The Brandt Report
By Mohammed Mesbahi
02 December, 2004
Countercurrents.org
In
the early 1980s Willy Brandt created an Independent Commission to study
world poverty. Brandt was concerned that the prevailing economic system
was the cause of immense poverty, suffering and degradation. He proposed
introducing emergency measures to alleviate this, realising full well
that these measures would always only touch the surface of the problem
and that until the deep underlying cause (an unjust economic system
which favours the first world to the detriment of the third world) was
addressed, the problem would never be solved.
In a series of recommendations
the Brandt Report called for sweeping changes to be made to the global
economy, rendering it more democratic, fair and equitable. Brandt was
critical of the structure of the World Bank and the International Monetary
Fund (IMF), which were, he said, unrepresentative of many of the countries
that they served. The policies of the World Bank and the IMF are determined
by the finance ministers, central bank governors and treasury secretaries
of the G7. This is openly undemocratic, since third world countries
have no say in policy making.
Brandt had a vision
for the future in which all the issues facing the world would be discussed
by the leaders and representatives of every nation, rather than by a
small group of rich nations (the G7) as is the case today. Poor countries
would have a chance to say what their needs were, rather than having
solutions, which in many cases further compounded their problems, foisted
upon them. Poor countries would have a say in global economic policy
making. Their participation in institutions such as the World Bank and
the IMF would be real, rather than an illusory presence and they would
be listened to.
Brandt recognised
the importance of organisations such as the World Bank, IMF, World Health
Organisation (WHO), World Trade Organisation (WTO), UNESCO etc. He did
not propose doing away with these organisations, but rather making them
more accountable to the people they purport to serve. He wanted to see
more co-operation between international organisations and between world
nations in order to solve the many problems facing the world today.
The Brandt Report
was well publicized, read and discussed, but twenty years later none
of Brandts recommendations have been put into practice. Indeed
the third world has been plunged deeper and deeper into poverty, hunger
and degradation, while environmental destruction and pollution have
continued to increase.
Budget and trade
deficits plague most countries but in the third world debt actually
interferes with many countries capacity to look after their citizens.
Brandt recommended that third world debt should be reduced through partial
or unconditional debt forgiveness. However, despite the fact that third
world countries have long since repaid the value of their debts through
their interest repayments, in most cases their debts have never been
forgiven and indeed have continued to rise.
There are several
reasons for the increase in third world debt. One is that when the money
was originally lent to third world countries, export revenue for raw
materials and crops in most third world countries was more than adequate
for the repayment of interest on loans and their currencies were tied
to the gold standard. However in 1971 the International Financial Institutions
demolished the gold standard and floated the worlds currencies.
Brandt warned that the abolition of the gold standard was a rash and
foolish move. When the gold standard was in existence every country
knew what its currency was worth. It could devalue it at its peril,
but that was the choice of an individual country. Ever since the gold
standard was dropped, no country has been able to predict what its currency
would be worth from one day to the next. Currencies are bought and sold
on the international stock market. Small countries, having far less
currency, are more vulnerable to the buying and selling of investors,
who can reduce the value of their currencies by anything up to 90% overnight,
just by selling it. Countries such as the US and Britain with strong
currencies are not as susceptible to these massive fluctuations. The
abolition of the gold standard resulted in massive devaluation of many
third world countries currencies.
Another reason for
the increase in third world debt is that the price of third world commodities
has fallen constantly over the years, making it harder and harder for
these countries to repay their loans.
As many third world
countries struggled to repay mounting interest out of diminishing export
revenue, in many cases they have been obliged to take on further loans.
These further loans were tied to the strict conditions of Structural
Adjustment Programmes: programmes imposed on the receiving countries,
obliging them to cut back on health care, education, sanitation and
housing programmes, thus further worsening the plight of their citizens.
Brandt recommended
convening a summit of world leaders to plan and mobilize a major international
relief program, targeting hunger and poverty. He proposed that world
leaders should organise the provision of basic necessities such as food,
clean water, health and medical care. He also proposed that these world
leaders should organise preventable disease control programmes in poor
regions of the world. Recently the World Health Organisation has reiterated
the need for disease control programmes, but (a) the WHO has no power
to enforce its proposals and (b) the countries worst affected by infectious
diseases lack the money to implement disease control programmes.
In the world today
twelve million people die of preventable disease every year. The largest
number dies from dysentery and diarrhoea. These diseases are caused
by water born disease organisms. Far from improving the provision of
clean water in the third world, International Financial Institutions
have worsened the situation by imposing structural adjustment programmes
which include the privatisation of water supplies. In many parts of
the world people cannot afford to pay for water, so where their water
supply has been privatised they have been forced to fall back on the
remaining, often unsafe, meagre water supplies which have not been privatised.
