Vincent Browne (October 25th) correctly highlights how unfair trade relations between Europe and Africa are undermining the latter's hopes for development, an injustice to which Uganda's President Museveni chose to devote his UCD Millennium Lecture. While inequalities in trading relationships are exacerbated by the heavy burden of external debt of many African countries and the reduction in development assistance by many of the worlds richest nations, unfair trading practices cost developing countries an astonishing $700 billion a year. This is almost 14 times what they receive in aid.
One of the key development challenges today is how to find resources to tackle the huge level of deprivation in our world where 1.5 billion people live or exist on less than a dollar a day. Such resources must not only be measured in narrow aid terms. In addition to aid we should include trade, investment, money freed up through debt cancellation and new and innovative forms of international taxation such as a tax on excessive financial speculation.
Yet at successive UN conferences during the 1990s, governments committed themselves to financing development. In light of the glaring gap between policy statements and practice, in July 2001 the UN General Assembly will convene a "high-level intergovernmental event" which will consider financing for development. Among the key participants in this process will be institutional stakeholders such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Trade Organisation (WTO), and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). The draft agenda for this event covers trade, aid, debt and the issue of addressing systemic issues in order to prevent repetition of the Asian and other financial crises of the 1990s.
This UN high level event will be an opportunity for EU and African leaders to look at broader issues of financial development so that when a country such as Ireland provides increased aid it does not lose sight of the bigger picture.
Ireland, as a newly elected member of the UN Security Council, and now committed to reaching the UN aid to GNP target of 0.7 by 2007, is well placed to take an active role in support of Africa and other developing countries at this event. The large number of votes which Ireland received from African and small Caribbean and Pacific Nations contributed greatly to the Irish government's successful candidacy for a seat at the Security Council. - Yours, etc.,
Justin Kilcullen, Director, Trocaire, Booterstown Avenue, Blackrock, Co Dublin.