Developing world fighting for survival — not solvency

While the financial world is on a rollercoaster, as confidence peaks and dips, in the developing world anxieties are not about solvency but survival.

The only shares they are interested in come in small bowls of which there are never enough to go around.

With such tumult in the markets governments are fixated with cutbacks and budget reviews. Foreign Affairs Minister Michael Martin is in the same boat.

Ireland’s aid budget is going to be less than before. That means every cent that is spent becomes more precious.

When people talk about cuts in government spending one gets an image of civil servants losing out on overtime, or of proposed vacancies being pared back. Uncomfortable, even regrettable, but nobody dies.

Alas, this is not the case in Africa. If the money doesn’t come the children don’t eat and the sick have no medicine. It is a very sad picture, with the children paying the heaviest price.

I would implore Mr Martin to make sure that aid agencies that work with the poor in the field — the implementing non government and the missionary sectors — who are at the heart of helping the poor are not impeded in their work.

Their projects are already in train. If funding is cut people will not be fed, hospitals will not be built and the circle of suffering will widen. GOAL operates in the real world, and is all too well acquainted with the harsh facts of life. But if the axe must fall can it be in areas where the impact would be negligible?

The best friend corruption ever had is indifference. However, Mr Martin’s sincerity in decrying the record of men like Robert Mugabe is on the record. He has signalled that he is not prepared to accept cheating the poor.

And he is right, now more than ever we cannot afford to be indifferent.

John O’Shea

GOAL

PO BOX 19

Dun Laoghaire

Co Dublin