Attached is a copy of a speech given in Wellington on 18 September by
Caritas Internationalis Secretary General Lesley-Anne Knight to an
audience of about 65 people.

We are making available, either by CD or via the internet a video copy
of the talk, as well as the subsequent question and answer session
(about 50 mins total).

A 1-min excerpt is also available at:
http://www.youtube.com/caritasaotearoanz

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Public Forum – New Zealand
18th September 2009

Breaking the Bottlenecks to Compassion
Lesley-Anne Knight, Secretary General of Caritas Internationalis

Tēnā koutou

Ladies and Gentlemen, whether we like it or not, we live in a globalised world. This was graphically brought home to us recently with the spread of the global financial crisis.

The interdependence of our world today has meant that what began as a crisis in a small segment of the United States housing market has evolved into a global recession with devastating consequences, particularly for some of the world’s poorest people.

The positive side of the interdependence and global connectivity of today’s world is that it makes us more aware of our common humanity. And it makes it harder to escape the shared responsibilities we have for one another.

I believe that through this awareness, we are slowly building a global culture of compassion and solidarity.

We experienced this effect on a massive scale following the devastating tsunami in 2004, which resulted in a record 7.5 billion US dollars being donated by the general public around the world to help those affected, including 19 million dollars from individual New Zealanders. And we saw a similar worldwide response when cyclone Nargis hit Myanmar last year.

The generosity of the general public in response to emergencies such as these is an expression of the compassion we feel when images of human suffering are beamed into our living rooms.

But there are also ongoing long-term tragedies that tend to drop below our horizons when they lose their news value.

Around 230,000 people died as a result of the Asian tsunami, but this same number of people die every five days as a result of poverty. The number of deaths directly attributable to poverty is equivalent to losing more than four times the population of New Zealand each year.

These ongoing tragedies are all around us, and no less deserving of our compassion.

The Asia Pacific region is home to half of the world’s poor and includes 14 of the world’s Least Developed Countries. In Papua New Guinea and Timor-Leste, you have two of the poorest countries in the world, ranked 149 and 158 respectively out of 179 countries on the UN’s Human Development Index. In PNG a third of the population lives below the poverty line, 5.5 per cent of babies will die before they are two, and those that survive will be lucky to make it to their sixtieth birthday.

Further afield, the statistics are even more shocking. Half the population of Sub-Saharan Africa lives in extreme poverty; nearly a third do not have enough to eat; one in seven children dies before its fifth birthday.

The fact that these tragedies continue in 2009 is nothing short of a global scandal that should concern us all.

The reaction to large-scale anti-poverty initiatives, such as the Jubilee 2000 debt relief and Make Poverty History campaigns, shows that when we are made aware of this suffering, we want to respond. We realise we are all part of one humanity and we have a responsibility to one another that derives not from any national, racial or religious affiliations, but from the very fact of our humanity.

So why does extreme poverty still persist? I believe it is the result of “bottlenecks to compassion”. The big challenge we face is how to locate and break those bottlenecks so that the genuine compassion that is felt throughout the world can be turned into real effective action.

Nine years ago, at the start of the new millennium, world leaders set about harnessing this global compassion and established a series of targets aimed at freeing millions of people from extreme poverty, hunger, disease and illiteracy. The Millennium Development Goals, or MDGs as they have come to be known, aim to halve the number of people living in extreme poverty by 2015.

They have provided a focal point for global development efforts and a benchmark by which we can measure our progress.

Significant progress has been made in many areas since the MDGs were launched. The big danger now is that we allow the global economic crisis to throw us off course.

As is so often the case, it is the poor who will suffer most as a result of the economic crisis. The World Bank estimates that, because of the crisis, the number of people living below the poverty line will grow by 53 million. This means that we will need to work even harder to achieve the MDGs.

Progress is also challenged by climate change which threatens to undo many of the advances that have been made in recent years.

So where are these bottlenecks – and how can we break them?

One of them is clearly a bottleneck in financial resources.

