Rich nations are failing us: Mbeki
20 September 2006
South African President Thabo Mbeki has warned against the widening gap between the world's rich and poor, and criticised developed countries for their indifferent response to this "global crisis".
Addressing the 61st session of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly in New York on Tuesday, Mbeki said that billions of poor people were "increasingly becoming impatient because every year they hear us adopt declaration after declaration, and yet nothing practical is done to assuage the hunger pains that keeps them awake at night."
Speaking in his capacity as South African president and current chairman of the Group of 77 plus China, Mbeki said that, for over a decade, "some of the developed nations have consistently refused to implement the outcomes and agreements of this world body that would help to alleviate the wretchedness of the poor."
A global partnership for development would never become a reality while rich countries insisted on an unequal relationship with the poor, Mbeki said, blaming the collapse of the latest round of Doha trade talks, as well as the failure to implement the Monterrey Consensus on Financing for Development, on the apathy of rich countries.
"Something is seriously wrong when people risk life and limb travelling in suffocating containers to Western Europe in search of a better life," South Africa's president said.
"Something is wrong when many Africans traverse, on foot, the harsh, hot and hostile Sahara Desert to reach the European shores. Something is wrong when walls are built to prevent poor neighbours from entering those countries where they seek better opportunities."
"As the divide between the rich and the poor widens and becomes a serious global crisis, we see an increase in the concentration of economic, military, technological and media power," Mbeki said.
"The majority of the human race is entitled to ask the question whether the rich are responding the way they do because the further impoverishment of the poor is to the advantage of the rich."
Mbeki called on UN member states to develop and implement policies for sustainable development, on international institutions such the World Trade Organisation to put their agreements into practice, and on the United Nations to reform itself to reflect the "expansion of the global family of free nations".
SouthAfrica.info reporter
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