Hunger is often related to unjust debt and outside
meddling. Many starve or go without schooling because their nations are using
scarce resources to pay multinational banks for illegitimate loans made to the
corrupt regimes of their forefathers, according to Desmond Tutu, archbishop
emeritus of Cape Town. It is “a moral scandal...(that)... Lesotho's debt
repayments to the developed world are equivalent to its entire education
budget.”
Haiti, too, is suffering. Since the 1960s, Western development assistance
programs helped turn the country into a low-wage export-friendly economy
profitable to external investors. After Duvalier, another dictator called Baby
Doc was offered generous incentives on condition that he maintain an extremely
low minimum wage, suppress unions and permit foreign companies to repatriate
profits. By 1985 Haiti had become the ninth in the world in assembling goods,
including baseballs, for US consumption.
In 1985 the World Bank and the IMF “imposed” structural adjustments including
reductions of import controls, cuts in health and education budgets, and wage
restraints. These resulted in agricultural exports from the US to Haiti
increasing from $44 million to $83 million in the three years after 1986. In
1995 a currency devaluation of 20% was painful, and the following year President
Preval signed adjustment agreements to cut the number of government workers,
increase taxes on the poor and provide subsidies to assembly plants.
“The benefit to the poor majority was nil.” Thirty years ago Haiti imported
almost no rice and exported sugar. Forced to accept competition from subsidized
American rice, Haitian farmers could not survive. Today Haiti imports nearly all
of its rice from United States.
Perhaps it is time to consider the degree to which our own attitudes,
consumption patterns and investment strategies contribute to this global
problem...and develop the consciousness, compassion and determination to help
ensure that everyone enjoys the conditions necessary to access, without undue
hardship, the necessities of life.