As water privatisation increases so will the incidence of water born
disease.
1,600 million people
worldwide are at risk of infection from malaria. 300 million people
are infected (of which 275 million in Africa) and somewhere between
1.4 and 2.8 million people die of this disease each year. It is caused
by the Plasmodium parasite, which lives in mosquitoes. Over the years
the parasite has become resistant to all the drugs used to treat the
disease. Combinations of drugs now have to be used to treat and prevent
it and millions of people in the third world cannot afford these drugs,
all of which have serious side effects. There is no vaccine against
malaria.
The mosquito which
carries the plasmodium parasite is not restricted to the third world.
This same mosquito lives and breeds in Europe. But Europe does not suffer
from malaria. Why is this? A century ago malarial plagues used to strike
many parts of Europe in the summer, especially the poorer Mediterranean
countries. However as these countries drained their swamps and treated
the malarial victims in hospital, the disease was eradicated. The malarial
mosquito continues to live in many European countries but because the
people of these countries are not infected, the mosquitoes that bite
these people do not become infected. One of the reasons why the majority
of malarial sufferers are to be found in Africa is because Africa is
poor.
The majority of
the population in Africa live too far from the city to obtain any sort
of medicine. Road and rail infrastructure is often rudimentary and people
are too poor to pay for public transport even where it does exist. Hospitals,
doctors and nurses are insufficient to treat the vast number of infected
people. To compound this already desperate situation, much needed doctors
and nurses are leaving many African countries, where their governments
can no longer afford to pay them a living wage, to provide medical care
in the west. Another reason why malaria is endemic in Africa is because
there is no concerted pan-African mosquito control programme. And for
as long as wars continue to rage in many African countries no such programme
can ever be implemented.
The deadly African
sleeping sickness occurs in 36 African countries, including Cameroon,
Chad, Congo, Republic of Central Africa, Zaire and Sudan. It is caused
by the African trypanosome, a parasite that lives in the tsetse fly.
50 million people are at risk of catching it, despite the fact that
the disease was almost brought under control in the early 1950s. Sleeping
sickness can be controlled simply by trapping the tsetse flies which
cause the disease. Cheap effective traps can be made from sticks and
cloth impregnated with cow urine. In the 1950s a disease control programme
was implemented in all the African countries affected by the disease.
However wars over
mineral deposits and oil have interfered with tsetse control programmes,
and cutbacks in health spending ordered by the IMF have put an end to
diagnosis and treatment of infected carriers of the disease. As long
as economic conditions continue to worsen in Africa, sleeping sickness
epidemics remain a continuous threat. There is no vaccine against sleeping
sickness and the few drugs which can be used to treat it are highly
toxic. The people at risk live in some of the poorest counties of the
world, so there is no incentive for the big western pharmaceutical companies
to put money into research and development of drugs and/or vaccines
to treat the disease.
200 million people
in Africa, the Americas, Asia and Europe are at risk of infection with
Leishmania, a hideous, disfiguring and potentially lethal disease which
can affect the skin, the viscera or the nasal passages. It is caused
by the Leishmania parasite which lives in the phlebotamine sand-fly.
Half a million people will die from Leishmaniasis each year, if not
treated. All the anti-leishmanial drugs are highly toxic, the first
choice drugs being based on antimony. The parasites are becoming increasingly
resistant to the current drugs and there is an urgent need for new,
effective, safe drugs.
In parts of Afica
90% of the population suffer from Schistosomiasis (Bilharzia) a debilitating
disease caused by the schistosome parasite, which lives in a water snail.
This parasite leaves the snail at certain times of the day, swims through
the water and burrows into the skin of anyone who puts their feet into
the water. This disease can be cured by a single dose of the drug praziquantel.
It can be prevented by a number of health measures: educating the public
not to swim in infected water, not to urinate into the rivers and streams,
snail control measures and protection of rice field workers with Wellington
boots. Ducks can be used to control snails in rice fields. In China,
where a concerted effort was made, schistosomiasis was brought under
control and in all but a few remote areas, was eradicated.
Chagas disease is
caused by a parasite which lives in the reduvid bug, an insect which
doesnt even fly. Originally these bugs lived in a small area in
Central America. However they found ideal conditions in the cracks and
crevices in the houses of the poor, and so the bugs spread, taking the
disease with them. Over the past century Chagas disease, a highly debilitating
incurable disease which affects the heart muscle, has spread all over
central and southern America even reaching some of the southern states
of the US. This disease is completely preventable, simply by providing
adequate housing, where the reduvid bug cannot survive.
AIDS is yet another
example of how a disease can have a far worse impact on the third world
than it does in the West. The AIDS virus has spread not just through
sexual transmission, but also through the re-use of hypodermic needles
and contaminated blood and serum. Many third world countries lacked
the equipment for screening blood products and re-used needles before
the danger of this became apparent, because they could not afford to
use new sterile needles.
