As we rush to bail out the bankers let's not forget the real poor

Published on Friday 26 September 2008 21:01

PAUL CHITNIS, chief executive, Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund

SPARE a thought for the sellers of Maseratis and Ferraris. Apparently the bottom has dropped out of their market thanks to the credit crunch. I heard of the wife of a London-based estate agent who recently discovered budget supermarkets. Her husband came home to find her excitedly showing off the fridge crammed full of tins of Malaysian meatballs and Russian pilchards.

Hundreds of billions of dollars have been found, like a rabbit from a hat, at a moment's notice, to prevent some of our financial institutions from going under. It seems greed and poor decision-making are not without their price.

The speed and generosity of fearful politicians in response to the credit crunch stands in stark contrast to their treacle-slow, miserly response to the plight of the poor in the developing world. No employee of the stricken banks and insurance companies will go hungry this week. Not one. Yet tonight, 800 million people will go to bed hungry in the developing world.

While Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have become household names, no-one will have heard of people like Mary whom I met in Southern Sudan. Rising in the half-light before dawn, she sweeps the dusty floor of the mud-built hut she shares with her daughters. After this, she makes the three-hour trip to collect water from the nearest pump. With no money, Mary manages on hand-outs and food drops. "Life is difficult," she says, "but we will survive."

Mary is one of the 1.4 billion people who survive on less than $1 a day. People like her have spent their whole lives suffering from a credit crunch. They have not over-spent on mortgages, nor squandered cash on trivia. They were simply born into poverty where, through no fault of their own, they will live and die unseen and unheard.

This week, at the UN in New York, 100 heads of government met to discuss progress towards achieving the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The headline goal is to reduce by half the number of people living on less than $1 a day by 2015.

There is some good news. Poverty in most regions has fallen; more children attend primary school; and the prevalence of HIV, responsible for so much death and misery in the developing world, has levelled off. The UK government is to be congratulated on its performance. DFID's budget has grown consistently since 1997.

But all governments, including our own, have a lot more to do if the MDGs are to be achieved by 2015, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. This region remains the most impoverished and dangerous place for a child to be born. The number of poor people there increased between 1990 and 2005.

Few of us who participated in the Make Poverty History rally in Edinburgh in July 2005 will forget the sight of hundreds of thousands of campaigners calling on the G8 leaders to do more to end poverty.

Indeed it is thanks to campaigners that the G8 pledged to increase development aid by 50 billion by 2010. Despite this, total global development aid actually fell by 8.4 per cent in real terms in 2007 compared to 2006.

Some major European donors are seriously off-track especially Italy, France and Germany. The political will to achieve the MDGs has been far too brittle and unreliable. Other priorities, including the "war on terror" and now the credit crunch have diverted resources away from the MDGs.

Mary, in southern Sudan, knows nothing of high finance. But I am more inspired by her gritty determination to survive than the Panglossian optimism of bankers and politicians. We – that's you, me and our politicians – have a covenant with the poor: to provide them with the resources they need to help them work their own way out of poverty. Not charity, but justice. As promises go, those made to the poor are especially sacred.