21st Century Challenge
by Dr. Mahbub Ul-Haq
 Simply
put, our challenge is this -- can we make the twenty-first century
a century of human development, when all people enjoy access to education
and health, when each individual is enabled to utilize her or his full
human potential, when all people have developed their basic capabilities
and enjoy equal access to the opportunities of life? Now let us be clear.
This is a vision of human competition, not state welfare. It is a vision
of access to opportunities, not access to charity. It is a vision of the
enrichment of human lives, not just the enrichment of national income or
wealth, and the investment required to realize this vision is fairly
modest.
We wish to move over the
next fifteen years toward a society where there is universal basic
education, primary health care for all, safe drinking water for all,
adequate nutrition for all malnourished children, and family planning
services for all willing couples. In other words, we wish to move toward a
world society where basic social services are available to everyone, both
men and women, and women before men; where the worst human deprivations
curbing the potential of more than 1.3 billion people today have been
finally overcome; where all essential ingredients for the full flowering
of human potential are available in the form of adequate education,
health, and nutrition. We wish to achieve all this.
What is the financial cost
of achieving such a society? According to the best available estimates,
the cost will be around an additional $34 billion a year -- 34
billion dollars. This cost is less than 1 percent of the total income if
the poor nations bear all the burden themselves and this cost will be
reduced to less than one-seventh of 1 percent of global income if the
international community decides to share the cost along with the poor
nations. That is the cost.
The question we face today
is this: Can we persuade the leaders of the world to accept such a global
compact for human development for the twenty-first century?
Let us again be very
clear. Such a global compact is not yet another treaty requiring the
formal approval of the governments of the world. It is, in fact, a shared
vision of what the world can and must achieve. It requires global
understanding, not a global treaty, because in the last analysis most
action must begin at the national level, and often at the grassroots
level, and such action must begin in the developing world itself.
These countries do not
lack financial resources. What they lack is political courage. We need to
ask the leaders of the Third World, and ask them bluntly, why they insist
on spending $130 billion each year on the military when even a quarter of
this expenditure can finance their entire essential social agenda. And we
must ask them why they insist on having six soldiers for every one doctor
when their people are dying of ordinary diseases, from internal
disintegration, not from external aggression, from many threats to human
security, not any threats to territorial security.
And we must also ask them
why they are not convinced that everything they buy costs the immunization
of four million children and every jet fighter they purchase costs the
schooling of three million children and every submarine they store away in
the waters denies safe drinking water to sixty million people. Why do we
let them argue poverty of resources for human development when they have
well-fed armies but unfed people and when many of these nations spend more
on their armies every year than their total education and health budgets?
And at the same time, we
must ask the leaders of the rich nations, why do you keep subsidizing your
arms exports to poor lands when you argue against even food subsidies in
these poor nations? Why is it that you refuse to close down your military
bases, phase out your military assistance, and restrict the export of the
sophisticated military weapons even now when the Cold War is over? What is
your excuse? And why do you make such handsome profits on your exports of
arms to poor, starved, disintegrating countries while giving them lectures
all the time on respect for basic human rights? And we need to ask these
leaders, why do they not invest in human development and instead make
profits out of the future prosperity of poor lands and not out of the
current state of human deprivation?
I believe, my friends,
what we need to change is the mindset of our leaders in developing
countries as well as in rich nations, because changes in policies will
then follow and adequate resources for priority human development agendas
will then be mobilized.
Let us spread the message
to all world leaders that such a compact is not only desirable --
it is eminently doable, it is feasible. And many years from now, we can
look our grandchildren right in the eye and tell them quite proudly:
"Yes, we tried."
 This
article was excerpted from the book:
Architects
of Peace: Visions of Hope in Words and Images
photos by Michael
Collopy.
Reprinted with permission of the publisher, New World Library,
Novato, CA 94949. ©2000. www.newworldlibrary.com
Info/Order this book
About The
Author
Described
as "the most articulate and persuasive spokesman" for the
developing world, Dr. Mahbub ul-Haq pioneered many economic
policies to help the poor. He served as chief economist of Pakistan's
National Planning Commission during the 1960s, director of the World
Bank's Policy Planning Department in the 1970s, and in various Pakistani
cabinet posts during the 1980s. As special advisor to the United Nations
Development Program, he developed the Human Development Index, which
measures development by people's well-being, rather than by their income
alone. Haq was the author of several books on poverty and development, one
of which is Reflections
on Human Development. He died in 1998 in New York. Visit
the Human Development Centre website at http://undp.un.org.pk/hdc.
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