the betrayal of responsibility
living in a world of obscene inequality, the moral privileged had a moral responsibility to do
what they can to improve the lot of the less privilieged.
only a few of the smaller European countries have met the United Nations goal of contributing 0.7% of their annual income
in the form of aid to poor countries. the most recent figure for the Britain is 0.32% and for the United States a remarkably low 0.10%.
when the agenda.. is to cut their budgetary deficits, the most vulnerable items include foreign aid,
because it has only weak domestic constituencies.
perhaps the rich avoid grappling with the inequity on the planet and their responsibility for it because a full understanding would seriously threaten the sense they have of themselves. ... it is stretching an analogy only a bit to recall the "good germans" of the 30s and 40s
who knew nothing about the holocaust being perpetrated by the regime to which they gave loyalty because they did not want to know.
the privileged are turning their backs. ...one cannot overstate the argument.
(but) it is the poor who will determine their future, not north americans or europeans. to think otherwise is to perpetrate an otherwise modern form of imperialism, to conceive of the rich as puppet masters...
still the prosperous countries and their institutions - their governments, armed forces, corporations, voluntary associations - powerfully affect the constraints within which the third world must determine its future.
having played a central role in the creation of the worlds inequities, they could allow themselves to be used constructively.
they will not help by being missionaries, by trying to bring the ideology of free markets or even democratic institutions to the third world.
their responsibility is to reform their own institutions, to lend a hand that is open and not clenched.
this is a task that is achievable and is also respectful of the third world, not manipulative.
- john isbister. promises not kept. 2003.