A step to a more forgiving, more peaceful world3

Thursday, 13 August 2009 | Filed under Peace-making

A news item this week about the “breathtaking rate” of militarisation in India drew my attention.

This year, India will increase its military expenditure by 34 percent to US$28.5 billion, up from US$21.8 billion in last year’s budget.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, India is the 10th largest military spender in the world.

Its neighbour and rival, Pakistan, is raising defence spending by more than 15 percent to US$4.2 billion for the 12 months starting July this year.

The obsession of the two countries to spend their money on guns, bullets and bombs is deplorable, given that about 520 million people among their combined populations live on less than US$2 a day.

India and Pakistan are not alone in squandering their limited wealth on weapons.

Arms sales to countries in the developing world accounted for more than 70 percent of all conventional weapons agreements in 2007, according to the latest annual report by the US Congressional Research Service.

World military expenditure is estimated to have reached US$1.34 trillion in 2007, up 6 percent over 2006 and 45 percent since 1998. The amount corresponded to 2.5 percent of world GDP and US$202 for every man, woman and child on the planet.

This kind of expenditure on weapons is obscene and totally indefensible. The opportunity cost to mankind is incalculable.

Just 1 percent of military spending is enough …

As a comparison, the total annual costs of putting every child in the world in primary school are estimated to range from US$7 billion to US$17 billion a year. Even at the high end, the amount would just be slightly more than 1 percent of the total world military expenditure.

That one percent could have given hope of a brighter future to the estimated 100 million children in the world who were out of school in 2005.

Today, the goal of universal primary education, which was promised as a fundamental right in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights a long time ago in 1948, is nowhere near being achieved.

Instead, since that declaration, about 85 million people had died in armed conflicts, either as battlefield casualties or as victims of starvation and diseases caused by the conflicts.

Many who survived war or live far from war zones continue to live on the edge because of extreme poverty.
UN Food and Agriculture Organisation figures show the number of people living in hunger has increased to a record high of 1.02 billion globally this year.

At the same time, the world is falling far short in its promises of aid to the hungry and needy.

Only US$3.7 billion of the US$6.7 billion needed to fund the UN’s World Food Programme for 2009 has been pledged.

Meantime, pledges of US$4.5 billion from international donors to help the Palestinians in Gaza, which was devastated by an Israeli invasion last December and January, have yet to be delivered, former Malaysian prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad has revealed.

It is simply amazing that the rich in the world tolerate such meanness while seeing no moral wrong in the decision of a Spanish football club to spend US$420 million to buy the services of a few star footballers.

Definitely hypocritical

The conduct of the rich nations in the world is hypocritical. They know how many children in the world don’t get to go to school.

They know where the needy live and what they need.

Yet, when I mentioned these figures at the 17th Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers in Kuala Lumpur in June, some described my speech as radical.

What is so radical about telling what is true?

During his US presidential campaign, Barack Obama promised that his administration would take a leadership role by providing at least US$2 billion to establish a Global Fund for Education to meet the needs of the world’s children.

The promise has not been delivered yet.

In 2006, Britain committed US$14 billion over 10 years to finance education plans in poor countries.

Now compare the amount the two countries have pledged for global education with their role among the top five exporters of weapons in the world – the US, Russia, Germany, France and the UK.

The five together accounted for 80 percent of the volume of exports of major conventional weapons for the period 2003–2007.

That’s trillions of dollars worth of weapons.

We have too many wars, too many killings, too much anger and hatred, too much distrust and destruction.

We are seeing too much grief and suffering inflicted by people on other people.

The enormous resources diverted to fund the expenditures on weapons and wars could be better used to feed and educate the poor of the world.

Some of us are convinced that the eradication of poverty is the first step to a more forgiving, more peaceful world, and that education is the only key to poverty eradication.

Where peace is lacking, poverty grows like a cancer, undermining social and political order and igniting further the fires of hatred and violence.

Sharing knowledge, sharing visions

Education empowers people and, through empowerment, improves governance and strengthens the rule of law.

By combining and sharing knowledge, values and visions, education will transform a culture of confrontation into a culture of tolerance.

People then will see clearly that violence is not an option.

The rich countries have a responsibility to the underdeveloped countries, most of which were until recently their colonies.

They have the means and the ability. Why aren’t they doing what they should?

If the advanced countries are sincere, they would put aside money to educate every child on earth as their vision of the future.

Education can become the bridge that will bind all the people in the world in a common purpose to create a better, safer world for all, not just for some.