Why is Queensland,
Australia, which enjoys a tropical climate, apparently free of the tropical
diseases which affect the third world? This is because it is not a poor
country. White Australians do not suffer from malaria, leishmaniasis
or dysentery because they have adequate medical provision, housing and
clean water. However, just as the poor in the US suffer from some terrible
parasites (eg hookworm) which do not affect the rest of the population,
Australia too has its forgotten poor community the Aborigines,
the only members of the Australian community to be affected by tropical
diseases.
Brandt stressed
the necessity for International co-operative disease control programmes.
A co-operative approach to world health could rid the world of much
of the ill health which holds back the populations of the poorest countries.
The WHO has written reports outlining problems such as dysentery, bilharzia,
malaria, etc. recommending control measures, but the countries affected
do not have the money to implement these measures. The countries worst
affected by tropical diseases are all in the third world, struggling
to repay interest on their debts and forced into cutbacks on health
care due to structural adjustment programmes.
The current world
economic system is failing the majority of the worlds population.
Much disease is
preventable through insect control programmes, clean water provision,
adequate housing, diet and education.
Brandt recommended
that rather than allowing corporations to invest and produce mainly
where wages, taxes, trade and financial regulations and environmental
safeguards are the lowest, there should be a commitment to raise the
income and quality of life of people in developing nations. However
the International Financial Institutions allow big corporations to treat
the world like a giant chess board on which they can move their industries
about like pawns, taking advantage of low wages and lax environmental
controls in poor countries, to produce goods at minimum cost and maximum
profit. Thus corporations are allowed to profit from cheap labour in
the third world, but are not obliged to ensure the health and wellbeing
of these same workers. These are the double standards which were employed
by the Victorian Industrialists in Britain at the turn of the last century.
In the twenty first century, such double standards are shameful.
Brandt proposed
reducing arms exports. He wanted to see a huge reduction in the sales
of arms and proposed high tax on arms exports to be used for international
development. He wanted more transparency for arms exports. It is iniquitous
that huge sums should be spent on the development, production and sale
of armaments, when so large a part of the world lives in abject poverty.
Sale of armaments and backing of unjust despotic regimes has led to
destabilisation and war in many parts of the world, especially Africa.
95% of arms are manufactured in the first world and 98% of wars are
fought in the third world.
It should not be
forgotten that countries who rely on the export of arms to provide a
large proportion of their national income need to promote the sale of
these arms. It is not in the interest of an arms producing country to
promote peace. Without international controls such as those proposed
by the Brandt Reports, the arms trade will continue to grow and conflict
will continue to be fuelled. The importance of transparency cannot be
overstated. If the entire population of Britain were aware of the magnitude
of the arms trade originating in Britain and of the impact of this arms
trade on the third world, there would be an outcry. Huge numbers of
people would demand the closure of factories producing weapons.
Brandt stressed
the importance of preserving the environment. The first world does far
more damage to the environment but the third world suffers more as a
result of that damage. A healthy environment is essential for the well-being
of all who inhabit the earth and the earth can only be preserved by
co-operative effort. A world governed by financial institutions is not
and cannot be a stable, sane or healthy world.
We should, of course,
be concerned for the plight of third world populations purely for humanitarian
reasons. But there is a further reason why we should be concerned. It
has been well proven that poverty leads to a high birth rate. In numerous
cases, where the standard of living has improved in a country, the birth
rate has dropped as a result. Even in Catholic countries like Italy,
this has been the case. The poorest countries in the world suffer from
hunger, lack of housing, sanitation, clean water supplies and health
care. And yet their populations continue to grow. Even in countries
racked by war, populations continue to grow. People in poor countries
have many children because they know that many of them will die. They
have children to help them grow food and to look after them when they
are old. They even have children so that they can grow up to be soldiers
or freedom fighters.
If we do nothing
to remedy the current world economic situation, poverty will continue
to increase and the world population will continue to expand. Famines,
epidemics, massive population migrations, environmental degradation
and wars will be the result. If on the other hand, we are prepared to
envisage a world where essential changes have been made to the global
economy, where every citizen of the world has enough for his/her need,
then poverty can be eradicated, the world population can be stabilised
and wars can become a thing of the past. We need a global economic system
in which third world countries have a say. Third world countries should
receive a fair price for their raw materials. They should not have to
pay out their entire export earnings revenue in interest on loans. Housing,
health and education should be considered the right of every citizen
of the world.
© Mohammed
Mesbahi
___________________
Mohammed Mesbahi
Chair and Founder
STWR
P.O. Box 34275
London NW5 1XT
Website : www.stwr.net
E-mail : [email protected] / [email protected]