We were talking about a sweeping wave of change, in a prior post. And waves don’t stop, so nor will I.
We’ve all heard about the Millennium Development Goals of the UN. It so happens, I’m not a big fan of institutions such as the UN. Especially not when, though it is a ‘voluntary’ organisation for countries to join, and establish somewhat of a ‘world-government’ type deal (or so is my interpretation), it’s regarded as a ‘second-choice’ in terms of political decision time. (remember the Iraq War?)
Anyway, the UN also has some good ideas. They have, in the years running up to 2000, decided to form a set of goals that are for the betterment of mankind in general (eradication of poverty / ensure environmental sustainability / achieve universal primary education / promote gender equality and empower women, for example). This, I find, is a ‘good’ thing, ‘we’ (Westerners) ought to break through the inequality we find in our world which is, for a good deal, maintained through Western behavioural patterns. So; 1-up for the UN.
Now, despite the good efforts, Ban-Ki-Moon, the tribal chief of the UN, has warned the people of the world that because of the economic crisis the goals are under pressure (see the full report here). Yeah. Right. The eradication of poverty for instance, in 15 years, can indeed be done, but the simple fact of the matter is that as long as western companies (and thus governments) still make money on this form of inequality, this will not be achieved easily (remember the ‘secondary choice’-thing). Same with the gender equality idea. This is not even achieved in ‘developed’ countries. Next to that there’s this counter movement of ‘new-feminism’ in which gender equality became some sort of chauvinistic idea, but I’ll leave that to your own judgment. In my opinion men and women are not equal, yet, should be given equal rights and men and women should be judged on their individual qualities when it comes to whatever it is you’d like to judge them on. Let’s be happy men and woman are not equal, it would be a monotonous world.
As it is, maybe we should look around and see what small initiatives are doing, and how you and I as individuals could support those initiatives. In this case, for instance, by supporting them in an effort to win an award where UN money is given away, in name of the Millennium Awards. (Because like it or not, the money will go somewhere anyway.) And I’ve got just the NGO to do that for!
As part of ‘doing my part’ I’ve joined Satara to assist in the further development of their strategy, communication and business-wise. Satara works on Ghandi’s philosophy “We need to be the change we wish to see.” We’re currently working on a spring/summer 2010 collection, produced in India, empowering women that are manufacturing the collection (by hand). We do this through paying honest wages, education and setting up a more secure social system. Satara’s profit is re-invested in a local education project in order to stimulate and enable local parents to send their kids to school instead of being forced to be dependent on their income to feed the family. (read the whole story here)
This is Moniek van Erven, telling you the story of Satara;
You can help out by voting for Satara both on- and offline;
Vote online via the following link.
Or via text-message;
Text ‘nhd satara’ to 4999 (in the Netherlands) (remember the single space between nhd & satara)
You can find more on the UN Millennium Awards here (Dutch) and here (English).
As it is, this was shameless self-promotion, but it’s for a good cause, hope you’ll help us out! Thanks in advance.
Love and Peace.
Hmm. Yes poverty is institutionalised, and knowledge is institutionalised, thanks to the colonial and neo-colonial era and with it also the accumulation of ‘Western’ capital and power. The UN development goals are under pressure for a number of reasons, and the loss of western capital is ‘sadly’ one of these reasons, because less is being invested to ‘develop’ the ‘underdeveloped’ through direct foreign investment and AID programs. It is a hypocritical system and so is the contemporary discourse of development.
So, number 1. We no longer have time to think of development as industrialisation, because that ultimately has self-defeating effects for our environment and thus for human survival, which should be our number one priority??? Right?
Second, we need to stop using the ‘western yard stick’ to compare western developed civilisation with that of the underdeveloped because western civilisation became about largely due to the colonial economic structure, also known as ‘slavery’, to reach this level of development. It would be impossible for the underdeveloped nations to create slaves from the developed nations, as they just aren’t powerful enough (ha…).
No, seriously we have to stop blowing hot air (or fake money) into the ass of the global economy because it is not helping the problem, rather exacerbating it, through its existing institutionalisation, which includes the emergence of new markets, also know as the commodification and exploitation of cheap labour (aka people), and new access to third world resources (environment), this time it is more ethical than in the colonial era, supposedly! My point is that there seems to be a correlation between the colonial time where labour was free, and that of now,when labour is ridiculously cheap, because they have not yet acquired ‘skills’. So I guess the genius of the economies natural mechanisms will determine their fate. Yeah, right…
So the alternative is to design a system, whereby people, who are being ‘developed’, have control over their development process, unlike in the current schemes from primary development institutions like the World Bank, IMF, and UN. I believe this is called democracy? Maybe developmental democracy? I think people of ‘developing nations’ number one priority would actually be that of the UN millennium development goals (social an environmental sustainability). Now you can’t ask a global economy to do that, because it is too busy not representing their interests!!! This contemporary structure is essentially working against any effort of kindness and good will which manifests into western AID etc. I am suggesting that we use a real solution to solve our human crisis and not the economy, especially one with such an irrational and unethical design as this.
Also in terms of sustainability it is the west that will have to pay for our level of ‘civilisation’! Developed countries are in a position to become more sustainable then us…Maybe they can start consuming their goods rather than sending them half way around the world in the petro-chemical dependent economy. Just a thought…
The only way to make a real change is to create a movement of people against the contemporary structures in place. Look at history it is really the only way. This means renew the political structures in the developed world which are largely corrupt due to the effect of industrialisation or rich resources. And in almost every case of development the people are suffering amongst this environment. This is not justice. So a movement to redefine what development means perhaps a movement in the name of democracy, active democracy, participatory democracy. Again maybe I am just democrazy?