Here in New Zealand, the public donated around NZ$144 million dollars in 2008 to aid and development work through New Zealand NGOs. Nearly 21,000 volunteers contributed their time to the work of New Zealand NGOs and more than 267,000 people are regular donors.
Last year, Caritas Aotearoa New Zealand spent NZ$3.4 million dollars on its long-term development programmes in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Pacific, as well as responding to humanitarian crises. With greater resources, it could do even more.
Caritas Aotearoa New Zealand is part of the Caritas Internationalis confederation, which has it headquarters in the Vatican City in Rome. We have 164 members, ranging from some of the world’s largest humanitarian organisations – such as Catholic Relief Services, Catholic Charities USA, Caritas Germany, Secours Catholique in France and CAFOD in England and Wales – to some of the smallest, such as Caritas Samoa and Caritas Tonga, which I am looking forward to visiting next week.

Speaking from our perspective in Rome, I can tell you that Caritas Aotearoa New Zealand is a much cherished, well-respected member of our confederation. Caritas Aotearoa New Zealand pledged more than half a million US dollars to our Confederation’s Emergency Appeal Programmes during 2008.

The sheer scale of the challenges we face in tackling global poverty and major humanitarian disasters means that we cannot rely solely on public generosity; we need the support of our governments. A lack of political will on the part of governments to rise to this challenge can be another bottleneck to compassion.

The level of public support for NGOs clearly illustrates a high level of compassion and a strong commitment to international aid. But do people also want their governments to provide overseas aid?

We believe that they do.

Opinion polls around the world show a consistently high level of public support for overseas aid. A 2003 review of these polls showed that 81 per cent of people in the major donor countries supported aid to developing countries. A survey of 22 countries in Europe in 2004 showed that, in the previous two years, support for development aid had risen from 83 to 91 per cent.

Unfortunately, the level of support for aid shown by the public is not always reflected in the amount provided by governments.

Forty years ago, the UN formally adopted a target for overseas development assistance of 0.7 per cent of Gross National Income or GNI – to be achieved within five years. Today, only five countries have met that target: Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.

Aid from New Zealand in 2007-8 amounted to 466 million dollars, but this still amounts to only approximately 0.3 per cent of GNI. I understand that the New Zealand Government has not set a timetable to reach the 0.7 target, and the likelihood of reaching the 0.7 by 2015 appears doubtful.

It is all too easy for governments to use the global financial crisis as an excuse for failing to meet aid targets. But this excuse looks pretty shaky when one sees the amount of money they are pouring into financial rescue packages and bank-bailouts.

If all 22 member countries of the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee achieved the 0.7 per cent target, it would amount to around 280 billion US dollars. Contrast this with America’s 700 billion dollar financial rescue package.

In its 2006 report, the UN Millennium Project estimated that to meet the total costs of achieving the MDGs in all countries, overseas aid would need to rise to $189 billion by 2015. In other words, all the MDGs could easily be achieved if all DAC countries met the 0.7 per cent target. No new commitments are needed ¬¬– just following through on those already made.

Let’s take a look at what some of these costs mean in terms we can relate to:

The World Bank estimates that achieving the health-related MDGs would cost an additional 20 to 25 billion US dollars, which is about what the world spends each year on perfume.

The estimate for achieving the education goal varies greatly, but could be up to 30 billion dollars. To put that in perspective, that is roughly what the world spends on feeding its pet cats and dogs each year.

Both Caritas Aotearoa New Zealand and Caritas Internationalis, at the international level, are actively engaged in campaigning for governments to honour their aid commitments and work together to tackle the global challenges we face. In particular, we are lobbying hard for urgent action on climate change.

Climate change threatens to set back many of the development advances of recent years. It threatens livelihoods, food security and social cohesion. And that is why it is vitally important that climate change policies are inextricable linked with those of development.

The poor will be the first to suffer the effects of climate change – indeed in many parts of the world it is already happening. Climate change policies must therefore prioritise their interests.

There is an urgent need for more help for developing countries in both mitigation and adaptation programmes. But it is vitally important that this is in addition to current aid commitments. If the cost of carbon reduction programmes is met from existing overseas aid budgets, this will represent a double whammy for the world’s poor – not only will they suffer the worst effects of climate change, for which they are least responsible, but they will also lose out on development aid intended to help them lift themselves out of poverty.

Caritas Aotearoa New Zealand is on the front line in the battle against climate change. In the Pacific alone, 75 million people are in danger of being forced from their homes. Some villagers in Kiribati have already had to move their houses to retreat from the rising sea.

The implications for us all – and particularly for you here in New Zealand, surrounded by millions of vulnerable people – are truly worrying. A global solution is urgently needed.

A third potential bottleneck to compassion is the way in which we deliver our development and humanitarian aid programmes.

