Sarah Ferguson's Bad Accounting

Now, according to the natural order instituted by divine providence, material goods are provided for the satisfaction of human needs. Therefore the division and appropriation of property, which proceeds from human law, must not hinder the satisfaction of man's necessity from such goods. Equally, whatever a man has in superabundance is owed, of natural right, to the poor for their sustenance. So Ambrosius says, and it is also to be found in the Decretum Gratiani: "The bread which you withhold belongs to the hungry; the clothing you shut away, to the naked; and the money you bury in the earth is the redemption and freedom of the penniless." (Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-II, Question 66, Article 7)

I heard Senator Sarah Ferguson on BBC Radio Jersey this morning; she was justifying the low level of foreign aid given by Jersey in comparison with its GDP by saying that one should take into account all the charitable giving that goes to foreign aid, such as the recent Concert for Haiti, Side by Side for Maderia, Christian Aid etc.

This is a kind of thinking that I am sure will be happily latched upon by any country that is providing less aid than the United Nations Target, especially as only 5 countries have so far managed this!

Although the world's 22 rich countries were mandated by the General Assembly to provide 0.7 percent of their gross national product (GNP) as ODA to developing nations, only five countries have met this target, according to a new U.N. report on FfD. Three of them, Luxemburg, Norway and Sweden, have also pledged to reach the 1.0 percent target by 2005-2006. The other two, Denmark and the Netherlands, have not. (1)

With the Ferguson proposals in place, all of these countries, who also have fund raising activities and private donors, can count that all in as part of their GNP, and manage to reach their targets without having to spend a penny. That, of course, is the outcome; it is an excuse to avoid considering that governments, as well as individuals, have responsibilies. As Peter Singer pointed out, in 1972, " if governments decide to reduce expenditure, they regard foreign aid as one of the expendable items, ahead of, for instance, defense or public construction projects"(2).

It is well known that Jersey is facing a "black hole" ahead, and I suspect Senator Ferguson's statements are not unrelated to that.

She is not, however, the only one trying to make out that more aid is being given than is the case. Writing in "The Tablet", Denis Claivaz notes that the IMF is also doing this:

Many people may not know that the International Monetary Fund's £74 million "highly concessional" and "interest-free" emergency assistance for Haiti is actually a loan. Full repayment will be due after a five and a half year "grace period". Interest will accrue from 2011. Surely history has taught us that Haiti does not need more loans. Haiti needs unconditional grant aid. Given the role of the international community in that country's miserable history, there is a moral obligation to ensure that Haiti's debts are immediately and unconditionally forgiven. Christine Lagarde, the French Minister of Finance, was among the first to encourage world leaders and money institutions to cancel Haiti's debt. Significantly, this is from a minister whose country had illicitly and immorally collected a huge amount of money from Haiti for the privilege of her simply being recognised as a sovereign state. The international community must both help Haiti to recover from the earthquake and empower its people to build their country anew.(3)

So how is foreign aid measured?

According to the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), foreign aid (or Official Development Assistance) is the transfer abroad of public resources on concessional terms (with at least a 25 percent grant element), a significant objective of which is to bring about an improvement in economic, political, or social conditions in developing countries.(1)

This foreign aid represents the moral obligation of the richer nations to help the poorer ones. There is an obligation for all the citizens of a prosperous nation to help those suffering, regardless of geographical boundaries. Voluntary giving is simply not enough, and where it is given, it is a bonus.

Karl Popper, in his "Open Society and Its Enemies" writes that :"human suffering makes a direct moral appeal, namely, the appeal for help, while there is no similar call to increase the happiness of a man who is doing well anyway...Instead of the greatest happiness for the greatest number, one should demand, more modestly, the least amount of avoidable suffering for all; and further, that unavoidable suffering - such as hunger in times of unavoidable shortage of food - should be distributed as equally as possible."(4)

At the present time, the news is focused on the immediate disasters - Haiti, Madeira, Chile - but all the while, there is still a steady need for aid for the many poorer countries:

According to Oxfam, on current trends there will be 9.6 million child deaths in 2015, compared with the millennium summit goal of 4.2 million. The cumulative total of additional child deaths between 2000-2015 resulting from the widening gap between the millennium target rate and current trends will amount to 56 million.(1)

We cannot see just how well off we really are. As D.J. Shaw notes:

Despite progress, it is still an appalling fact that in this globalizing world of increasing prosperity, in which the richest tenth own 85 percent of the world's assets, just under one billion people subsist on less than a dollar a day, 2.8 billion (almost half the population of the developing world) exist on less than two dollars a day, and 850 million suffer from hunger in dehumanizing, abject poverty. Hunger and malnutrition kill more people every year than AIDS, malaria and TB combined, and more people die from hunger than from wars.(5)

In fact, the 0.7% is a very modest sum, as Tim Costello is chief executive of World Vision Australia notes:

The commitment required to eradicate global poverty is modest by comparison with the cost we will have to endure in combating climate change. In 20 years time I suspect that we will be shocked at how modest the request of 0.7 per cent is from the poorest trying to survive. They are not asking us to give up our consumer excesses but just to show a little charity that we could easily afford.(6)

I hope that the proposal by Senator Sarah Ferguson to "count in" personal charitable donations will not get the sympathetic hearing that I suspect it probably will with the States. She was also noting that there is not a proper accounting officer for the Overseas Aid Committee, and therefore no proper accountability to the States. This is ironic because her suggestions strike me as the worst kind of accounting to fudge figures and misrepresent Jersey's giving.

