Global Poverty and the UN Millennium Development Goals Program – Axis of Logic

To secure monetary and development loans, debtor nations must meet criteria designed to maintain a very strong market economy, namely, domestic and foreign capital enjoying the support and protection of the state because ‘national interest’ and economic development is equated with private capital, while the enemy is the public sector and workers. Financial dependence is invariably linked to trade, manufacturing, transportation, and service sectors dependence, which does not permit for the less developed nations to emerge from perpetual poverty that a substantial segment of their population is suffering. In the absence of addressing such structural causes of income inequality, the UN-MDG program cannot possibly succeed.
 
This does not mean that Merkel’s comment about political corruption is not to be taken seriously. Political corruption is a reality in developing nations. For example, India falsified maternal death reports to meet MDG targets. Local politicians and military officials have used foreign aid to enrich themselves in many developing nations not just recently but in the last seventy years. Indeed official corruption in semi-developed and less developed countries is part of the problem, but officials are on the receiving end, while domestic and foreign business people are at “offering” end making bribery possible in return for favors. However, even if corruption were to disappear by magic in a single day, the chronic problems that UN-MDG has identified will remain for as long as the political economy is based on the principle of capital concentration and accumulation flowing from the bottom of the social pyramid and outward from the less developed nations to the rich nations, and from labor to business.
 
The larger question to ponder in the UN-MDG program is why the political and business establishment is behind this effort. Why is it that the same elites largely responsible for the calamities of chronic poverty are insisting they wish to eradicate it under the UN-MDG program? One answer is that MDG is morally correct and that governments, corporations, the IMF, World Bank, NGO’s and others that support MDG are motivated by humanitarianism, compassion for the poor, for abused women, for tens of thousands of children dying each day of hunger, for those suffering human rights abuses, etc. This is exactly the image that the UN-MDG supporters wish to project, but does it have anything to do with reality?
 
In some respects, there are interesting parallels between the British ending slavery and UN-MDG. Did the British end slavery out of consideration for the Africans; did they do it owing to pressure from ministers of the church; or was there motives rooted in the political economy and society undergoing rapid changes owing to industrialization? British policy to retain the population in their colonies as the economy was changing from commercial to industrial capitalism thus the slave trade (ACT OF 1807) followed by the Abolition Act of 1833 was based on the realistic need for labor in the colonies to supply the mother country with raw materials for global trade. Industrial capitalism was based on free labor as it was on free trade, therefore the institution of slavery was anachronistic, for it was the product of commercial capitalism that was overtaken by industrial and finance capitalism.
 
Fifteen years after the UN promulgated the MDG program, we have the evolution of globalization that needs a work force in the semi-developed and less developed countries where labor values are low. Otherwise the growth and expansion of capitalism cannot continue. Given its cyclical nature, capitalism constantly seeks new markets to exploit for greater profit and lowest labor costs. The UN is offering the forum and the means for governments of the rich nations serving large corporate interests to create a more viable work force in the semi-developed and less developed nations, and to continue the thorough geographic and economic integration of every inch on the planet in order to realize the goal of capital concentration.
 
While the only thing that matters in peoples’ lives is their improvement no matter how it comes about and no matter the intentions of those wishing to eradicate poverty, illiteracy, disease and gender inequality, the only proof remains in the results and not the lofty rhetoric. When the Ebola virus epidemic erupted in December 2013 in Guinea, spreading to Sierra Leone, Liberia, Senegal, Mali, and Nigeria, the only action that the UN, G-7 and the West took collectively was only after there were isolated cases in Spain, UK, and US. Even then, the manner by which the West collectively handled the outbreak was to protect its own borders rather than address the roots causes of the virus in Africa.
 
There is consensus among scientists that endemic poverty, the same that the UN MDG program was supposed to lessen if not eradicate, as it claimed in 2000, is a major reason we had an Ebola virus epidemic out of control that had many in the Western World seriously worried. Further evidence of the contradictions between rhetoric and empirical results can be found in what took place after the Ebola epidemic – one of the worst in Africa’s modern history according to the World Health Organization. The UN Development Group concluded in March 2015 that because of the Ebola outbreak the affected sub-Saharan regions suffered decreased trade, flight cancellations, closing of borders, and a drop in foreign investment, all conditions that sunk the already poor areas even deeper in poverty.
 
