The £25 billion that the Government has committed to redeveloping Trident missiles should be spent on mosquito nets and food for children in Africa, according to leading Christian charities. Charles Badenoch, chief executive of World Vision, said he was “disappointed” that Tony Blair had opted to spend the money on nuclear arms rather than on saving children’s lives in the developing world. “The billions spent on arms could be spent on alleviating poverty,” he said. “Then we would not only have a more just world but a much more secure world.”
He was speaking at the launch of the Blow the Whistle campaign in Whitehall on 15 March. The campaign aims to remind governments of the commitments they made at the UN millennium summit in 2000 to halve world poverty by 2015. This year represents the halfway point in the timeframe for that pledge to be realised. Churches and Christian charities, including the Alliance, are uniting to encourage governments to do more.
Despite international commitments, currently 1 billion people do not have access to clean water, while 6,000 people become infected with HIV/Aids each day. Some 115 million children never attend school. Two children in Africa die of preventable diseases every minute, and every 13 seconds someone dies of starvation.
Blow the Whistle comes against the backdrop of criticism from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, which has said that the international target of increasing aid to $130 billion by 2010 may be missed.
Funding has so far risen by 5 per cent per year, less than half of the 11 per cent growth in international giving required of the world’s developed nations if the millennium development goals are to be met.
This affects people like Bridget, age 16, in Zambia. Although her two brothers continue to attend school, there wasn’t enough money for her education to continue. So she took to prostitution to try to pay her own school fees. She sold herself for $1 a time. Finding that she couldn’t combine prostitution with her studies, she’s now taken to prostitution full-time. “When I saw that my mother and father couldn’t afford my books, uniform or fees, I decided to do something about it personally,” she said. “But I’ve stopped going to school now, as I couldn’t keep doing both at the same time.”
Changing lives
The Blow the Whistle campaign will run over the next seven years, motivating Christians to lobby government leaders to hit targets that will change the lives of people like Bridget.
Its focus this year will be on 2 June, when a rally will be held in London to coincide with the G8 meeting in Germany, where poverty issues will be discussed. It’s hoped that Christians will join with thousands of others blowing whistles to call for a reassessment of whether these targets will be met.
Helping to launch the campaign, Treasury MP Andy Reed said, “Gordon Brown doesn’t believe that alone the Government can achieve these fundamental changes. It does require a civic society — particularly led by the churches — to promote this. If we don’t make a step change it will be another 150 years before we hit these goals. We have the means but we just need the political and social will to do it.
Matthew Frost, chief executive of Tearfund, added, “Many other countries look to this country to campaign on poverty issues. But it is still only a fragment of people in the Church who are actually doing that campaigning. So much more could be done. The challenge is to see far more Christians get involved to see it becoming part of life as a Christian to speak up on behalf of people in poverty.”
Although this summer’s G8 is likely to look at both international poverty and climate change, there are no hard and fast commitments being made for governments to reach the 0.7 per cent of their GDP in aid that they promised in 2000.
Micah Challenge, the organising coalition of Blow the Whistle, aims to highlight this. Through the rally in London, it is hoped that Tony Blair and other world leaders will be forced to meet the commitments that they previously made. www.micahchallenge.org.uk Hazel Southam