It is also doubly ironic that Jersey has no comparable scheme such as "Gift Aid" which would increase and promote that kind of giving which she would like to count as "overseas aid".

Links
(1) http://www.moyak.com/papers/foreign-aid-overseas.html
(2) http://www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/1972----.htm
(3) The Tablet, Letters Column., (Br) Denis Claivaz, Presentation Brothers,
Geneva, Switzerland, denisclaivaz@hotmail.com
(4) The Open Society and its Enemies, vol. i, pp. 284-285)
(5) http://www.odi.org.uk/events/world_food_security/D_John_Shaw.pdf
(6) http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/19342.htm

An Unappealing Chairman

I've just heard on BBC Radio Jersey an interview with Edward Trevor, who is Chairman of the Joint Christmas Charities Appeal this year. The news report before mentioned how he had criticised and harassed people collecting for an Aids Charity, because it is World Aids day this week, and threatened to get the police to remove them from the streets. (1)

Part of his discomfort is understandable. He thought that they were collecting at a time (the period with the run up to Christmas) when the Joint Christmas Appeal had the sole monopoly on collecting in town. He discovered that this was not so, and the Bailiff had given them permission.

But what is extraordinary, and quite damaging to the Joint Christmas Appeal, is that when interviewed by BBC Radio Jersey, not only did he make his annoyance at this clear, which was a valid argument, but went on to call the Aids charity "a so-called charity", said he wouldn't give to them because he didn't agree with their aims, and that "in the West, people with Aids brought it upon themselves".

This is an extraordinary bigoted statement, and while he may have such views, it is not wise for him as Chairman of the Joint Christmas Charities Appeal to make a statement which gives the suggestion that the supporters of the appeal would mostly agree with him. I think he should apologise for not making it clear that he was speaking just as an individual, and stating views that were his own, and not in any way a reflection of the Joint Christmas Charities Appeal.

I was at school in the same year as two people who died of Aids. One of those suffered from hemophilia, and in the 1980s, a lot of the blood clotting agents used was imported to Britain, and was infected. This was a scandal that Lord Winston called "the worst treatment disaster in the history of the NHS"(2). I imagine that if his parents heard the Edward Trevor's views they would be both appalled and extremely and justifiably angry.

The other friend of mine went into acting, and was openly gay. Clearly he had picked up the infection from his lifestyle. And yet is that a reason to turn away, and say that nothing ought to be done? I remember his funeral well, because it was at St Brelade's Church, and his parents came, grief stricken, for it must be so hard to lose a son while you are still alive, and he was their only son, and only in his thirties. But the church was packed with people, because he was much loved. Would the only crumb of comfort that Mr. Trevor had to offer be that "he had brought it on himself?"

In the 1980s, I wrote a celebration of the Life of St Francis, which was performed at Grouville Church, and produced by Rosemary Hampton. Leprosy was the great fear, the AIDs of the time, and Francis was afraid of lepers, yet he overcame his fear, and embraced the leper. We know today that leprosy is not a result of a person's sin (as indeed the wise book of Job said long before), but in the Middle Ages, it was seen as a result of the individuals sin, as a curse brought upon them because of bad living. Have we progressed so little that some can still see Aids in this way?

Voice: Francis! Francis! All the things you used to love in the world, and wished to enjoy, you must now hate and despise if you wish to do My will. And those things that made you afraid will bring you My joy, and the love of Good Lady Poverty.

(Music plays, special lights off, normal lights on. A bell rings. Francis comes to, as if waking up. )

(The bell rings again. A white-faced leper comes into sight from the shadows, dressed in. rags, bent over, moving with a shuffling gait. )

(Bell rings (cue voice) )

Leper: Unclean! Unclean!

(Francis shrinks back away from the leper in horror. The leper stretches our a white hand and Francis flinches away, to avoid the touch. )

Leper: Take pity! Take pity on one of God's poor!

(Francis loses his fear. He moves forward, slowly taking out his purse. He holds the leper's hand and places coins in it. Then (impulsively) moves forward and embraces the leper. )

(Song; Good Lady Poverty (2 soloists begin singing (consecutively), and the congregation join in the last verse. ))

(Francis moves off with leper (arm around his shoulder) )


Links
(1) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/jersey/8385826.stm
(2) http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2007/may/25/health.politics