief. Even The Guardian newspaper, well known for its Liberal Left leanings called Gordon Brown's admission "extraordinary" and observed that " The debt relief is not 'in addition' to the aid increases, as Blair claimed, but part of it."
- Far from representing a 100% debt write off - the deal only applies initially to 18 of the 62 countries that need debt relief to reach UN poverty targets. These 18 countries will save just £1 billion a year in interest payments on debts, a mere 10% of the total interest payments that these 62 countries have to pay every year.
Of course Britain can't solve the whole of global poverty on our own, no one disputes that. BUT it is deeply insulting and patronising to developing countries for the British government to use 'spin' to pretend it's doing specific things to help poorer countries get on their feet - when in fact the small print tells a different story.
A Conservative Approach to International Development
In the last ten years Conservatives led by groups such as the Centre for Social Justice, founded by former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith, have done much to spell out Conservative principles of achieving social justice in the UK. I believe that many of these principles can and should also be applied in international development. These principles include:
Examples of good practice
The following examples illustrate how these Conservative principles of social justice are being put into practice at grassroots level in international development:
1.The first involves relief work done by a Christian relief agency in Afghanistan during the Taliban era when there were many thousands of badly malnourished families in Kabul. Instead of just handing out food to hungry people, the TEAR FUND team concerned approached the community leaders in the district they were working in and asked them each week to select a different group of men from the poorest families in the district. These unemployed men were then put to work digging ditches to drain the area of stagnant water that malaria-carrying mosquitoes were breeding in. In payment for their work they were then given sacks of food. When another aid agency working in the area was evaluating their own relief programme, the local people told them ‘ we appreciate the free food you’ve given us – but what we really like is the way the other aid agency do it – giving us both food and work!’ It didn’t just give them food, it also gave them dignity, by helping them to help themselves.
2. The second example is an approach to longer term development known as ‘community development’. In this the aim is not to come in and do things ‘for’ the community, but to help the community ‘to help themselves’. This involves the aid agency helping the community to think through what the underlying causes of the problems they are facing are and how, with a bit of outside help they can solve them themselves. This may be by the aid agency providing materials or outside expertise so that the community can build their own pit latrines, dig their own wells or build their own schools. However, the most important thing is that it is the local community’s project – not the aid agency’s. Instead of the aid agency paying a salary to a teacher or village health worker, the village is encouraged to find ways of doing so themselves – perhaps by providing food in exchange for the person’s work, or spending a few hours a week working on the teacher’s fields while they are teaching their neighbour’s children. This approach not only prevents the community becoming dependent on the aid agency, it also positively builds the capacity in the local community to help itself. When the aid agency eventually leaves, the village school or other development projects they have set up don’t stop functioning because the aid agency is no longer paying salaries – they carry on. That’s good development – and it is based on principles that are fundamentally Conservative!
Significantly both of these approaches are being undertaken by NGOs (Non Governmental Organisations i.e. independent aid agencies). The Conservative Party is rightly committed to channelling more of the UK's aid budget through NGOs, rather than through the European Union as the current Labour Government does. This is a move that will be welcomed by aid agencies - because their experience of obtaining aid funds from EU funding is that the EU not only suffers from corruption 'losing' huge amounts of money, but is also massively bureaucratic. One aid agency I worked for had to allocate half of an expatriate staff member's time - just to complete quarterly reports to the EU - a colossal waste of an aid worker's time.
Debt Cancellation?
As Conservatives we believe that people need to avoid taking on debts that they cannot reasonably be expected to be able to repay, it's basic good economics, good 'housekeeping' and allows people to be economically self sufficient, rather than dependent on others.
However, many developing countries remain crippled in their attempts to achieve economic development and self sufficiency by the massive loans that institutions such as the World Bank made to them, in many cases more than 20 years ago. In order to allow these countries to achieve the Conservative goals of economic self sufficiency and avoidance of continuing dependency on the West, I believe we need to seriously consider cancellation of some countries' long standing debts, so that the poor are not indebted forever, but have a ‘second chance’ to achieve economic self-sufficiency. Of course we need to ensure that such countries are genuinely seeking to tackle issues such as corruption and that the money previously spent on interest payments will now genuinely go towards development and helping the poor.
Free and fair trade is absolutely essential if developing countries are to be allowed to develop and become economically self sustainable. Time and again, the governments of developing countries plead - just give us access to your markets so that we can sell our goods. Trade between countries enables both trading parties to experience economic growth. That doesn't mean that economic development will ever be pain free, it never is anywhere in the world because it involves change. We can see this form our own history - whether we look at the impact that the industrial revolution and mechanisation had, or the impact that the railways brought to Britain. But, despite the short term cost, the long term impact of these changes has been overwhelmingly positive with more people employed, earning more money and economic growth that has enabled us to pay for free education and health care for all - things that the ordinary working man and woman at the time of the industrial revolution would not even have been able to dream about. No one in Britain today would seriously contemplate joining the Luddites who opposed the industrial revolution only 200 years ago.
The same is true with the developments that international trade brings to developing countries. providing the trade is genuinely free and 'fair', there is no question that the medium term benefits are likely to be overwhelmingly positive. As with all economic change there is a short term costs to pay, but the alternative is to leave those countries where they are now with millions of people trapped in poverty, illiteracy and disease. Let me illustrate this by telling you about my friend Latif.
Latif's story
I met Latif while I was working in Kabul, Afghanistan. He had a small trolley selling boulani - small Afghan pastries - which he set up on the street outside the house where we were living. As I chatted to Latif in the Afghan Persian and got to know him a bit, he told me his story. he had had his own business just north of Kabul making small metal and wooden pots and pans. In those days the civil war between the different mujahaddin groups had been going on in Afghanistan and so there had been virtually no international trade at all. Then after the Taliban were driven from power cheap imports started to flow in from China forcing the market price below what he could make a living at. So he had set himself up making and selling the pastries in Kabul. I sympathised with the predicament that 'peace' in Afghanistan had had for him, as economic change had led to the loss of his business. At the same time I admired him for his get up and go, his drive to go and find work and if necessary 'make work' in order to provide for his family. But what was the alternative for Latif - if he and the rest of his village had stayed the way they were before - just trading amongst themselves and a few other nearby areas - they would be like people locked in a walled garden buying and selling only from each other - nothing would change, they would still live in poverty, unless outsiders came to help them one in five children would still die of preventable diseases and average life expectancy would remain at around 42 years one of the lowest in the world, and most of the children in his village would never learn to read or write - unless of course outsiders came to help them - and they became dependent on outside assistance. But even the most generous aid agencies won't fund programmes for ever...Despite the cost, the only way that the Afghan government would ever be able to pay for health care and primary school education for the people in Latif's village is by the country experiencing significant economic growth - finding the goods that it can make and export to the rest of the world - and in turn allowing other countries to sell the good they are good at making to Afghanistan. And although trade is certainly not without its short term costs - as Latif's story clearly shows - even in the short term there are some benefits - as people in Latif's village now have cheaper prices for at least some things because of international trade, and that's money in their pocket that they can spend on other things like food and health care.
Latif' story also illustrates one other important point, when trade barriers come down in developing countries, the competition that local producers face does not come from the West. Both the cost of labour in the West and the exchange between western and local currencies mean that western goods are sold at prices completely out of reach of the vast majority of the local population. In my experience of working in Pakistan and Afghanistan - imported western goods are normally about five times the cost of similar locally produced goods e.g. in Pakistan - one can buy a locally made western style shirt (often an exact 'copy' of a western brand!) for about 150 rupees (£1-20), a similar shirt in the UK would cost around £20 and even in the cheapest bargain basement shop you would be struggling to find one for less than £5 or £6 - which is still five times the cost of the locally made shirt in Pakistan. The only time that western goods do compete with local goods is when the western goods are heavily subsidised - as with surplus EU farm produce which is dumped on the world market at rock bottom prices, or heavily subsidised US cotton which is making life difficult for cotton producers in some parts of West Africa. Both of these are issues that need to be urgently addressed by the EU and the USA. But as Latif's story illustrates the real competition facing developing countries comes from trade with neighbouring countries that may be slightly more developed than themselves. But as each country has different natural resources and different and different skill traditions - that trade itself is the doorway of potential economic growth for even the poorest of countries like Afghanistan.