To support their case that the UN-MDG program is a success, its supporters point to the world statistical averages. Upon closer examination, we find that Asia has experienced improvements across the board from 2000 to 1015. The results in Asia are the product of national capitalism and not the UN-MDG program. In other words, the rapid GDP growth of China and India in the first decade of the 21st century resulted in derivative growth in many parts of the world that depend on commodity exports. Cyclical demand for minerals and agricultural products with derivative benefits for a segment of the masses has absolutely nothing to do with the UN-MDG program and its supporters cannot possibly claim that improvements in poverty reduction are directly linked to the UN program. Naturally, UN-MDG officials hailed China for its role in helping achieve the MDG goals, but this is a clear case where credit goes to China and not the UN.
 
The most significant goal, which pertains to social justice and equality that neoliberal policies under globalization have been spreading across the globe, has been completely absent from the UN agenda. Are there more or fewer human rights problems around the world in 2015 in comparison with 2000, including human rights abuses in the US and other advanced capitalist countries that exempt themselves and point the finger only at the poor countries and openly declared “enemies of the West”? The US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and US-NATO intervention and covert operations in Africa, Middle East, Ukraine and Central Asia have actually caused a rise in human rights violations. These conflicts have caused a rise in the massive problems of refugee population and guerrilla warfare that the US labels “terrorist” when it is linked with Muslims.
 
Sustainable Development and Human Rights
Although US-NATO policies have actually contributed to human rights abuses from 2000 to 2015, a period that the UN-MDG program aimed to lessen such abuses, there is still the claim of success in this area. Even more insulting to those people around the world who are honestly working to eradicate human rights abuses, the UN-MDG program have linked this issue to sustainable development. “Sustainable development” is a concept both in PR terms and in every other respect that the corporate world has totally co-opted and uses it selectively to further its agenda of maximizing profits without offending the more sensitive among the middle class investors and environmentalists throughout the globe. During the Rio de Janeiro UN meeting on human rights in April 2012, the UN High Commission on Human Rights proposed linking sustainable development to human rights. In practice, this meant that multinational corporations could not invest in the absence of taking into account the physical and human environment.
 
Is sustainable development taking place in developing nations owing to the efforts of multinational corporations? Are multinationals involved in agricultural chemicals and hybrid seeds interested in sustainable development that would eradicate poverty in Asia and Africa? About the only people who believe there is anything sustainable or development taking place in poor countries are the corporate salespeople, their lobbyists, well-paid consultants and academics, the corporate-owned media, politicians, and UN officials who want people to project the image that the future is no as bleak for the bottom two-thirds of the population in 2000 as it is in 2015.
 
If a multinational wanted to build an agrichemical plant in Indonesia, it would have to do so with the least damage to the environment, with rules about workers’ safety, due consideration for the local community. In short, the UN proposal asks the corporate world not to behave as though they were in the 18th century. Again, this satisfies the demands of the middle class investors who are sensitive about the environment, but there is nothing about social justice to address gross income inequality.
 
By focusing on the bourgeois PR issue of sustainable development and greater “gender equality” access, which means more opportunities for middle class women, UN-MDG officials are satisfied they have done enough for social justice in the world. Needless to say, because the UN MDG program enjoys corporate support, there is no criticism of the massive wealth concentration and the need for policies of income redistribution  – the reality that 1% of the world’s richest people own about as much wealth as the bottom 50% of the world people.
 
One could argue that it is better to have the UN coordinate an international effort aiming to reduce poverty, illiteracy and disease than no to have such a program even if the program is not achieving its stated goals and even if corporations and strongest governments in the world are using the MDG program for their goals. It could be argued that in the absence of such a program we may not have the same results, such as they are and for the reasons that they are. On the other hand, one must also see through UN MDG as an effort to camouflage the growing inequality capitalism is creating and the growing lack of social justice. One could also argue that the UN MDG program is a Trojan Horse of imperialism on the part of the richest countries laying the groundwork the largest corporations to penetrate the less developed regions where most natural resources are available for exploitation and where labor costs are the lowest on the planet.