Next week the world gathers at the United Nations to figure out why the Millennium Development Goals are not going to be reached, especially in Africa. The goals were modest enough – eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality, reducing child mortality and improving maternal health. Yet, to take child mortality as an example, four million children under 5, most of them in Africa, have died in the decade since the Millennium Summit agreed on these goals, and at the present rate the goal of reducing child mortality by two thirds won’t be reached until 2045.
The problem is the only too familiar one – poor governance in much of Africa and the failure of rich countries to fulfill endlessly repeated pledges of support while simultaneously imposing destructive and exploitative policies. But to demonstrate yet again their undying commitment to the same goals as ten years ago, leaders of the rich countries are flocking to the UN meeting in droves, led by Barack Obama himself. Much more important, Stephen Harper will also be there. And speaking.
Mr. Harper has a deep vested interested in this meeting. The ultimate fate of his under-the-radar drive to have Canada elected to a rotating seat on the mighty Security Council might well be decided there. No one is entirely sure why the Prime Ministher is so anxious for his government to be represented on that august body, and he, of course, has never said. But he’s spent millions of our dollars having senior civil servants and cabinet ministers jet around the world wooing foreign leaders.
What the Harper government offers is charity and handouts, fish for some rather than all learning to fish.
This project is a bit of an uphill battle, however, since on innumerable different issues the Harper government has almost provocatively alienated other governments. His 110 per cent support for Israel, for example, does not impress the Arab bloc, while peremptorily cutting off aid to eight poor African countries and then freezing all aid to Africa has not exactly made friends on that continent.
But in a world where interests are complex, there are often ways to compensate. For example, Rwanda was one of the countries whose aid was terminated, much to the unconcealed disappointment of its government. But Rwanda also desperately wanted to join the Commonwealth (a move that made little sense in Commonwealth terms) and it seems Canada made a deal: it backed Rwanda’s Commonwealth bid in apparent return for Rwanda supporting our Security Council bid. Who knows what other deals Mr. Harper’s envoys are making as they quietly traipse around the world?
Of course success also depends on the Harper government’s ability to conceal its actual record. But some Canadians are being downright unpatriotic in refusing to co-operate in this effort. Take the back-to-school quiz the McLeod Group has unhelpfully just released. This new organization, comprising some of Canada’s most experienced and talented international development experts, somehow thinks it’s only right that the world knows what it would be getting if it got Stephen Harper on the Security Council.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper addresses the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Sept. 21, 2006. — Reuters
So they remind one and all of a few pertinent facts. For example, did you know that all of the following international figures have publicly criticized the Conservative government just in the last five months? Prince Karim Aga Khan, a spiritual leader devoted to the elimination of poverty and the advancement of women; Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary-General; David Miliband, former British foreign secretary and possible new leader of the British Labor Party; and most famously, Hilary Clinton. Since such folks normally never bad-mouth friendly countries in public, this may well be some kind of record.