That’s why organizations such as Caritas are today very focused on the effectiveness of the aid they provide. They are subject to stringent reporting requirements from their institutional donors, and must also work hard to ensure private donors know that their money is being well spent.

The persistence of global poverty can lead to a perception that aid simply does not work. But there are many success stories.

If we look at some of the MDGs we can see that, prior to the onset of the economic crisis, significant progress was being made. For instance:

• In 2005 the proportion of people in the developing world living in extreme poverty was just over a quarter, compared with nearly a half in 1990.

• Enrolment in primary education in the developing world reached 88 per cent in 2007, up from 83 per cent in 2000. In Sub-Saharan African enrolment increased by 15 per cent from 2000 to 2007.

• Deaths of children under five have been reduced from 12.6 million in 1990 to around nine million in 2007.

Aid does work. What is needed is more aid, and smarter aid.

We need to ensure that our aid policies respond to local needs, build local capacity and strengthen civil society’s ability to hold governments to account. Above all, aid should not be delivered in a paternalistic manner that denies developing countries’ rights and duties to manage their own development.

Reflecting the principles of Catholic Social Teaching, Caritas works with the local people of a particular country in all of its programs. This approach is central to our philosophy that international partners are best placed to identify their own community’s needs and problems, developing sustainable solutions that are culturally appropriate and owned by the community.

As part of the Catholic Church we have unmatched outreach in almost every country of the world. This gives us a unique advantage, because no matter where a humanitarian emergency arises, we will have somebody nearby who can immediately start work to help coordinate our response.

Caritas is present before the emergency, during and, most importantly, after. One of the major criticisms of NGOs is that they fly into an emergency zone, stay for a few weeks and then move on, leaving the job half done. Emergencies often occur in the poorest parts of the world and can have a devastating effect on development programmes. Caritas recognises the importance of a continuing presence after an emergency in order to manage the transition from disaster recovery back to long-term development.

Being part of the Catholic Church also means that we can often work in areas where other organisations cannot.

For instance, during the recent conflict in Sri Lanka, Caritas Sri Lanka was one of only two aid agencies working in the combat zone throughout the fighting. Supported by Caritas Aotearoa New Zealand and other members of the Confederation, Caritas Sri Lanka continues to provide food, medical help, and shelter to some of the 285,000 people who have been forced to flee their homes.
When Cyclone Nargis hit Myanmar last year, Caritas was able to make an immediate response through the Church and other partners, saving lives and delivering urgent relief to more than 80,000 people. Caritas was able to call upon more than 300 local volunteers recruited from parishes and communities where the Catholic Church operates. Local church representatives enjoy a high level of trust among the affected population. They speak the local languages and understand the social and economic environment in which they operate.
As a faith-based organisation, Caritas also has an important role to play in peace-building and reconciliation, especially through inter-faith dialogue and cooperation. In countries such as Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Indonesia we are often working with other faith groups.

If you would like to know more about the work of Caritas Aotearoa New Zealand do check out their website at www.caritas.org.nz, where you will also find a link through the Caritas Internationalis site.

You may have heard about the outspoken critic of aid Dambisa Moyo. Her book title suggests that aid is dead. Can I say to you, to suggest aid is dead - is dead wrong. Moyo’s argument centres on the failures of our multilateral institutions to deliver solid development outcomes. Whilst in part the history of delivering development through multilaterals such as the World Bank and African Development Bank is chequered, at best. What this argument does is cast a shadow over the work of organizations like Caritas. I totally reject that aid delivered through organizations like ours is not having a dramatic impact.

I think of the tens of thousands of women in DR Congo, raped and ostracized by their communities as a result, many of them have been given new life and hope through support of Caritas. In Zimbabwe, thousands more would have died of starvation if not for our delivering food aid, with the support of the WFP.

To stop giving aid at the grassroots level will propel millions back into poverty.

So in conclusion, I would just like to make the following points:

Overcoming global poverty, and achieving the Millennium Development Goals, is not an insurmountable problem.

The compassion that arises in us when we reflect on these issues can be harnessed to drive solutions. As well as doing what we can individually to support this work, we need to encourage our politicians to have the courage to prioritise international aid.

And we need to make clear to world leaders that we expect them to work together to provide answers. We are dealing with global problems and we need global solutions.

We in Caritas are ready and willing to work with the people of New Zealand and their government to break the bottlenecks of compassion.

Let’s do it.

Thank you.

ENDS

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