The EU and 'Free Trade'
Britain joined the European Economic Community (EEC) - now known as the 'European Union' (EU - a name change not without some signficance!) to join a 'Common Market' - a free trade area, an area where no customs duties would be paid. However, rather than promoting 'free trade' - the EU has now become one of the great defenders of 'protectionism' - keeping other countries goods out by imposing high customs duties on them or even imposing 'quotas' on how much they are allowed to sell to the EU - as former New Labour Cabinet minister, now EU Trade Commissioner, Peter Mandelson has recently done with imports of Chinese goods such as shoes and underwear (could you honestly imagine anyone except a former Labour Cabinet minister creating a trade war with with China over women's bras!). The victims of this EU protectionism are producers in developing countries. What developing countries really want is for the EU to open its markets to them - fairly. But it won't...
Fair Trade: Labour misses the opportunity of a lifetime to reform the EU Common Agricultural Policy and get a fair deal for farmers in the Developing world.
The world needs genuinely free and fair trade in order to develop. However, at the moment there is a huge problem caused by farm produce subsidised by the EU and US governments being dumped on the world market - and undercutting producers in developing countries. Britain has been working to reform the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) for years - but the biggest obstacle to reform is France. France has around 20% of her population employed in farming - mainly tiny farms of a few hectares that are completely dependent on CAP farm subsidies. The CAP subsidies provided to tiny uneconomic farms like these result in the EU producing huge surpluses of farm products which are then dumped on the world market at highly subsidised prices - that often undercut the price local producers in developing countries can sell their unsubsidised products for. It's a scandal - the dumping of heavily subsidised EU farm products on the world market is forcing some farmers in developing countries to accept 'uneconomic prices' for their own farm produce. And in developing country terms 'uneconomic prices' may mean that some farmers don't earn enough to feed their own families. It's a scandal that urgently needs tackling. However, because of the high percentage of the French population employed in agriculture, France will never agree to 'real' reform of the CAP without massive pressure. Yet in 2005 Britain had the best opportunity for decades to exert such pressure and force France to accept fundamental reform of the CAP, the best opportunity in decades to stop some of the very real harm that the EU is doing to farmers in developing countries. As the EU expanded, France demanded that Britain give up it's EU rebate which had been won years earlier after much tough negotiation by Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Tony Blair and the Labour government had the opportunity of a lifetime to only agree to give up Britain's EU rebate if France accepted far reaching and fundamental reform of the CAP. What did the Labour government do...? They simply gave away Britain's EU rebate - in exchange for nothing more than a vague promise that the French will in a few years time 'look at' whether the CAP should be reformed...! What a contrast with the tough negotiations that the previous Conservative government undertook to get a 'good deal' for Britain. The deal the Labour government simply caved in to accepting is both bad for Britain - costing Britain billions of pounds a year extra just to be part of the EU - and fundamentally bad for the developing world. Labour's 'concern' for the developing world looks somewhat hollow when it threw away with barely a whimper the opportunity of a lifetime to reform the CAP with all the injustices that it involves for farmers in the developing world.
Fair Trade
There is a problem in some developing countries with large multinational corporations having a virtual monopoly on buying up the crops such as coffee beans that small farmers produce. Some, though by no means all such multinationals can force local farmers to accept prices for their crops that they can barely live on. I believe that the best solution to this grossly unfair treatment of local farmers does not lie with government action (which is anyway often meaningless with the amount of corruption that characterises far too many governments in developing countries). The solution lies in a twin approach of firstly, the formation of ethical companies in the West who will pay a living wage to producers i.e. 'Fairtrade' companies; and secondly, in local farmers forming local producers associations so that they have greater bargaining power to negotiate with the multinational.
My wife and I support Fair trade. We began buying Fair trade coffee a few years ago when we heard on the BBC how a fall in the world coffee price had meant that some coffee growers were being paid so little for their crops that they couldn't feed their own children properly. At the time Fair trade coffee certainly didn't taste as good as some of the other brands - and thankfully things have improved somewhat since then! but we felt we had to take this step as the children of coffee growers were literally dying from malnutrition.
Read Martin's article in Conservatism Magazine on International Development in Speeches and articles section of this web site
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