Sir, - As the world lurches towards the 21st century perhaps now is a good time to ask about where the human race is headed. The answer to that question depends very much on one's place of birth, which has a huge bearing on every aspect of life from the first breath onwards.
For example, a millennium baby born in Sierra Leone will have only about an 80 per cent chance of surviving the first couple of days of January. Of the babies who do survive the trauma of birth in the poorest country on earth, almost 30 per cent will have died before 2005 due to hunger, diseases (mostly prevent-able) and the effects of war.
Those who do survive childhood can expect to live on average only to the age of 34. In stark contrast, the child of the Celtic Tiger can confidently expect to live to the ripe old age of 77 and beyond and is by and large guaranteed a much easier and healthier time. The children of Sierra Leone are not the onlyones in Africa to suffer because of where they were born. The children of Sudan, Angola, Ethiopia, Mozambique - in fact the children of almost all of sub-Saharan Africa are in the same boat.
Unfortunately their boat is not being lifted by the same rising tide of growth that we in affluent countries are experiencing. The UN says there are over 200 million people in sub-Saharan Africa living in "income poverty"; translated from agency-speak, this means they are living on a dollar a day or less.
However, far from combining our phenomenal economic growth with a caring policy of increasing efforts to eradicate poverty, international expenditure on foreign aid has diminished by 20 pert cent over the past five years. This can only make the future for African millennium babies even bleaker - if that is possible.
Even in its decisions on the level of support it is prepared to offer - and to which countries - the international community is making some fairly strange decisions. Why, for example, was $1.50 a day spent on refugees in Kosovo while at the same time refugees in Sierra Leone and other African countries meritedonly 11 cents a day each?
Aid programmes among refugees in various African countries have had to be abandoned or cut back this year due to lack of funding, while at the same timemoney is pouring into the Balkans. Kosovar children are now back at school grappling with problems set by their teachers while their counterparts in Sudanand Sierra Leone have more basic problems to worry about - such as where their next meal is to come from.
Cynical observers would say that, because of the shortfall in funds, aid agencies are not only interested in doing good but must also be seen to be doing good to ensure further funding. Aid is therefore concentrated on criseswhich are highly visible. If the TV cameras are covering a crisis it suddenly becomes "sexy" for the aid agencies to be there. Unfortunately it also follows that when the TV companies tire of a situation they move on, bringingmany of the aid agencies with them. This, needless to say, has a devastating effect on the most needy.
The really sad part of all of this is that we haven't even started to address the situation. The "battle in Seattle" as the recent shambolic World Trade Organisation conference has come to be called, is a good indicator of thelevel of international agreement on the way forward for the global economy.
It's enough to make you and me sick or angry. It has rather more serious consequences for so many forgotten people in Africa. - Yours, etc.,
John O'Shea, GOAL, P0 Box 19, Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin.